{"id":3741,"date":"2018-04-11T19:25:18","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T23:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/?p=3741"},"modified":"2018-04-11T19:25:18","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T23:25:18","slug":"narratives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/narratives\/","title":{"rendered":"Narratives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>https:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/pin\/427560558351428922\/visual-search\/?x=16&y=12&w=530&h=388<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to think over history, whose voices do you hear, Whose voices have been silenced and why\u201d. (Candice Hopkins, Silenced Voices, Improvisation & Instruments)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Growing up, I was told that history is malleable, that it was all a matter of narratives. \u201cIt all depends on who tells the story\u201d Mom would say, \u201cSome people are craftier than others that their stories, even though they might be lies, become the standard\u201d. Ofcourse the mind of the five-year-old that I was could not process the weight of Mom\u2019s words, but at least, the words stuck with me.<\/p>\n

Today, reflecting on Candice Hopkins quote in the video and the fragments of recollections of Mom\u2019s words, the truth is undeniable. There is no such thing as an absolute truth\/recollection of history because at the end of the day, only the version told by the more powerful party becomes publicized. For instance, the popular Hollywood movie \u201cHotel Rwanda\u201d paints a heroic picture of Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager who goes through great lengths to protect the people in the \u201chotel Rwanda\u201d (Hotel mille Collines, a hotel that too was renamed for the purpose of the movie). Hollywood\u2019s version of the story earned the man global heroic awards even though genocide survivors who were actually under his care in the so called \u201cHotel Rwanda\u201d accuse him of the most heinous crimes, calling him out as the enemy that sought to exterminate them all. A similar example exists in the Bahamas whereby the tourism industry paints a beautiful, paradisiacal image of the place when even the UN calls it out for its extremely high poverty and unemployment rate.<\/p>\n

The connecting pattern between the above examples is the striking difference between the narrative that is believed to be true vs the narrative that is never mentioned in mainstream media. The popularized narratives are pushed by the more influential powers (for hotel Rwanda it was Hollywood and the Bahamas, the tourism industry) and with time, these narratives silence all other opposing narratives. In the end, it is always a game of power\u2026whoever holds power has the unique ability to control what becomes reality.<\/p>\n

But what if the roles were switched? What would happen if we allowed the defeated, the victims, the marginalized to publicly air their version of the most popular stories? Would we for instance have a different tale to world wars? Would the truth shock us so much that it would change the status quo\u2026and most importantly, would anybody listen<\/strong>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/pin\/427560558351428922\/visual-search\/?x=16&y=12&w=530&h=388 \u201cYou have to think over history, whose voices do you hear, Whose voices have been silenced and why\u201d. (Candice Hopkins, Silenced Voices, Improvisation & Instruments)   Growing up, I was told that history is malleable, that it was all a matter of narratives. \u201cIt all depends on who tells the story\u201d Mom would say, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Narratives”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3148,"featured_media":3742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2610],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2594],"class_list":["post-3741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elements-of-sound"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3743,"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3741\/revisions\/3743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3741"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjsymuleski.com\/artofthemooc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}