The Art of Political Storytelling

Why Stories Win Votes in Post-truth Politics

Philip Seargeant

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350107403
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Retórica

In our post-truth world, tapping into people's emotions has proved far more effective than rational argument - and, as Philip Seargeant argues in this illuminating and entertaining book, the most powerful tool for manipulating emotions is a gripping narrative. From Trump's America to Brexit Britain, weaving a good story, featuring fearless protagonists, challenging quests against seemingly insurmountable odds, and soundbite after soundbite of memorable dialogue has been at the heart of political success. So does an understanding of the art of storytelling help explain today's successful political movements? Can it translate into a blueprint for victory at the ballot box? The Art of Political Storytelling looks at how stories are created, shared and contested, illuminating the pivotal role that persuasive storytelling plays in shaping our understanding of the political world we live in. By mastering the tools and tricks of narrative, and evaluating the language and rhetorical strategies used to craft and enact them, Seargeant explains how and why today's combination of new media, populism and partisanship makes storytelling an ever more important part of the persuasive and political process. In doing so, the book offers an original and compelling way of understanding the chaotic world of today's politics.

Part One

Apocalyptic politics

1

Setting the scene

A hero of our time

This is the story of one man’s mission to save the world from the forces of evil. To do battle against a corrupt and self-serving enemy bent on enslaving an innocent population. In order to achieve this, he has to venture deep into hostile territory, abandoning the comfortable existence he once had, and embark on a perilous, unforgiving journey. At each stage of this journey he’s assailed by fierce and unscrupulous opponents. As he battles ever further into the heart of darkness, his allies, colleagues and even his friends begin to doubt his resolve. Some of them counsel him to abandon the mission. Others lose faith completely and end up siding with the enemy.

At his lowest ebb he faces a crisis which not only threatens the outcome of the quest but also puts his very existence in danger. Life itself is in the balance. But it’s at this moment of utmost crisis that he’s able to realize his true potential. This is when he looks deep within himself and discovers his true identity. Through self-belief, force of character and complete conviction in his cause he faces down the enemy in one final conflict. In doing so, he achieves the unachievable and wins a famous victory. In the closing scene he returns triumphant, not only in what he’s accomplished personally but also in having saved the world from a cataclysmic future.

This is a classic story archetype. You could slot an almost endless array of scenarios into its structure and come up with the plots to umpteen Hollywood movies. The hero at its centre – usually male, but by no means exclusively – could be pulled unwittingly into an intergalactic conflict and have to do battle with a despotic imperial army. They could be fighting corruption at city hall, or battling a faceless, heartless insurance company. They could be called upon to protect the inhabitants of a small Western town against a marauding posse or to apply their forensic psychology skills in the hunt for a serial killer. The same structure could provide the blueprint for political drama, telling the tale of an innocent outsider sent to Washington to confront the vested interests and rampant dishonesty of an immoral ruling elite.

Swap out the ending and you have the story of a tragic anti-hero. It’s Macbeth bewitched by ambition, seeking the Scottish throne through duplicity and murder, and then desperately fighting to maintain control of his destiny. It’s Michael Corleone from The Godfather, responding to the attempted assassination of his father, then reluctantly embracing the family legacy. Or – occupying a morally more ambiguous middle ground – it’s Walter White from Breaking Bad, naively stumbling into the world of organized crime as he tries to secure a stable economic future for his family, then having to learn to adapt in an environment which challenges his entire moral outlook on life.

But this structure doesn’t only work as the foundation for innumerable fictional stories. It’s also, almost precisely, the story of Donald Trump’s candidacy for president. This same blueprint maps astoundingly well onto the narrative of Trump’s run for office. The actual telling of the story – whether it’s tragedy, heroic drama or farce – would obviously depend on the tone you chose. Which in turn would depend on your attitude to the man and the values for which he stands. But the basic shape of the plot – the motivation, the struggle, the climax – is practically identical.

