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I’ve noticed a mounting trend in both web content and documentary, whereby makers contextualize their traumatic experiences in terms of traditional narrative arcs, emphasizing suspense, climax, and resolution. Often, this results in the positioning and commodification of ‘story’ as trauma, with no mention of the systems and power structures that enabled it to occur. While I believe that sharing details of trauma is valuable and important, retelling them in broadcast environments or on entertainment platforms is different from recounting them to a loved one or a therapist. For this piece, I explored the resonance of stories told in this way by assembling segments of confessional YouTube videos so as to emphasize the disconnect between people relaying their trauma with sincerity, while simultaneously using devices of suspense and release to entice listeners to lean in closer
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