#darnton

Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre and Mongolian Beef Noodles.

Robert Darnton in ‘The Great Cat Massacre’ expounds how folktales can be used as in powerful source for the social mores and sensibilities of a particular culture at a particular time. The particular version of ‘common sense’ or dominant norms at the time are reflected in the stories, legends and rituals of that time. He argues against a structuralist or psychoanalytical approach, and instead influenced by anthropologists, particularly Clifford Geertz, an academic, that even in my studied ignorance, I have heard of, instead favouring approaching these stories as social-historical texts, understanding the truth in the tale. My own brush was Darnton was brief, ( I cantered through the Cat Massacre for an undergrad essay many moons ago) but one essay of his, ‘The Meaning of Mother Goose’ sticks in my mind that expands on some of his ideas around folk stories as source document. Key ideas he picks out are the limited ambitions of what ordinary peasants, the heros in this collection of 18th Century French folk tales (upon which the brother’s Grimm based their adaptations). Though there are fairy godmothers and castles, the heroic achievements are a reduction in a the back-breaking nature of their work, or an improvement of their conditions, rather than a role reversal with the feudal Lord himself. When instant wishes are granted, it is almost always for food, for there to be plenty, and meat is a recurring motif. The limited, targeted nature of their aspirations reflects the social realities of their everyday existence, by ritualising the telling of stories that are about what is just out of their reach, we understand what their limitations and challenges are on a daily basis. This limited fantasy, retold through the oral tradition gives us a vivid snapshot of their reality, a kind of negative ethnography, describing the negative space around their existence. There is an element of this when we speak to consumers about what they want in different markets, though obviously they may directly relate their difficulties, in the retelling of them, they are providing their own filter, consciously or subconsciously tuned to their perception of the situation and the audience we put them in. But when they start talking about dreams, aspirations, realities, we start to get much richer emotional picture of their lives, their situations. Ask them to describe their ideal product, and the problems that it may solve in that category, gives us an insight into the real difficulties that they face. What has struck me on a recent project, talking about how a certain FMCG can bring joy is what would provide lower-middle income housewives with joy, how small those aspirations are, how their varied as we went round the table in workshops in four countries across four continents- the emotional window in that gave us individually and the net picture it painted from the number of women we spoke to in each place. From this, we can’t hope to get the depth and breadth that Darnton does out of his Mother Goose stories- the sample can never hope to have that validity, but it does provide an indicative window, using the tales that people tell themselves. It helps to inform the kind of dialogues that are most powerful to connect consumer to brand, to provide products that genuinely fulfil those emotional needs, rather than just simply try and create unmet ones, which if truth be told is a far more rewarding way to grow a business and a relationship.

R. Darnton, L'età dell'informazione [2003], Adelphi edizioni, 2007 [Trad. F. Salvatorelli]

Robert Darnton // The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin

"Diario Berlinese", di Robert Darnton, a proposito del flusso di tedeschi orientali verso la metà occidentale di Berlino dopo la caduta del Muro.