Single Story, Television and Violet Blue

Last night, due to very bad WiFi in my hotel, I watched a few TED videos I'd downloaded in case the WiFi in my hotel room was very bad. One was just superb. It was 'The Danger of a Single Story' from Chimamanda Adichie. I'd never heard of her before, but just ordered a couple of her books on the strength of how much I enjoyed this:



It made me think of The Wire. Just as Chimamanda was stuck telling single stories in her early writing, the majority of TV is stuck telling single stories. The majority of characters in TV are superficial. One dimensional. They have a single story … good policeman … bent copper… drug dealer … guy in red shirt in away team to the planet surface.

Characters become multi-dimensional when we know more than one of their stories. I've always thought this is why The Wire is so good. Most the characters have more than one story. It's not possible to do this for all of them, of course. Some minor characters are never fleshed out. Some characters have to wait for several seasons to pass before getting more of their stories told. After this happened a couple of times, I stopped judging characters on their single-story - being patient for the reveal of a second, third … nth story.

I haven't always extended that patience in the real world, but it's something I shall endeavour to do, having thought about it in this way.


I'm going to have to consider whether this is also why I like The Killing and Borgen. I think it's why Skins and Misfits are so good - they present single-story stereotypes intially, but dedicate whole episodes to fleshing out each of the main characters by giving them additional stories.

This assumption of a single story is what's bitten Violet Blue in captioning "The Saddest Booth Babe In The World" ). I'm not going to judge her too harshly. She'd just responding to a single story in he way most of us often do. She's not doing herself any favours, however, by not reconsidering, not apologising, not learning, not growing.

A person at conference booth can be a young attractive women, with breasts in a tight t-shirt, representing herself and her work and her nerdery. A young attractive woman, with breasts in a tight t-shirt is not necessarily hired marketing eye-candy. She may be bored and tired and disillusioned. She may be struggling to overcome shyness or social awkwardness (I am imagining myself in a similar situation). She may be sitting there thinking "Fuck! I wish I'd hired a booth-babe. I suck at this!"