Maybe we need to re-evaluate what stories are worth telling, need telling? Deserve telling. The classics make six million not having enough to eat a background statistic, but one wealthy man losing it all because of misdeeds he consciously committed? It’s some kinda goddamn tragedy!
Or maybe it’s not that simple? “The Great Gatsby” was about how disgusting the rich are to us and each other and that the only thing worse is what a poor man will pretend to be so as to join those monsters, but all that most seem to recall of it is how they wish they were at those banger parties. “Les Misérables” was about the horror of being trapped in one’s past desperation. How where we come from is inescapable no matter what we do, and how even if we burn that whole thing down and start again in revolution, another class of conartists will do it all again. At best, all folks remember are the jaunty tunes. At worst, there’s simply fan-fiction on Tumblr about a thief and a cop written by teenagers that just want to make their penises kiss? Hell. Our factual narrative of the dull arrogance of the moneyed in the sinking of ‘The Titanic’ has been reduced down to an old woman, in her death, forgetting all about her long life and family, to go back to one night when her and her admittedly rocking tits got railed by a syphilitic bum in a Model-T.
What are we doing here? What do we actually need to change? Whatever the impetus or titles, everything seems to come up hollowed-out into the easiest, most exploitable forms to generate even a single buck. Constantine turned the all-loving Message of Christ into an engine of wars and gluttonous empires stomping their polished boots unto our fragile throats forever. Buddha, Mohammed, whatever you like. Mickey Mouse. The Berenstain Bears are out there selling the Prosperity Gospel now, as soon as the original authors kicked off, their evangelical fascist son took to revamping ‘em into recruitment for televangelist megachurches. There’s only so much media literacy to go around and let’s face it, media-literacy don’t sell. The more media-literate people are, less they’ll be able to sell Axe cologne and cars that resemble industrial dumpsters.
So, what do we do in the face of the horror of every great tale being hollowed out to sell toys, deodorants and crusades? That’s the good news, we’re doing it. We are doing it right here, we happen to be doing it right now. Every generation needs to tell new versions of the stories, get ahead of the monsters, keep telling the truths we can. Letting them do the good new tales will, until they get hollowed out again. New stories and new tellers forever, down through the ages, one step ahead of the kings and damn advertisers forever and that’s what we’re doing, friends.
The eternal commission of word-smiths: adaptation. We adapt to whatever there is to adapt to.
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