Do Stories Change for Generation C ?

A friend of ours, Jeff Conner who is with the entertainment, movies, comics etc business, has discussed with me in email about some interesting observations about Generation C and stories, story-telling and culture.

Alan and I have often remarked on how the youth of today (Generation-Community, the always-connected generation) have different values and behaviour. They want to co-create for example, they expect to participate, whether in voting off American Idol contestants or designing their Nike Sneakers.

Now Jeff pointed out that the traditional narrative of storytelling may be changing too. This is not his own thought, he points out, the discussions are on-going in Hollywood etc, but yes, Gen-C is also a gaming generation. And in many of the games the storyline is user-generated, and the gamer takes the hero role. The narrative becomes very different from that of say the movies. Jeff writes:

"The most popular games and roleplaying activities are all about the user, meaning that the scenarios (or "stories") always feature the user as hero, no matter how it's dressed up. The result of this will be that Gen C will lose the ability to process traditional narrative fiction. Culture survives on the stories, but if all those stories become self-narratives, then culture will suffer."

I think that is a valid concern. Perhaps our culture eventually evolves into variants of Batman, Spiderman, Superman (and the Iceman, Kimi Raikkonen? ha-ha).. and the more game-oriented versions of those?

Jeff also considered Gen-C and the use of SMS text messaging. Is texting now becoming the tool to fight boredom (and I'd say yes, it increasingly is). This may further dilute the quality of entertainment - and I'm certainly not the first to suggest that ever shorter attention spans and now reality TV formats are already doing enormous damage to classic expectations of quality in entertainment. Again, Jeff's comments put it very well:

"I am wondering if you've noticed a trend with Generation C where the addiction of texting, and their fear of boredom, has changed the basic meaning of "entertainment' to an activity that is closer to "distraction." True entertainment takes a commitment by the  recipient -- half-attention just won't do."

Again, quite valid observations. I'm interested in other opinions around this? Anyone else noticed similar shifts, is our very foundation of the culture, story-telling and entertainment, now shifting, altering, perhaps diminishing or losing quality, going from entertainment to distraction (ha-ha, good point to put in a good word for our friend Mark Curtis's book, Distraction, very good read).

Finally, an un-related point, but something Jeff's been thinking about, is comic book content and mobile phones. He thinks - and I agree - that the Japanese Manga style of comics with their bold simple graphics and not much text, suits particularly well to the mobile screen, better than Western style comics that can have more complex art and are text-heavy.

Fascinating discussions with Jeff, I'm happy he said its ok to post these thoughts also here on the blog to share with you. What do you think?

Comments

[tim harrap]

Yes I think they are changing but it is becoming an existential question for people. If you have ever read Erich Fromm's book "To have or to be" you will note even from the title the debate about the essence of being. Do you continue to grab "material things" - to have - [will it really satisfy you?] or do you recognise the more important element of existence, simply- to be. Talk about consciousness raising!! See also my comment about "ataraxy".

This question is central to the current debate on this blog item. Yes you may become the hero but you also recognise that to achieve successful ends you often have to share activities to achieve your goals. You are not the sole being but part of a community. If you begin to be seen as a "grabby" I must have, your "community" should in theory (!) pull you up short.

[Jeff Conner]

The issue of having and being is, to me, aside from Gen-C losing the ability to process complex narratives that do not feature the participant as the hero. Being the hero doesn't mean that you can't work with others and be a good community participant. The story just shifts from "this is me defeating evil" to "this is me working with others to defeat evil" (or some other goal). It's certainly not "this me enjoying a piece of great literature that isn't about me."

As I noted, culture survives on its narratives. If those narratives become truncated, then culture itself is at risk.

[Lynn Winters]

I was amazed when I realized the extent that this "role playing" activity has swept the current generation. I think it is great that it is a step away from computer and video games and requires the participants to exercise their imagination and focus on the game. However, how anyone can do this for a period of 12 hours without stopping is beyond me. We played cops and robbber, and cowboys and indians making up our scripts as we went along, but only for a few hours in an afternoon, not all night sessions. That is when it has become another addiction. Good or bad for the growth of our youth, their minds and futures. Only time will tell.