What I aim to argue in this book is that this similarity is neither coincidental nor inconsequential. The way in which Trump’s candidacy – and his subsequent presidency – has centred so completely around his character, and the way his character, when thrown into the world of politics, creates an archetypal Hollywood plot structure, is one of the driving forces behind his success. His whole saga has been compelling, if not essential, viewing. In an era of binge-watching and exemplary long-form drama, this story has dominated the ratings like no other. The narrative Donald Trump created for himself, and the way he went about telling this and manipulating the media into amplifying and broadcasting it for him, offers a paradigm example of what a persuasive tactic political storytelling can be. It was, arguably, the foundation on which his success as a political figure has been based. The structure of the Trump story was torn straight from the template of all great drama. It mixes together all the same ingredients: well-defined antagonists and protagonists; a challenging quest with an unlikely outcome; and page after page of memorable dialogue. As a result, it’s had a huge influence on the shape of the political landscape. In fact, I’d argue, it’s played a key role in reshaping the way we perceive not just politics but culture and society in general.

And Trump isn’t alone in basing his persuasive power on strong storytelling. The Leave campaign in the Brexit vote is another forceful example of the effectiveness of a good narrative. This again fashioned an underdog story of a put-upon community fighting back against a seemingly invincible autocratic bureaucracy. And in doing so, it turned voting into an act of dramatic resistance.

It is not just politicians from the last few years who’ve exploited this approach. Almost all notable political figures and movements down through history are associated as much with a particular narrative as they are with a set of ideas, policies or actions. Or to put it another way, behind every successful politician is a simple but powerful story.

As we’ll see, the adherence to this strategy of communication has become, over these last few years, evermore important for the way we shape not only our politics but also our understanding of the world more generally. It’s become something of a modern mantra – a cliché even – that we’re living in an era in which tapping into people’s emotions has proved far more effective than rational argument. That people vote primarily on their values and feelings. The idea is offered up as an explanation for Trump, Brexit and Boris Johnson, for Jair Bolsonaro’s take-over in Brazil and for the success of populists in Eastern Europe such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. In each case, it’s passion rather than rationalism which beguiles the voters. And one of the most powerful tools for playing on people’s emotions is storytelling.

* * *

The purpose of this book is to illuminate this pivotal role that persuasive storytelling plays in society. Storytelling is an essential element in the way we interpret the entire social world. Our knowledge of the world may be built on facts and evidence – but facts only have meaning when they’re placed within a context; and that context is more often than not built around a story. Although storytelling has played an important role in politics throughout history, today’s combination of digital media, populism and partisanship is making it an evermore important part of the persuasive process – so much so that even when the current cast of characters get written out of the script, the storylines they’ve instigated will continue to resonate throughout the culture. And as I’ll show, this persuasion isn’t restricted to those running for office or already in power. It’s also at the root of strategies of disinformation, of ‘fake news’ and propaganda.

It’s for this reason that an understanding of narrative can provide us with important insights into the workings of power, and perhaps help us harness these dynamics so we can communicate our own ideas, perspectives and propositions with as much power and effectiveness as our opponents. The purpose of the book, then, is to show how the tools and tricks of narrative can be mastered to shape our understanding of the world. To explore how stories are structured, shared and contested. And to explain the rhetorical strategies that are used to enact them, and the language that’s used to craft and narrate them.

As I’ll argue, language is a huge part of this overall story. Language frequently gets blamed for breakdowns in public discourse and for the critical state of modern politics. For being in a state of decline, and for wilfully obscuring rather than clarifying our state of affairs. But language itself is simply an instrument for communication. It’s how people use language, how they respond to it and how it comes to reflect the concerns of a community that together builds the background to our politics. To understand why things are the way they are, we need to look at how language is used, how it’s manipulated and the force and effect this manipulation is having on the ideas that shape society.

Neither the language we use nor the stories we built from this language arise out of nowhere, of course. The tales we tell not only shape the times we live in but also reflect them. They need an environment in which to be embedded: a climate of ideas, ideals or fears to rub up against. Today’s political climate can best be summed up as the collision of two trends in global culture: post-truth and populism. Both of these terms are bandied around with abandon in analyses of what we’re meant to make of the modern world. And both of them are vague enough to mean a range of different things to different people. In order to better understand their significance for today’s politics then, and to set the scene for this particular story, let’s rewind a few years, and transport ourselves back to the eve of the end of the world.

