In reading Ong’s Orality and Literacy, I was thinking of the anecdotes that circulate amongst my friends. More specifically, I was trying to recall the compelling and interesting stories vs. the banal and lame ones and what made them good or bad stories. Though what came to me weren’t the stories themselves, but the story tellers. I have a friend, and I’m sure we all do, that is just plain awful at telling stories. Now I know that all his stories are not necessarily uninteresting, I know this because if I retell the same story I get a much better response, so it has to be something else he is doing wrong. And what he is doing wrong is not following a successful pattern that makes for effectively communicating a story.
Ong goes in detail in comparing the cultures that are purely oral, which has no forms of written communication, and ones that are literate. In the case of the former where nothing can be written down, whatever is communicated only lives on within the memories of those present at the moment the communication is “performed”. Having no way to look something up, a way these cultures remember and enforce memory is to use common patterns and sequences to communicate. What we find is that patterns also exist in literate cultures. Now the stories my friends tell are nowhere near as epic as the Iliad or the Odyssey, stories thought to be told and retold purely orally, though the better ones do follow a prescribed pattern which is what makes them successful.
Take these 2 stories for example:
Story 1 – “I was at a bar last night and somebody spilled a drink on me. I was wearing an expensive new shirt and was talking to someone when it happened.”
Story 2 – “I was at some hipster dive bar in the lower east side with my friends Bill and Ted. I decided to dress up for once in my life and wore this new expensive shirt I just got. So I’m up at the bar talking to this really cute girl when some douche bag spills his drink all over me. It completely ruined my night.”
What was told in both these stories? I was at a bar, I was wearing a new shirt, and a drink was spilled on me at an inopportune moment. Granted these aren’t necessarily great stories, but at least the second is more compelling to hear. You can relate better to the situation, and when you get to the climax or heart of the story, a drink spilled on you at the worst moment possible, it has more of an emotional impact. You can better understand the mindset of the protagonist in the story. What makes Story 2 better is some additional details and circumstance surrounding the story. Though even more importantly is that Story 2 it told in a familiar and effective sequence: the setup, the plot, and the resolution.
This common pattern is seen in most conventional films, a form of secondary orality according to Ong. A film is broken into four quarters. The first quarter is the setup. This is where we learn about the characters, setting, and general premise of the story. The next 2 quarters is where the bulk of the film happens, the conflict, the climax, etc. Finally, the last quarter is the resolution and conclusion. The major difference between something like film and something that is purely oral is that film is a recorded medium that allows the creator to easily change the sequencing and “recall” details and events however he or she sees fit. Nevertheless, most main stream films still follow the same prescribed sequence of setup, plot and resolution.
So what about films that don’t follow the common story telling pattern? Well, these films normally attain the rather ambiguous moniker of “Art Film”, aka a film not readily consumable by the general public. It’s not that deviating from the standard pattern is a bad thing, on contrary it often creates a more interesting and memorable experience, it’s just that most people find the common story telling pattern comforting. They can easily follow along since they are so used to observing this pattern. One film that I can readily recall that overtly reshuffles the story telling sequence and has also attained mainstream success is Christopher Nolan’s Memento. In this film the main character only remembers the last few minutes of his life and must keep a running log of the current events in order to remember what has just happened. Oh yeah, and the story is told backwards! The film is very unique and it has been well received by the general audience. Now why has this film succeeded while others who have played with the story telling formula failed? There are a lot of reasons, but the important thing to take away from this example is there are very few “successful” films, or other forms of oral media like radio and television, that do not follow the general pattern seen in both stories told by Homer or by us.