Speakers: Nichole Pitts (Host), Jessie Kate Bui (Guest – Storytelling Coach)
Nichole Pitts
Welcome to The Ethintegrity Podcast, Jessie Kate!
Jessie Kate Bui
Nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Nichole Pitts
I’m so excited, to have this conversation with you about storytelling and design. I think we’re gonna have such a great discussion. How did you get into design and storytelling?
Jessie Kate Bui
My father is a master woodworker, so like I definitely had a very early inspiration. I was always around creativity and creative problem solving. So that was a big influence. As a kid, we were in the middle of building a house. So I saw all the behind the scenes of like, what’s the magic that goes behind designing something. So I would draw and write stories as a kid. It was always something I was doing. Then just as I grew up, I explored different ways to use it.
I majored in visual arts while I was still trying to discover how I wanted to use it. And then I stumbled onto the entertainment, art side of things, the movie making, the movie magic, the storytelling behind that and all the creativity that’s there when you create a world from zero, it was just like creating a house from nothing.
It was something so resonant with me. So I just started doing freelance design and things like that at first. And then along the way, as I was trying to get more confident as a designer, I just ran into a lot of imposter syndrome, honestly. Like I really just kept thinking how am I ever going to know if this is enough?
How am I ever gonna know if this design is going to be acceptable? Can I translate the skills I have now into a studio? I wanna feel like I’m prepared for that kind of situation. So I started learning a little bit more and found that it was about storytelling. It was understanding that when you have a really clear story, you’re translating it into design and art. And that really boosted my confidence in that and took me down a rabbit hole of a career in design and story.
Nichole Pitts
So how did you manage that imposter syndrome that you just mentioned?
Jessie Kate Bui
Oh I think probably poorly. I have like a self competitiveness.
And so part of it was like, maybe if I can just beat my last drawing, then that will take that imposter syndrome away and then I’ll feel better, but it just kept happening over and over. Cause I could never beat it. A lot of the ways that I was doing it, it felt more like coping.
I would just draw something a hundred times. Like maybe this will help but it wasn’t understanding what I was supposed to get out of drawing something a hundred times. I just felt like if I just kept doing it a lot of times I will solve this problem. Later as I discovered it with story, I mean, it was a quick fix.
Honestly, it transformed it very quickly. As soon as I understood that when a drawing was actually expressing something meaningful, a message a point of view, a question, it just went away. Like I could look at a piece of art and go, that’s what it meant. That’s what it was doing. That was its purpose.
And so I don’t need to feel like an imposter. I communicated that idea. If a director or a client had a different opinion, they wanted it to be something else, now I know that I’m solving a different problem. And then I solved that problem. But everything became stepping stones. So it honestly just diminished as soon as I understood that narrative drove design.
Nichole Pitts
That’s really interesting. So building on that, what was your biggest challenge in understanding and becoming more dynamic with your storytelling and the design of that storytelling?
Jessie Kate Bui
I think with my storytelling and design, I tend to have a lot of interest in identity narrative stories about a specific character growing, transforming.
And so when I would try to get feedback, I think one of the biggest challenges I had on the design side, so I would have like a story I was working from. I’d be interpreting that into design and then looking for feedback and trying to find feedback with costume specifically, because costume to me was like the design piece that best expressed the characters space in the world.
Like their position in the story, as well as an expression of their personality. So it was like, well, this is the perfect testing ground to explain the narrative. And I couldn’t get feedback on it. People weren’t able to dissect it or say, oh, are you trying these? Or how did you solve this with costume?
Or have you looked at this historical event maybe that can inform your design, those things were missing. And so it was so frustrating, like to me, that made no sense. I could go to an artist who was an environment designer or someone who was a character designer. They could give me rich feedback.
Have you considered how this architecture informs narrative and aligns with themes and ideas? Have you considered how this body type and this expression expresses the emotion of the character? And then I would just flatline with costume feedback and it just that was so illogical. So that took me on a rabbit hole of going, why is that the case? I need to resolve this. This doesn’t make sense. Specifically, this was in an animation, games environment. Live action has a lot of resources on this topic, but in animation and games, it just was lacking. So I started researching that and kind of diving into that.
Nichole Pitts
I met Jessie Kate virtually in January of 2022. And then we met in person in April of 2022 at this brand strategy mastermind. During that time we were just having conversations and she was talking to me about her book, “Talking Threads”. Not only is this book just visually stunning, but as we’re talking through a lot of what you were talking about Jessie Kate, as far as designing this storytelling, I noticed a lot of these “threads” (pun intended) to ethics and also diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I wanted to understand, was that intentional? Did you think about the ethics and the DEI part when you were writing it or was it just kind of a happy coincidence?
Jessie Kate Bui
I think it was maybe somewhere in between. I wasn’t familiar with DEI in a traditional sense. But, I definitely have a conviction.
And so did all of the co-authors that I brought in for the book about integrity of story and when you’re telling a story about a character, really making sure you’re honoring and respecting that character’s background narrative, representing a diverse set of points of view, because storytelling helps us change our minds and grow as people.
