RED: How to use stories to destroy ANYONE.
Last month, at the release of Wanted: Storyteller, I covered how all stories are essentially propaganda. Now this is my theory on how it all works. (evil version)
How to destroy a woman through story.
You simply take her tale and pervert it. Write her weak. write her stupid.Say it enough, she will believe it. Once she believes, it is fact. She will teach it to others — like a virus.
How to destroy any culture through story.
Take a culture , make a stereotype, mock said stereotype. Write them weak. Write them stupid Instant skinning via story. Say it enough, and there are many who will believe. Once they believe, it is then a fact. They will teach it to others — like a virus.
Be a serial arsehole — How to destroy ANYONE through stories.
Abuse a class of people, invade a country or countries. Take everything they have. Tell stories where they are weak, Mock them. Make stereotypes, write them stupid, write them lazy. Say it enough, and there are many who will believe. Say it enough, the invaded will believe and will teach it to others….Like a virus.
My song Red is about the stealing of skins — the stealing of stories, the stealing of powers.
Red is Red Riding Hood.In case, like me, you have sometimes missed glaring pop culture stuff 😀
http://yunyu.bandcamp.com/track/red
The tale has its theoretical origins in China (Grandaunt tiger) , Africa (wolf and the kids) and various European regions. The popular version I refer to is about a girl who is sent off by her mother to run a little errand — deliver food to her ailing grandmother.
On the way she meets a genetically modified wolf that speaks human. She talks too much, now wolf knows her address and has beaten her to grandma’s house.
Wolf eats grandma. Bad bad wolf.
What happens next is interesting. Older versions suggest that rape happens. Red is told to climb naked into bed with wolf. Eventually, she outwits the wolf by pretending she needs the bathroom and ends up tying wolf to a tree (or filling its belly with stones). Leaving it to die.
Red rescues herself.
Something quite disturbing happens in the newer tales. Storytellers in Germany introduce a woodsman who comes in to kill the wolf. Woodsman has no backstory, he just appears. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he travelled by teleportation and was sent there by Robot Hitler from the future.
—if you are going to get ridiculous with storytelling with ZERO context, you might as well not be shy about it. Maybe we should include Rainbow crapping unicorns into the stories, or Godzilla. I like Godzilla.
So, just like that, Red got downgraded from self rescuing heroine to non playing character aka. Damsel in Distress. Other times, according to Charles Perrault, she simply dies from her wolf encounter.
All too easy to skin a story and pervert it no? The sad thing is that this damsel in distress version is the one more commonly told today.
The stealing of skins
In my obsessive read of fairytales, there is a recurring theme that happens in many tales — the stealing of skins.
The story usually goes like this, man finds woman frolicking in lake/sea, steals her magic robes which either give her the ability to fly (common in Chinese/ Russian/ Japanese folktales)or swim (see selkie )
Woman with no robe is left behind by her companions (usually sisters who fly or swim away). Man takes woman home. By all descriptions, she is raped. Stories told insist that she falls in love with her rapist. One day woman， who usually has had a few kids by then, finds skin, puts it on and escapes home to the skies or sea. It is said to be a sad love story when the woman leaves. Man pines for her forever.
Nevermind her opinion. Objects have no feelings.
The disturbing bit about the tales are that the stealing of the skin is a romantic gesture. The male is usually depicted as kind but lonely person. Woman, according to the storyteller, is happy to be a sex slave.
I have no words….except
Stories are powerful things. In this instance, rape is romanticised. The successful fight for freedom is regarded as a tragedy. Insisting that things are so only hides the wounds of a story, wounds fester in secret, we continue to feel what we feel. Now we feel too scared to share the wounds because no stories of self rescue tell us we can get ourselves out. No stories justify our rage. Women continue to be afraid to report rapes and violence and are ashamed, and shamed for it.
The stealing of skins, the stealing of powers that come with it, the stealing of stories.
You can extend this methodology to any culture the mainstream media wants to negate. Take any culture’s skin(story), pervert it, tell THEM what it is. Make them ashamed for trying to be strong. Make them ashamed for being them. Make them pay for trying to exert themselves. Make their rage foolish and trivial.
Negate them.
Take this methodology to any class of people you want to negate. The poor, the artists or dare I say…the scientists. Tell them to get off welfare, tell them to make immediately profitable inventions, art. Make them blame themselves. Make them attack each other. Twist their tales. Write them lazy, write them stupid. Blame them if they have nothing left to give. Make them ashamed to call the game unfair.
The wolves at our door have their goons and their dogs.
My Twisted Tale:
Today, at the release of RED I’m going to steal one back for us, the ones who bear the mark of the Twisted Tales.I will play their game and add a further mutation to Red Riding Hood’s tale.
What if Red was the wolf? What if it was the Woodsman that took her wolfskin and stopped her from accessing her powers? What if the Woodsman was the one that killed her grandmother who was also wolf.
More excitingly, What if Red found her wolfskin today?
I know what I’d do if I was her.
I’m not returning to the woods, the skies or the sea.
I’d be coming straight for the Woodsman’s JUGULAR, then I’d free up a few more wolf skins because I’m sure this serial arsehole has a collection.
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Then I’ll write rainbow crapping unicorns into the story. Because RAINBOWS!!
Buy the RED single from TWISTED TALES here:
RED has a teaser that lives here: