All Skeletons Are the Same

     An article that recently inspired my creative process was “All Stories Are the Same” by John Yorke. As the title suggests, the article delved into the bare-bones of stories and media, and how all stories are the same if you strip them down far enough. I agree with this sentiment, and it makes sense from a humanistic perspective. Stories and literature are a construct of humanity and therefore a direct reflection of it. If you strip a human being down to their skeletons, generally every single person would have the same exact structure. Just like stories, however, the human race is extremely diverse, and no two people are exactly the same. The uniqueness of stories comes from the traits and nuances built on its skeleton, just like the uniqueness of people. Both people and stories have their own defining characteristics, expression of ideas, and nuances that give them an uncontested, personal niche.

To elaborate on the structure of stories, we can look at the way nuance and thematic expression influence the way a story is told. To say all stories are the same is on one hand true, but on the other hand is ignorant of all the ways stories are vastly different. 

 A prime example of this is Disney’s Mulan, specifically the original animated film and the recent live-action adaptation. If we take “all stories are the same” to the extreme, these films are literally the same story, but are starkly different in their impact and enjoyability. The original animated musical perfectly encapsulates the Disney Renaissance. It is a masterful work full of rich characters, a gripping plot, and powerful thematic elements. The live action version on the other hand is a cinematic failure. Many important characters are just cut out entirely, the plot is stale, and the characterization is just flat-out boring. Mulan (the character) in the live action is a mere husk of her original greatness-

as was seen in the animated rendition- and the plot is entirely unengaging. Even the nuances of the original film that added shades of maturity are gone. A prime example of this would be the scene of the ruined village. In the original, the lead up to the scene is full of merry singing. The soldiers have departed into their romanticized war. They feel as though they are on top of the world and that it would bend to their brotherhood. This is immediately juxtaposed by them coming upon the village. The shift in tone is sudden and jarring, hitting the emotional weight of the scene perfectly. They walk among the ruins in dead silence, a stark contrast to the singing right before. It’s an extremely powerful scene that shows the characters coming to a grim realization of the horrors of war. In the live action, there is no nuance of this sort whatsoever. The scene of the ruined city is simply shown with no lead up. There is boring narration over it as the soldiers gaze unconvincingly upon it. There is no emotional weight- no power like in the original. This comparison perfectly demonstrates that even with the same exact story, two different iterations of it can and almost always will be entirely different.