Campbell - Leadership and Language


Currently in my Leadership class, we are discussing the role of media as an influence in our perceptions of what it means to be a leader or to perform leadership. In Closing the Leadership Gap, Wilson explains that even the smallest, most subtle remarks can have a lasting impact on how we view all of society, which may seem ridiculous. Wilson states that "information through storytelling can have a sweeping effect, interrupting national and cultural patterns" (p. 132). She then goes on to describe how a TV series in South Africa which revolved around health issues managed to significantly decrease the rate of domestic abuse in the country. How can a simple television series have such an impressive role on the realities of society? What is the true power of storytelling?

Wilson cites a very popular psychological study which was performed by Albert Bandura as Stanford University in the 1960s. Coined the BoBo Doll Experiment, Bandura found that young children are more likely to aggressively batter and beat up a BoBo Doll after witnessing a random adult doing the same thing. What Bandura developed from this study is defined as social cognitive theory, where "people learn from role models whose behavior they wish to emulate" (p. 133). This can be clearly exemplified in today's cultural climate, where any pop fad catches on like wildfire and celebrities are emulated as the leaders of political, musical, artistic, and civil movements. What we are repeatedly exposed to on TV, the radio, and the internet is what we learn to idolize and mimic, whether we are conscious of such a process or not.

As we have discussed in class, storytelling goes beyond the limitations of language; there is a deeper meaning to the narratives of humankind. From the archaic cave paintings in Lascaux to the oral mythological epics of Ossian and Homer, storytelling has been used as a means to transcribe the underlying customs and values of the contemporary society in a creative and captivating way. Mythology was never meant to be interpreted in a literal sense; rather, its use is to demonstrate a deeper message to which the audience can relate. Thus, oral fables have been passed down generation to generation, shaped to fit the nature of current circumstances.

These stories are portrayed today through popular media devices, especially social media. These devices have become platforms for issues beyond the superficial gossip of pop culture and trivial celebrity matters. For instance, many classic American tales (i.e. Little Orphan Annie) have been remade using highly diverse casts, particularly with the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities. While this has caused a myriad of controversy, it recognizes the need for greater representation in such media constructs to equally appeal to countless groups of people. The basic components of these stories - plots, characters, music, etc. - remain the same yet include those who are consistently underrepresented in today's movies and TV shows. In this way, storytelling largely resembles the nature of primal oral narration: adapting stories to fit the dispositions of contemporaneous culture.

From the traditions I learned growing up as Roman Catholic parishioner, allowing stories to be interpretative, inclusive, and flexible permits people to gain a deeper understanding of lifetime situations and grow from them. Biblical narratives and popular musicals alike, we extract meaning from stories beyond the scope of their mere creativity. Language in these narratives acts a tool to transfer meaning into a compelling and comprehensible fashion. Moreover, these stories can be told and retold to fit the morals and mores of the times, allowing them to last well-beyond the lives of those who first uttered them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Campbell - Time and Primal Culture

One of the major themes that we've discussed in this class throughout the semester has been comparing and contrasting oral cultures with written cultures. There are many differences, including ritual practices, moral codes, and utilization of spaces. However, another major difference that we only briefly touched upon is the way in which primal and modern cultures differ in their dense of understanding time. In today's world, time is very linear. We consider there to be a beginning and an end, and have even become so technical as to mark the years, months, days, and even hours. We measure our lives in the passing of years and death is seen as a gateway to a new life or an eternal paradise. For primal cultures, however, life is entirely cyclical. When we die, our bodies serve as food for scavenging animals or as nutrients for the soil. Our energies are passed along to other members of the natural environment, so despite our deaths, we never stop contributing to the circle of life...
Read more

Campbell - Ossian Mythology and "Oral Texts"

Abram, David.  The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World . New York: Vintage Books, 1996. I really enjoyed Abram's historical summary of how oral language developed and transitioned into written word. He begins this account with the invention of the Hebrew alphabet, or "aleph-beth," which later served as a model for Greek linguistic advancement. However, as any geography lesson will tell you, the Greek nation was geographically broken and thus the cultural climate was highly sectarian (i.e. nation-states), so the concept of written language took awhile for people to accept. Additionally, the mystification of oral chants and stories could not be directly translated into written word, and many Greeks were rather disenchanted by this loss of oral magic. As Abram explains, "the sung stories, along with the numerous ceremonies to which they were linked, were in a sense the living encyclopedias of the culture - carrying and preserving ...
Read more

Hanscom - Lion's Gate Statue

        When we had class outside at Lion's Gate, we had a good discussion about the statue at the top of the hill. The statue commemorated a man who was responsible for making the space around it a place for the public to visit and enjoy. The statue was a very tall, geometric design of a man taming a horse with a bit in the horse's mouth on top. At the bottom of the sculpture, there are four sculptures of men holding different objects representing things we really value in American culture. One of the figures was holding a painter's palette with brushes to represent art, another figure was holding a compass with some paper to represent math/science, the third figure was holding an anvil to represent the trades that use this object for metalwork, and the fourth figure was holding a book by Homer to represent literature/storytelling. These four things represented the most important aspects of American culture at the time this sculpture was made.     ...
Read more