TRANSCRIPT

So, I think as storytellers we have a great responsibility to think about the kinds of stories we tell, but I want to be clear, I am not advocating censure. I think that censure is one set of people trying to determine what's right and imposing that on other people. What I am advocating is that we take responsibility as storytellers for the content we create. In other words, let’s learn a little bit about how stories impact our brains. Let's think about the effects that stories have on human beings. We used to be able to say things like, “Oh, it's just a story. Who cares? You know, I can turn the television off, I can take the virtual reality headset off,” but that's really not the case, and we now have the science to back that up. We know that when someone listens to a story or when they tell the story or when they live that experience in real life, there’s very little difference between the kind of activity that happens in our brains, which means that we can be deeply traumatized or impacted by a story. We can be exposed to things that we don't want trapped as memories in our minds. The human brain, as far as we know, isn't actually able to distinguish between the fiction and the reality when we're building our memories. We sort of triage and process all of those experiences together. Now this has great power. It also means that when our brains sync up as we share stories, we’re able to share experiences and to understand each other better and share our pasts, in a way. This is a phenomenon you can hop over and hear me talk about in my TEDx, a little bit, called “neural coupling.” What I'm getting at here is that we understand now something that Plato understood intuitively a long time ago:

Stories have influence on us as individuals. Stories shape the way we look at the world. They also shape the way we look at ourselves and our own experiences. We no longer, you know, if we really look at the science and look at the research, we can't say anymore that there's such a thing as just a story. We can't say that you can watch the film and then forget about it. You can't take the virtual reality headset off and let the memory go. So I think we're entering this great age of debate and fine-tuning of how we as storytellers are going to take responsibility for the experiences that we almost impose on our viewers, on our readers, on our audiences. I'm not going to tell you how you should respond to that challenge. That's your duty as an artist and as a creator. I just want you to step up and care about it. I want you to realize that the words you choose do have impact. The story you choose to tell and the way you choose to tell it, the kind of images that you put on screen, will have a lasting, unforgettable impact on your viewer or reader. In fact, our brains process images, we think, up to 60,000 times faster than words, so we have to be very aware of that visual nature of the storytelling and how it imprints us. I’m really eager to have more conversations about this.

I think we all need to, and as technology provides for more and more immersive experiences, we need to be thinking about this at the forefront of creation. We have a duty as storytellers to not only serve the world well, but to serve our peers well. We have a duty to sort of be ambassadors for the kind of world we want to see. Does that mean that we shouldn't take on hard topics? Absolutely not. It means that we need to think about how we want to take those topics on and what we choose to show people. How we can be thought-provoking and what kind of reasoning we put behind the reason for being for projects. Basically, I want to invite creators everywhere, you included, to step up and ask yourself, “For what reasons am I telling the story? What kind of impact is it going to have and how does that change the way I might tell it if I'm not happy about the impact it has?” You know, do your research. Find out about how stories impact our brains and then make wise decisions. That’s what storytelling ethics for me is all about.

You know, I was actually having a conversation about this with a friend at South By Southwest. They’re a virtual reality filmmaker and their response to me at first was, “Well, who cares? If somebody doesn't want to experience these deeply traumatic event, they can just take the headset off,” and my point was they can never take the headset off. Once we have lived through, for example, the experience of a sexual assault or a rape in virtual reality, we can never undo that memory, and it can be as deeply traumatizing as if we were exposed to that, you know, in our waking lives. So I want us to think about what kind of memories we want to expose the consumers of stories to. You know, Plato thought about that a long time ago. He was especially mindful of the way young people would engage with stories, because he realized that the experiences that they would have in living through the journey of a tale would be as meaningful in defining how they chose to live their lives as their everyday existence and experiences lived, you know, from the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they go to bed at night. So, let's at least begin to have a conversation about this, and please, if nothing else, realize that the stories you tell, the words you choose, and the images that you choose to present to your viewer or reader matter. They have impact and you as a writer have choices.

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