Critical theory is concerned with the images of society, its myths and stories. These stories have several characteristics:
1. They have a history, and develop in reaction to various social, cultural, and historical forces and events.
2. They serve to interpret events. We use them as lenses to understand contemporary society.
3. They are usually unconsciously held. We do not reflect on them.
4. They serve to hide, as well as reveal. Every myth or story pushes out other myths or stories.
5. These stories are in someone's interest. That is, the myths or stories have winners and losers, good guys and bad guys, those written into the story and those left out, those who gain from a story being true and those who do not.
6. They provide identity and social cohesion. These stories tell us why we belong together, why we have a right to be who and where we are, why our actions are justified.
7. These stories tend to be totalizing or exclusive, in the sense that holding one makes sense out of a person's whole world, and all other stories are seen as inadequate, or even incomprehensible.
8. They are metaphorical - they see something as something else. Sometimes, in recent times, they are metonymical - they use some aspect of a thing to represent it (e.g., a flag is a country, a sail is a ship).
9. The stories are not static or stable. They shift and change over time. They are applied to events, which then change the nature of the stories. Every application of the story adds to its history, and to its implications.
10. The stories are often not seen as stories at all, but as the truth of the world, given by God, common sense, science, nature, or some other source.
11. The stories are reproduced in a variety of ways, but usually are simply implied by our choice of images, phrases, metaphors, etc. The stories appear in traditional story-telling places, such as the news, but they are also coded into many other places (e.g., what we wear, how we design our cities and buildings, our social and cultural practices).
So, what are the myths or stories we tell about the following examples? Have the stories changed over time? What are the metaphors? What might be left out by the stories we tell? Where do the traces of the stories appear? Using the points just listed, analyze one or more of these examples: