Page 183 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

The digital age is transforming storytellingMarco FerrarioThe great irony of existence is that what makes life worth living does not come from the rosy side. We would all rather be lotus-eaters, but life will not allow it. The energy to live comes from the dark side. It comes from everything that makes us suffer. As we struggle against these negative powers, we’re forced to live more deeply, more fully.Robert McKeeMay we have the strength to struggle against adversity, against evil: that is the Odyssey, Star Wars, the story of any story. But it is also the life of every one of us.Vulnerability, the possibility of winning, and also of succumbing, is what makes stories “real” – that is, credible. When the main character in a television series falls, exits the stage or dies, the emotional impact on fans peaks. The possibilityof evil triumphing is embedded in every instant of our lives and makes us fearful, causes us pain; we would rather avoid it – it is the “dark side” that stories bring to light.And then there are the good and strong feelings – extremes that make us throb with emotion, cry, suffer, enjoy – that fill the stories that we wish would happen in real life, that we wish were true, that we would like to experience ourselves.What has all this got to do with the Internet? Why is there all this talk of storytelling precisely now, as if the Internet had given an extra boost to the already extraordinary power of stories?There are words so hackneyed that we are sick of hearing them; “storytelling” is one of those words today: anything can be told, anything can be turned into the story it entails.