Storytelling As Seductive Indoctrination: I Am Right In Narrative’s Crosshairs

Recently at the dentist I opted to watch a Netflix show about animal babies in the wild. Usually I avoid TV, as it makes me antsy and unsettled, and that’s the last thing I need when people are putting things in my mouth. But when I saw “Wild Babies” on the menu, I thought it might be cute and disctracting.


I guess I expected the nature show format of my youth but with fewer killing and eating scenes. The format of my youth was hushed, long-ish scenes with nothing much happening punctuated by violent death; the title “Wild Babies” made me think it might be for kids, and therefore on the gentler side.

It was not the nature show format of my youth. While I didn’t see any death, the show was crudely narrativized in the grossest, dumbest way through careful editing and a constant voice-over. We encountered a cautious baby girl lion had to decide whether to follow her daring and rambunctious older brother lions away from the safety of the den while their mom was away. An outcast baby seal had to struggle to integrate into the in-crowd of other baby seals, or risk being someone’s next easy meal. It was like the ridiculous story construction of reality TV but with “wild baby” animals.

You don’t have to take my word for it. The website for the show says “since cliff-hangers are through lines in the series, you’ll be desperate to learn what these adorable creatures get into next.”

I was disturbed and even a bit appalled. The narrative seemed to me not only anthropomorphic and structured to meet our “cliff-hanger” needs, but also culturally forced into a 1950s sit-com version of what a “story” is. I grew up watching The Flintstones and The Jetsons, only vaguely aware these were all re-packaged Honeymooners. I never thought that in 2024 I’d have to watch those same stories imposed on pangolins.

The experience reminded me of this excellent New Yorker article from last year about how everything is now a story and how weird that is. To change hearts and minds, we need stories — not data and logic, but narrative. To be effective in the marketplace, a brand needs a story. To get elected, politicians need a good story. Stories are seductive: you follow effortlessly, and you get swept up. But narrative imposes its own structures. The New Yorker article asks, “What is it that story does not allow us to see”?

The problem of narrative has bothered me for a while. I am a fan of Murakami’s writing, but the lack of a satisfying narrative grates on me. Things just happen and then they stop happening. I feel annoyed, but I feel stupid for feeling annoyed. Life is things happening and then they stop happening. Patricia, why do you need the book to be about something?  

On the flip side, the form requirements of story in contemporary western culture also piss me off. If you take a writing course, you may be taught that there has to be something unresolved, and that it should get resolved, and that a character should grow and change. And so many stories are like that, even though life is almost never like that. It verges on indoctrination. Whose purposes are being served by this relentless hidden messaging about the relationship of meaning to narrative closure?

One of the most striking domains where story now runs rampant is in statistics. In the lockdowns I used some online tools for learning baby data analysis, and right at the start was a lesson about how data is about story telling. First thing to do is figure out what story you want your data to tell. Then you can figure out how to tell it.

I realize I’m being naive, but: really? We’re all just fine with statistics telling the stories that the storyteller wants to tell? I often think about how in the 80s everyone used to talk about how there were “lies,” “damned lies,” and “statistics” — which I took to mean that quantitative information is slippery and can be used in various ways. That used to be cause for skepticism and cynicism, but now it seems treated more like a feature, not a bug.

All this is to say that I feel right in storytelling’s crosshairs. I am seduced by story — I seek out narrative and I sink myself into it like it’s a warm bath. On the other hand, I am suspicious and skeptical about its covert impacts. With those wild animal babies plot lines, I feel inoculated: childhood viewing of sitcom after sitcom rendered me impervious. But what about newer strains? What am I unconsciously absorbing about the nature of triumph, regret, and what it means for things to work out in the end?