sto·ry·tell·ing
/ˈstôrē teliNG/
noun
1.
the activity of telling or writing stories.
“the power of cinematic storytelling”
adjective
1.
relating to the telling or writing of stories.
“the oral storytelling tradition”
You’d have to be living under a rock to miss the news of several high-profile men being accused of workplace sexual harassment and sexual assault over the past 4-6 weeks. Between the “me too” stories that likely flooded your social media feeds and the noise surrounding high-profile men accused of criminal behavior, the focus has rightly been on the pervasive sexual misconduct in our culture. Women have endured mistreatment at the proverbial hands of men since the beginning of time and I hope we can look back at this period as when the tide finally began to turn. But this isn’t about that.
In the event you have been living under a rock (lucky you, can I visit?), here’s a quick rundown, but not an exhaustive list, of powerful media/entertainment industry figures who’ve been accused of sexual misconduct in the workplace fairly recently:
- Harvey Weinstein – film producer
- Micheal Oreskes – senior vice president of news, NPR
- Leon Wieseltier – former editor at The New Republic
- Mark Halperin – journalist, formerly of ABC News and NBC News/MSNBC
- Roy Price – Amazon Studios executive
- Chris Savino – Nickelodeon producer
- Lockhart Steele – Vox Media editorial director
- James Toback – filmmaker
- Terry Richardson – photographer
- Andy Signore – Defy Media senior vice president of content
- Bill O’Reilly – former Fox News anchor
- Knight Landesman – Artform co-publisher
- Kevin Spacey – actor
- Roger Ailes (deceased) – former Fox News chairman and CEO
In many cases, these men were in positions of power, they were the gatekeepers regarding what stories got told and how. These are the people who’ve been in charge of telling our political and cultural stories, the people whose lens through which we’ve viewed the world, in some cases for decades. They determined which projects got funded, what pieces were seen, which voices were heard.
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful tool. It can be used to entertain, to educate, to connect, to make money (as in business). Great storytelling is grounded in truth, and relies on the integrity of the storyteller. Effective storytellers must also be vulnerable, creating space for their audience to feel genuine emotion and to connect with them authentically, so that all-storyteller and audience-can arrive at a place of understanding together.
For decades upon decades, the voices that have been the loudest, the tellers of the stories, and the people who are responsible for the tellers of stories, have been in many cases white men. A fair number of these men have demonstrated an extreme lack of respect for women, such that harassment and assault became “regular” workplace behavior. I struggle to pull apart the way these men lived their lives and the lens through which they view the world. Does the way they view women, particularly women with less power, influence the stories they tell and how they tell them? I think emphatically yes.
What do Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren look like through the lens of these narrative gatekeepers? How do they tell the stories of these women? What do the issues of reproductive rights for women and access to healthcare look like through the lenses of these men? How does their tremendously amplified voice influence what the rest of us think about these people, these issues? And how does the bullying behavior of these particular men influence the how the stories are told by the people that work for them? How does that behavior influence WHO works for them?
This is not to say that men can’t tell effective stories, or that they can’t cover female political candidates fairly. That’s not at all what I’m saying. But when the amplified voices are white men, and in a number of cases unethical white men, how does that influence our collective truth?
I wonder about the damage done by a network like Fox News. Setting aside the network’s inclination towards being a propaganda machine, how effectively can a network run by a man who treats women as Roger Ailes did tell the stories of women? How can they connect authentically with people, and how vulnerable can their female employees be in doing their job, considering theirs is a profession that requires a certain level of authenticity? When the most powerful lens at a network is that of a misogynistic predator, how does that influence what the rest of us see?
I don’t know what the answers are. So much damage has been done that it seems like burning down these power structures and rebuilding them would be the most effective path to true change. But that will never happen. We’re left with trying to influence broken systems, but hopefully by developing a deeper understanding into how the systems are broken, we can take back some of the power and have greater influence on our collective truth. Pay attention to who is behind the stories you read, see, hear. Who writes the music, takes the photos? Seek out stories told by diverse groups of people. Hear their truth, listen to their perspective. Who tells the stories matters deeply. Lastly, we can use our own voices, as so many women have been doing of late. Whether that’s speaking our own truth, amplifying the stories of others, or creating space where previously there wasn’t any, we all have a role in shaping the future. One story at a time.
“I will tell you something about stories . . . They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.” ― Leslie Marmon Silko
