Turning lives into stories
Many people assume storytelling is
an art that belongs to writers. In fact, we are all story tellers. The only way
we can make sense of our experiences is by finding connections that can form a
meaningful narrative. Stories transmit social and cultural values across
generations. We are the sum total of all our stories. Storytelling takes many
forms, from writing our biodata, to shared memories with friends, revisiting family
albums, or more formally as writers, poets, singers or film makers.
Homer’s epic stories, the Iliad
and Odyssey, written in Ancient Greece, established the masculine ideal of the
courageous warrior, and the glorification of war. It came to define heroism in
Europe, seeping from the actual battlefield into cinema and computer
games.
Arabic epic literature best known
through The One Thousand and One Nights, abounds with fantastical adventures, animal
fables, proverbs, the supernatural, humorous and moral tales. Pakistani folk lore centres around ancient
love stories. The Ramayana and Mahabharat, while depicting wars, also made the
more obscure religious texts accessible to ordinary people, generating many
more relatable deities such as Krishna, Ganesh and Hanuman.
Hollywood has emerged as the most powerful source of modern
mythology, creating archetypes of lovers, criminals and family drama, with far
reaching global influence. The war film genre became a propaganda machine
glamorising war and heroism, and stereotyping the enemy.
Native Americans were depicted as brutal savages, defending a land
that was ‘destined for white people’, Black Americans were presented through
the lens of slavery, shown to be simple, naive or dangerous, Black American
actors pushed back to claim centre stage, and the recent film, Killers of the
Flower Moon, attempts to correct the perception of Native Americans. Arabs once fascinatingly exotic with
genies, flying carpets, and horses galloping in the desert, soon became violent
Palestinians, and post 9/11, depicted as evil terrorists.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet symbolizes the perfect love
story across the world, and Che Guevara the perfect rebel to all those who want
to defy the establishment from Peru to Pakistan. Parveen Shakir became the voice of the modern
Pakistani woman, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib the voice of protest. The
definition of an advanced society is its ability to go to the moon, rather than
the eradication of poverty.
Narratives can also be inverted. The 2022
biopic of Elvis Presley highlighted his inspiration and respect for
Black music, challenging the all-white American image promoted in the racially
divided America of the 50s and 60s. America was uncomfortable when Cassius Clay
became Muhammad Ali and refused to fight in the Vietnam war, but he has now
become a much-revered icon proving his words true : ‘I am America, I am the
part you won’t recognize. But get used to me.’
The narrative of the suffering of
the Jewish Holocaust has been sidelined by the current brutality of Israeli
attacks on the civilian inhabitants of Gaza and the West bank, and as a
consequence of their support of these attacks, USA, Britain and many European
countries have lost the image of the upholders of human rights.
Even the story of Superman created
by Jerry Seigel, is being revisited as a symbol of the loss of the Jewish
homeland, as the planet Kal-El (Hebrew for ‘All is God’) blows up, and Superman
is sent to Earth (America) in a spaceship not unlike baby Moses in his reed
basket.
Pakistan too is in a maelstrom of
shifting narratives. The ignorant masses have turned out to be politically
aware. The awe of the powerful has turned into disappointed contempt. In his paper ‘Anti Hero’, Mathew Mezey writes
‘Over the last 30 years we have lost the respect we once had for all experts and
professionals and most notably politicians’ - a phenomenon called the ‘decline
of deference’.
Yet society needs its heroes:
those extraordinary people who show what is possible for a human being to
achieve. Heroes defend the defenseless and downtrodden, and represent the
triumph of good over evil, and are, as Ahmed Mian puts it, ‘A beacon of hope in
a troubled land.’ In the words of Chief Dan George, ‘If legends fall silent,
who will teach the children of our ways?’
Durriya Kazi
March 12, 2024
Karachi
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