MC52060A Money & the Media

Money and Narrative/Stories

Outline of todays lecture

What are narratives and stories, and why do they matter?

Frameworks for analysing narratives and stories about money

Fictional narratives Nonfiction narratives Autobiography and alternative histories

What is narrative?

Aristotle: the art of storytelling = the dramatic imitating and plotting of human action (Kearney 2002: 3)

Narrative is the representation of an event or a series of events (Abbott 2008: 13)

More than simply a description, exposition or lyric And all around us: friends, teachers, newsreader,

novelists, columnists all narrate things to us

What is narrative?

Distinction often made between narratives and stories

Stories = the series of events that occur, and which are narrated

Narrative = the specific way of plotting and telling the story

Points to fact that stories are always mediated we do not see them directly

Why do narratives/stories matter?

Stories/narratives make things explicable (how the world came to be)

They make things memorable over time They are inter-subjective (someone telling

something to someone about something)

They thus make the world, and the events that happen in it, both shareable and historical

contributing to creation of community

Why do narratives/stories matter?

The same thing applies at level of the individual When someone asks you who you are, you tell

your story (Kearney 2002: 4)

Every life is in search of a narrative Narrative provides a viable form of identity It is a pattern to cope with the experience of

chaos and confusion and with the experience of temporality (Kearney 2002: 129)

How narrative works

Narrative involves telling story in a particular way Aristotle: it is an imitation of action A creative redescription of the world such that

hidden patterns and unexplored meanings come out (Kearney 2002: 12)

It gives us a distance from which to view events Opens up perspectives not normally accessible? Empathy and detachment => new ways of being

2. Frameworks for analysing narratives about money

Thematic in terms of ongoing/persistent conceptual frameworks (see week 1)

Marx, Aristotle and others: money as corrosive of human relations

Adam Smith; money/trade as benign Simmel, Weber: money as ambiguous disruption

Frameworks for analysing narratives about money

Historical in relation to issues/concerns of the time E.g. demise of trade unions, rise of financial

capitalism, high levels of unemployment, role of women in workforce

Geographical: concerns specific to place/region These are not mutually exclusive Broad frameworks (e.g. money as corrosive) may

be foregrounded at specific historical moments

Frameworks for analysing narratives about money

The social function of stories e.g. ideology critique E.g. Lvi-Strauss stories provide symbolic solutions

to contradictions which could not be solved empirically (Kearney 2002: 6)

Critical theory/Horkheimer & Adorno the extent to which cultural products (e.g. novels, films, songs) affirm the status quo (affirmative vs autonomous art)

False comforts, false resolutions?

Fictional narratives money corrupts the person

Wall Street (1987) Dramatizes real

historical change (financial capital 1980s)

Broader theme of potential of money to corrupt human values

A battle for the soul of a young man

Fictional narratives money as the power to control and exploit

Pilcrow (2008) Adam Mars-Jones

Money as form of communication, but also control over others

Transposes Marxist themes moneys power to institute relations of domination and exploitation

Fictional narratives money vs authentic relationship

Jane Austen and marriage plot novels

(Male) hero has to choose between wealthy woman who would enhance status

and poorer but more altruistic or authentic women

The triumph of love over money?

Fictional narratives money/trade as benign

Rarer (because less dramatic?)

And more often as backdrop to ordinary life

Markets/money-making activity as largely benign

Brings different types of people together, leads to cooperation (see Adam Smith, Montesquieu)

Fictional narratives money as ambiguous disruption

Brewsters Millions (1985 [1902])

Man with no sense of money has to spend $30 million within 30 days to inherit $300 million

Dramatizes ways to waste or use money

Also the ambiguously transformative effect of wealth

Fictional narratives

Mary Poppins Set in Edwardian

London Banker married to

suffragette Tension between

different relationships to money

To invest or to give?

Fictional narratives historical concerns

Boys from the Blackstuff (1982)

Unemployment in Liverpool in Thatcher era

Humorous but ultimately tragic look at the way economics affects ordinary people (BFI 2006)

3. Fictional narratives

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

Many themes, but context of Thatcherism and entrepreneurial culture of 1980s

Nonfiction narratives A broad category: real-world events narrated in all

kinds of ways

Historical narratives share with fiction the transformative plotting of scattered events into a new paradigm (Kearney 2002: 12)

But make distinct referential claim based on evidence Yet in many languages same word used for stories

and history (histoire, Geschichte)

Historical narratives are world-making as well as world-disclosing

Nonfiction narratives History is told with interests in mind? An interest in

communicating/sharing (Habermas)

What we consider communicable is also what we consider memorable and valuable (Kearney 2002)

Narrative comes between us and the world (Abbott 2008: 154)

Nonfiction writers select some details rather than others, emphasize some not others, disclose etc

Emplotment: chronicle of events => meaningful story

Nonfiction narratives: the dramatization of real events

Made in Dagenham (2010)

Dramatizes Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968

Re-claims womens role in labour history

Then becomes part of shareable world (Kearney)

Nonfiction narratives: true-life stories

Nonfiction narratives: documentaries

Autobiographies and counter-histories

The role of stories and narratives in creating a sense of selfhood

Narrative provides us with one of our most viable forms of identity individual and communal (Kearney 2002: 4)

Storytelling as sense-making technique? (e.g. in psychoanalysis/therapy)

A way of locating oneself in history but also sometimes against it

Autobiographies and counter-histories

Landscape for a Good Woman (1987)

Against romanticized accounts of working class

A story of unfairness, resentment, and wanting material things

Also about stories

Autobiographies and counter-histories

Autobiographies and counter-histories

Why autobiographies and counter-histories matter:

The stories that people tell themselves in order to explain how they got to the place they currently inhabit are often in deep and ambiguous conflict with the official interpretive devices of a culture (Steedman, 1987: 6)

New narratives and micro-narratives Many authors (e.g. Kearney, Abbott, Fludernik)

raise question of end of narrative/ threats to story

Some agreement that there are challenges to tradition of linear narrative, new forms emerging

Narratives are increasingly multi-plotted, multi-vocal and multi-media (Kearney)

Worth attending to narrative qualities of e.g. photography (Berger, Another Way of Telling)

Also the micro-narratives of social media?

Social media micro-narratives

Conclusion

Why stories and narratives matter making things memorable, comprehensible, shareable, social, historical

Different types of narratives Similarities and differences between fiction and

nonfiction narratives

Autobiographies and counter narratives Social media/digital media and new narrative forms