And so creating diversity is a natural way to enhance the actual tool of narrative and story. I think it was just like this happy medium actually between them where we have that intention, but I didn’t actually know a lot of the practical and traditional approaches to DEI that might have actually been really helpful, but I think we just had an alignment from the beginning.
Nichole Pitts
Well, I always feel like ethics and DEI are embedded into everything that we do. Into all parts of our lives. So I like the fact that it wasn’t specifically called out, but there was so much that I learned in the book that I wasn’t aware of. And it really makes me look at movies and TV and even video games a little bit differently. Understanding kind of the basis of how the characters are developed, even down to what they’re wearing and how they’re presented visually. So how did the book, “Talking Threads” come about?
Jessie Kate Bui
So I had been going to a lot of our networking expos that we have for people who are working in the industry, whether they’re students or professionals and I was bringing my portfolio around and I happened to have a lot of costume work in my portfolio because I like character.
I like story behind motivations and intentions and things like that. And I couldn’t get any feedback on costume designs, like how to improve or elevate them. And I kind of fixated on that. I’m a very curious person. So I just kind of went down this rabbit hole of deciding, like, I’m gonna figure out what it is like, how do we do this? Where are these missing pieces for animation and game artists? Why are we not talking about this? Why don’t we have these tools? So I started talking to different studios, asking them questions, how do you use costume designers or just asking specific people who had played that role in some sense to get sort of insight on that.
And then I had a class I was taking and the teacher requested that I make a book about it. He’s like, “You have all these tips you’ve gathered, all this random data. You should just put that together and share it.” It was a bit of an intimidating project, honestly, especially when you’re thinking, I’m just curious. I just have questions. I have some insight into it, but I’m not an expert in this thing. And so then that led to, well then why don’t I bring in some experts? Right? We’ll all work together to cover the territory. That way I’m not speaking beyond my experience, but we’re still serving those points of view.
I had brought in four other authors who all had specialties and we put that together. I feel really proud of the fact that we were able to introduce so many ideas to creatives and be able to facilitate them with tools that not only just allow them to do their jobs more practically and feel more prepared, but actually allow them to create stories with more integrity. Like that’s been a big deal.
Nichole Pitts
In the book you talk about two types of stories: moral compass and the foggy mirror. What are they and how do they differ from each other?
Jessie Kate Bui
These are some concepts that our co-author, Gwen Conaway, brought in that were just so fascinating. I’ll try to honor her in doing a good job at explaining this, but the foggy mirror and the moral compass are sort of two different ways that we can perceive the spectrum of a story.
So a black and white story, this good and evil, a group oriented mentality so that we can navigate maybe larger scale problems in societies that we’re talking about in the stories that would be more of the moral compass. Like where is our direction?
How do we redirect ourselves to be more moral. There are some examples for moral compass. This might be something like Star Wars where you have good and evil, the Sith Lords and the Jedi, the colors of their light sabers are even predetermined.
This is how we know they’re good. This is how we know they’re bad. We have visual cues, we have character cues and it helps us navigate these expansive distances and big worlds and big challenges by simplifying an element. And in this case, it’s like the group identities. This is the good group. This is the bad group.
The Hobbit’s another example. So we have things like the elves. They’re the good, they’re the elite. We have the dwarfs. We have these groups that all kind of have a predetermined sort of personality range and class range that they fit into. And it helps us navigate this big complex idea of this story. These expansive complicated cultures. Well, if we can just group them into simple ideas, it lets us navigate that big challenging event we’re talking about.
Nichole Pitts
Basically morality is pretty much black and white and you’re looking at more patriotism over globalism.
Jessie Kate Bui
Yes.
Nichole Pitts
There was a quote from the book that I loved. “Throughout most of human history storytelling has been used to keep our morality in check and legends, religious mythologies and folklore are perfect examples of moral compass tales. These stories are appealing to most people because the protagonists can be anyone. Likewise, the antagonist can be any challenge that we face.” And if we think about a lot of times with ethics and compliance, we talk about that moral compass. My logo actually is a compass and ethics is so different than compliance because ethics really is our moral code, which is very personalized and individual based upon where we grew up, our culture, our family dynamics, the generational trauma that we may have inherited.
What was interesting is the example of Star Wars, which is my favorite movie. I love me from Star Wars. Seriously, I will run around the house with the light saber, if I had one. I don’t. But if I did, trust and believe. Ha!
I think that there is the moral compass there, but there’s a little bit of foggy mirror with some of the characters like Han Solo, who is really a bad guy that kind of turns good, but he’s the bad boy in the series. Think about Darth Vader and his journey from Anakin to Darth Vader back to Anakin. And you think about the Empire versus the Rebellion. There’s so much there that really can be black and white, but there’s still some of that gray area.
