Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?

This chapter was an extended version of something I’d heard before: “There are no new stories.” That’s not to detract from new works that may come up, but it’s just the truth. I haven’t been around that long, but in my short life I have noticed this. 

A very easy, maybe bad, example to spot that proves this is any given romantic comedy movie out there. The guy meets the girl and pursues her and then they end up together. Of course little details set the stories apart, whether it be the evil step mom in one and the crazy magical quest in the other, but the basic story is the same. 

Part of me wonders why this is. I guess an easy explanation is that it’s just hard to come up with original stories. As a playwright I can definitely agree with this statement. One of the reasons I have such a hard time being proud of my work is because I’m afraid that people will think it lacks imagination. Then it could also be because as human beings it’s just hard to deal with things that we don’t understand. The unknown is scary. It is in our nature to protect ourselves and avoid being vulnerable at any cost. Therefore, people read stories and watch movies about things that they are familiar with and that they know for certain how they feel about. It allows them to stay in control. Maybe because of this authors stick to what they know will be easily accepted due to its familiarity. 

And in that train of thought, maybe it’s also due to what society has deemed acceptable. After all, there have been books banned in different parts of the world because they were “too scandalous” or “inappropriate”. Upsetting the norm in society is frowned upon. Anything that isn’t “normal” or “traditional” can cause negative reactions. Most people would like to believe that they are open to change and new things, but it’s often proved to be false. Homosexuality is still something that causes commotion. Sex and anything related to it still causes most people to blush and change the subject. The man is still supposed to be the one to ask the woman out. How then, can anything that ventures into subjects that aren’t normally spoken about be accepted? They aren’t. And so we are stuck with the same stories. 

Maybe it’s because our knowledge of the world is too small to be able to come up with new stories, after all there is the other saying: “You write what you know.” We only exist in one planet. There are seven others that we have very little or no knowledge of. We are also only one type of living organism. Our goals in life are all basically the same. What we know is very small compared to what is out there. And we can’t write about things we don’t know. So again, we are stuck with the same stories. It’s no wonder we constantly see the same characters in literature and in movies.