There are infinite events and ideas occurring simultaneously in the world around us. To cease confusion and create order of this, many human beings respond to this by mentally subscribing to various narratives about the world around them. One transmitter of narratives is the media industry and its use of mass communication.
This ‘chain of news communication’[1] figure highlights the selection and distortion that occurs between media perception and media image, as well as personal perception and personal image. The media industry selection and distortion reflects what information is considered narratable and unnarratable for their controlling interests. Prince presents “the category of the unnarratable, or nonnarratable: that which, according to a given narrative, cannot be narrated or is not worth narrating either because it transgresses a law (social, authorial, generic, formal) or because it defies the powers of a particular narrator (or those of any narrator) or because it falls below the so-called threshold of narratability(it is not sufficiently unusual or problematic). [2] There are many factors to consider in a piece of information’s narratibility. Often, this selection and distortion happens to serve the best interests of the controlling interests of the corporation. However, what mainly gets transmitted is information that captures the audiences attention, which often is out of the ordinary.
“The tellability of a story is often conceptualized in terms of the weirdness that is said to characterize story elements such as events. William Labov (371), who is usually referred to as having coined the concept, stated that in reportable or tellable narratives “the events involved [are] truly dangerous and unusual. . . . Evaluative de- vices say to us: this was terrifying, dangerous, weird, wild, crazy; or amusing, hilar- ious, wonderful; more generally, that it was strange, uncommon, or unusual––that is, worth reporting.” Later in the same decade, Mary Louise Pratt (140) introduced the tellability index, which boils down to a weirdness index as it indicates to what extent the story elements are “held to be unusual, contrary to expectations, or otherwise problematic” (136). Monika Fludernik (70), who regards narrative as the evocation of experience, sometimes equates tellability with weirdness, e.g., when she talks about “the reportability (i.e. weirdness) of the experience.””[3]
A relevant and recent example of the compellingness of a narrative that is high in “tellability” and is out of the ordinary(weird), is the Charlie Sheen coverage by the media. Charlie Sheen’s debacle’s have been narrated all the way from major news outlets to social networking sites such as twitter and facebook. On my own facebook homepage, once I saw four Charlie Sheen status’s. What compelled people to care so much about him? His highly unusual(weird) antics and statements.
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