Narrative and Its Significance
Author’s Note: This is part of an ongoing study in pop culture. The first part of this essay, which is on the rise and fame of K-Pop group Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS) can be found here.
The previous section of this long essay explored the relationship, at least on a surface level, between the fame of Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS) and the way they tell their personal stories, thoughts, and sentiments through the content that they make, the songs that they compose, and their overall performance. It left us an important question, the answer to which may encapsulate not just the band’s experience toward their fans but also, on a personal level, all our other experience of telling stories and listening to (or reading) them: What makes narrative significant for us?
In this regard, we go to the dynamics of narrative and how it affects our personhood by listening to them, understanding them, and drawing connections between these narratives and our lives. In this regard, I draw and make conclusions on the basis of studies on narrative theory, specifically that of philosopher Gregory Currie.[1]
What makes a narrative as such? On plain sight, it’s a very specific paradigm that is at work, highlighting the basic relationship between data and the person as its processor. In its most basic definition, narrative is the collection of memories and events and putting them in a meaningful manner. Following our mental intuition that events are not just random occurences that happen from one after another, we establish causal links between these events and gather them into a meaningful whole.
Put simply, narrative is making meaning out of the things that happen to us or to others and basically making sense out of them. Of course, at its very base lies our own experience as we recall them, and as its extension, the experiences of others as we receive their own narrative, as well as the creation of narrative worlds that are not within our reality but are connected with our own experience, perception, and imagination of things. The last one is a technical way of speaking about fictional storytelling and literature, seeing that it may not be truly “real” in a sense that it is part of our human experience, but nevertheless connected with experiential observation, facts, and meaning-making, from which our imagination draws both data and inspiration.
However, the construction of narrative in itself — as a synthesis of events under a theme and provided with causal links — does not provide so much significance in a social context, as it should in a personal one. Sure, there is a story in my head, something that I can tell people, of how I see the events of my life. I may go on and on about its details and explain it in any manner. I may speak of things happening out of sheer luck, or driven by something like a higher Being through which everything I will and desire happened, or something happened in the midst of all these stories that the direction of my life changed for the better (as I look back at it). It is a meaningful whole, but it does not yet explain why these stories “strike others’ nerves,” or inspire them, or be more than enthusiased with them.
In other words, there’s something else that makes stories important for us. And to answer this question of sorts, we can point to what we may call (for now) the “empathetic dimension” of narrative. Put simply, the stories of others connects and resonates with my story by the fact that these stories are experienced and retold in similar worldviews, most often in varying degrees of similarity.
A more fundamental claim can be placed here, namely that of narrative identity. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur would point out that much of who we are is constituted by the stories that we recall and retell. It is not so much the factual information (our age, height, place of birth and origin, etc.) that can answer the question “Who am I?” Rather, it is the events in our lives that shape us, name us, and aid us in our decisions (so as you can see the correspondence of time: past, present, and future).
Moreover, it is fundamental toward every person to the point that even the existence of others is easily perceived and understood by the self. And looking at it this way, we can see the empathetic dimension of stories; that is, we can understand and empathize the story of others because of the following:
- Their narratives are something that I can understand and make meaning of.
- Their way of describing the links between these events are something that I also make and I may arrive to the same conclusions and decisions.
- The perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and sentiments that they bore in those events and that they bear in the retelling of these events are also something that I may have or can relate to.
Bringing together all these ideas regarding narratives, we can summarize this discussion (with which the following essay works) in a few points:
- Narratives are a part of our experience as human person.
- Narratives are not merely events that happen, but our own act of reconstructing and making sense of them.
- This act of “narrative-making” provides meaningful and significant connections to others.
Given this rather simple (and simplified) philosophical framework,[2] it makes sense why, among other K-Pop groups, BTS had this certain influence that is probably unparalleled in comparison to other K-Pop groups of this generation. This will be the focus of the next part of this essay.
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[1] For the casual reader, it’s best to check out his 2010 work Narratives and Narrators.
[2] I will leave the entire complexity not in this blog, but in some other publication.