Other narratives besides the one-powerful-savior model

Filed under: Improving Society, Speculative Fiction
2 Comments

I’ve read several speculative fiction stories lately where the overall narrative is something that I feel like I see a lot:

An ordinary person acquires special powers or abilities or access, and thus becomes the savior of the oppressed people.

I suppose that narrative is more palatable to me than the version in which the savior turns out to have secretly been a prince (or princess) who was raised by peasants or something. That is, I would rather see an ordinary person become a hero than be told that only royalty can save us.

But I feel like even without the royalty aspect, the heroic-savior narrative still has some related issues. For example:

  • It tends to imply that ordinary people who don’t acquire special powers can’t do anything.
  • It also tends to imply that effective resistance can only be done by a single powerful savior, instead of by masses of ordinary people.

Whereas I feel like one of the narratives we need right now is of ordinary people who don’t acquire special powers, and who resist anyway. (Yep, I know such stories already exist; I’m not saying they don’t.) Stories about people whose small acts of resistance or bravery or kindness inspire others. People who work together collectively to resist. People who join together as crowds to speak out. People who organize communities but who recognize that their effectiveness relies on the work of lots of other people. People who support others in doing the necessary work. People who join organizations that do the necessary work.

In other words: Stories with realistic dynamics that implicitly tell readers: you, just as you are right now, can make a difference. You can do the work, or support others who do it. You don’t have to have to have powers, and you don’t have to sit back and wait for a savior to fix things.

Yes, I know that the single-powerful-savior narrative is super dramatically effective. I’m not asking for an explanation of why people write it or publish it or read it. I’m not even saying that people shouldn’t write or publish or read that kind of story, nor that it can’t be inspiring.

What I’m saying is: There are other narratives, too, and some of those other narratives may be more effective at teaching ordinary people that they can resist than the single-powerful-savior narrative is.

2 Responses to “Other narratives besides the one-powerful-savior model”

  1. Elliott

    This is a deliberate tactic by the cultural hegemony working to control the narrative landscape. A fantastic video essay on this is ‘Antz vs. A Bug’s Life: Who Loves Capitalism More?’ by Wisecrack, which looks at the narrative of a Randian hero vs collectivism. Once you start to see this you realise it exists everywhere. The collectivist narrative cannot be permitted to exist in a hierarchical system.

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    • Jed

      This comment from Elliott (who I think is neither of the Elliotts-spelled-that-way who I know) is a fascinating example of phrasing things in a way that can be read with two opposite meanings, depending on the reader’s interpretation of words like this and cannot.

      At first, I thought that Elliott was saying that my post was a deliberate tactic working to control the narrative landscape, and that the collectivist narrative should not be permitted to exist in our world.

      But then I re-read Elliott’s comment, and realized that it was probably intended to say the opposite of how I initially read it—I now think it probably means that the single-powerful-savior narrative is a deliberate tactic working to control the narrative landscape, and that the system we live in tries to suppress the collectivist narrative.

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