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Narrative Structures as Structures of Oppression

3/1/2017

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“The world is made of stories, not of atoms.”
Muriel Rukeyser, “The Speed of Darkness”
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Human beings think in stories. We use stories to share experiences, ideas, and wisdom. Two of storytelling’s most celebrated theorists are Gustav Freytag and Joseph Conrad. It was Freytag who observed that most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. He drew this as a triangle in order to depict the tendency for the action of a story to rise as the story begins, peak in the middle, and fall as the story concludes. This triangle is also called a ‘story-arc.’

And it was Joseph Conrad who noticed that stories also tend to have a hero, or protagonist, and that this hero often was set on a journey on which he had to defeat an antagonizing force. Often this journey was a trip to some other place, a far away or magical land, where the hero would have to overcome a series of challenges before returning home triumphant.
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Traditional narratives, the type that fit into Freytag’s Triangle and Conrad’s Hero’s Journey, participate in a kind of mass make-believe. Traditional narrative lulls the audience into a complacent stupor that allows them to believe that they, too, are heroes, that their enemies are villains, and that they will somehow prevail over the tyrannies, misfortunes, and character flaws that plague them. These structures create a story-telling binary of people like us (protagonists) and people like them (antagonists). And the people like us always win.
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Except, of course, when they don’t. When viewed from a place of marginalization, of fetish, of oppression, or of trauma–from a place of otherness–these same stories where in the able-bodied, attractive, capable heroes (with just enough of a Superman curl to keep them interesting) re-enact time and time again the very aggressions that oppress the rest of us. And with nothing else to watch on TV, we sit there and take our punishment wondering as Muriel Rukeyser did, “who will speak these days, if not you, if not I.” (Rukeyser, “The Speed of Darkness”)
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We Have Liftoff!

4/14/2015

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I hope the space puns never get old. 

I am over-joyed to announce we aired our first episode from the WNYU studios today at 4:45 PM. In true radio show fashion we were making edits up until the last second. 

Take a listen to the beginning of something great!
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Pilot Episode Recording

4/8/2015

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What an incredible day of recording. I cannot adequately express how very thankful I am for the amazing people who came to the recording studio to share their time and their talent today.  

In order of appearance at the microphone:

Javier Molina made an unlikely friend. 
EllaRose Chary dusted off some space dust. 
Maggie-Kate Coleman showed us the moon is the right place for love. 
Kristen Sieh had a futuristic twist on a time-honored profession. 
David Commander has some good shit to sell.  
Tiffany May McRae maybe found the best space crop. 
Chantal Pavageaux just wanted a fair shake. 
Nick Vaughan reported on residents and residencies. 
Jake Margolin found the space within. 

All I can say is: BE EXCITED. 
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    Billy Noble

    The Gone's host, Billy Noble is a transgender art technologist and Master's of Science candidate at the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering.

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