Living through apocalyptic times

Let’s start with a fairly straightforward, if slightly philosophical, question. When the apocalypse finally arrives – that is, when we reach the climactic chapter in the human story – how are we best going to deal with it? Should we see it as a chance to rebuild society from the scorched earth upwards? Reboot civilization and discover afresh what humanity is capable of? Rethink our attitude towards sustainable power and the relationship we have with technology? Finally take decisive action against climate change?

Or should we just embrace it as a marketing opportunity? Hope that our faith in the power of consumerism can banish the doomsday gloom?

Unsurprisingly perhaps, it was this last option that was chosen by various large multinational corporations when faced with the possible ruination of human civilization in late 2012. For much of that year there’d been growing disquiet about a prophecy (or at least, an internet rumour) related to the ancient Mayan calendar system, which was predicting that the end of the world was nigh. Not only was it nigh, but it would also be arriving on precisely 21 December.

Various natural disasters were mentioned as the likely catalyst for the cataclysm, including that the planet Nibiru was spiralling through space on a direct collision course with Earth. The source of this prediction was a woman who claimed she’d been receiving messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system. They’d chosen her to be their mouthpiece, she said, so she could warn humankind of its approaching annihilation.¹ Such was the concern about this that NASA felt it necessary to step in and debunk her predictions.² Yet even with calming strategies of this sort, as the date drew near there were reports of panic-buying across the globe, of desperate, reassuring statements from the Russian ‘minister of emergency situations’,³ while on the day itself the Guardian live-blogged the whole nerve-racking drama as it unfolded.⁴

For advertisers, this was too good an opportunity to miss. Jell-O, the gelatine-based desserts people, produced a commercial in which a crate of pudding was offered up as a sacrifice to the Mayan gods in the hope that it would persuade them to cancel the cataclysm. Picking up the narrative a little further along the timeline, Chevrolet had an advert showing a Silverado cruising through the post-apocalyptic wilderness to the sound of Barry Manilow. When the driver finally met up with his fellow survivors, they all lamented the fact that their unfortunate companion Dave, who’d been driving a Ford (the damn fool) hadn’t made it. This didn’t go down too well with the people at Ford, who took umbrage at the idea that their product would be found wanting after the fall of civilization. They threatened Chevrolet with a cease-and-desist order,⁵ proving that even come the apocalypse, corporate lawyers will still be in great demand. Then there was Durex, who encouraged us all to celebrate oblivion with the slogan, ‘The end of the world shouldn’t be the only thing coming.’

For most people of course, the Mayan apocalypse was a bit of a joke – what the political media consultant Tobe Berkovitz calls a ‘water cooler catastrophe’. While it’s fine to exploit this vision of human calamity as a way to sell puddings and prophylactics, you’re much less likely to see ‘commercials making fun of the fiscal cliff’, he notes.⁶ Real social and cultural upheaval, when it arrives, probably won’t involve alien communiqués or planetary car-crashes. But its mundanity will make it all the more difficult to come to terms with.

We’re now further into the twenty-first century than our ancestors were with the twentieth century when the First World War fundamentally changed the character of that century. Have we already experienced an event of equal magnitude that will set the agenda for the rest of our lifetimes? Given that it turned out not to be the Mayan cataclysm, what’s likely to stand as our moment of fundamental change when the history of this century gets written?

The global financial crash of 2008 would be one candidate. Its ramifications are still reverberating through the fabric of society in disturbing and unexpected ways. Yet it doesn’t perhaps have the symbolic resonance that other major historical turning points have had. It was undoubtedly dramatic, both as a process and in its implications. But it wasn’t perhap s dramatic enough as a spectacle.

Which brings us to the events of 2016. This was, for many, a critical year of change which seemed to throw into confusion so much of what we understood of the social world we inhabit. Even as early as July, people were asking whether it was ‘really one of the worst years in history’.⁷ Headlines such as this obviously have a lot to do with the narcissist...