Jessie Kate Bui
So this is a really good point. I mean, there is definitely with any of these things where we’re even talking about a dichotomy of like, there’s this and this version of story there’s also the in between, the mixes of these in storytelling to create interesting conflict and tension and ideas like you were just pointing out with Han Solo. One way to bucket Star Wars into that moral compass even more clearly is like you said, we each have our individual moral compass that directs us one way or the other. Now in a predominantly moral compass tale, there is an agreed upon conclusion. If Han Solo goes with the Rebellion, then he’s good. If someone goes with this side, then they’re bad. And so it’s sort of like a scaled up version of one individual’s moral compass being applied to everyone to determine if they’re good or bad. The foggy mirror narratives allow for each individual’s individual moral compass to all be happening at the same time and have completely different opinions about what that morality is. And so these oftentimes compliment even longer form formats like TV series, Game of Thrones is a good example of this because we need time to actually understand how these things are happening to really see both sides of these characters.
There’s a really great scene in Game of Thrones with Jamie Lannister and Ned Stark talking to each other. And you look at the scene and Jamie Lannister looks like a knight in shining armor even the decor on his armor is beautiful and fine and thin and delicate, almost like an elfin part of script. And then you have Ned Stark and he’s gruff and rough and he’s earthy and you, oh, well he’s the bad guy and Jamie Lannister is the knight in shining armor. But in the conversation we’re exposing that the opposite is true in the way that they’re navigating the world. Jamie Lannister is taking advantage and Ned Stark is trying to protect his family.
And then over the course of the story, it’s constantly everybody shifting their moral compass while having different opinions about what that means. So a foggy mirror is maybe a little bit more reflective of real life in the way that we have to navigate it sometimes. But like you said, with patriotism, like the moral compass sometimes aligns with how we maybe have a group that we advocate for, or we have a political party and things like that.
Nichole Pitts
It seems to me, between the two, foggy mirror is pretty much more of how we live day to day.
Jessie Kate Bui
Yeah.
Nichole Pitts
It’s so nuanced that there’s good people and evil people on both sides of it.
Jessie Kate Bui
Yeah. Yeah.
Nichole Pitts
And even thinking about Game of Thrones, which I love. And after the Red Wedding, I was like, listen, I’m gonna have to take a little break. Are you serious with this George? And the people that read the books were like, “I don’t know how you didn’t know this was coming?, I read the book. Spoiler alert.” You know what?
Jessie Kate Bui
This is where you go to your therapist and they just say stop watching the show.
Nichole Pitts
Right? Well, fun fact, when I lived in London, Kit Harrington and his wife lived across the street from me and the last season of Game of Thrones was on and it took everything I had not to go over there with a jar sugar to be like, “Hey, John, where’s Ghost, number one. And number two, what the hell has happened with this last season?”
But you really make a great juxtaposition between Game of Thrones and The Hobbit that you talked about with the morale compass, because in the book, it states “With the Game of Thrones, each character is driven by his or her own individual path rather than the overall narrative and personal goals can conflict with the societal goals”.
And we see this all the time with our kind of push/pull, but you were talking about “Group identities, such as the Stark family are quickly fractured.” And that was something that we saw from episode one. I loved Arya. But her sister? I was like “this what you’re doing? I mean, do you wanna be princess that bad?” And then I had to ask myself, “Maybe I would be the same way?” I don’t know.
Jessie Kate Bui
This is exactly what’s great about, I mean, both of them definitely invite questions. What would you do in this big scale event, for example, with the moral compass, where would you align? And that can be a big, teaching moment in one way. And then Snape is another example with Harry Potter. Is he good? Is he bad? It’s like, well, what if he’s both? What if he’s a bully and saving the Wizarding world in these grand ways.
And so it’s very much allowing you to say, okay, maybe I am all of these things and what do I feel about that? And what do I feel about the fact that I might be flawed and how do I approach that? And what does that mean? And so those are the things where I feel like so much of what you talk about and what you teach helps us navigate when we hit those moments.
When we go, oh wait, hold on, what if despite my thinking that I’m doing all these things kindly, that I might be propagating racism without realizing it and not understanding how to rewrite the way that I’m acting like it really brings up those questions and they’re difficult to handle, but those are valuable as a human society to go through. This is why storytelling is so helpful to help us kind of encounter these questions.
Nichole Pitts
Well, I think that’s why it’s so interesting with these three dimensional characters, like you mentioned with Harry Potter – Snape and Dumbledore. They’re both such flawed characters as well. And it’s really when you get to the end of the series, especially with Deathly Hallows that you understand, oh my goodness this is what the impetus was even for Snape.
And I don’t feel like Snape wasn’t acting in Harry’s best interest for the greater good it’s because he had a crush on Harry’s mama.
Jessie Kate Bui
Those are the things where you both encounter what would I do in that situation, but also, you know what, sometimes we might do something that happens to be for the good of others, but it’s okay that it was just something personal. He just loved his mom, it was a relationship he cared for her. He felt cared for by her. So that’s what mattered to him. That was what was in his world. And so I think those are those things where we might even then have a prejudice towards that action. Well, then that’s not a good enough reason. It’s like, but that was his reason. That’s all that that means.
Nichole Pitts
Exactly. Or even if we think about Ron Weasley and I thought that he was fleshed out pretty well because he’s the best friend, the sidekick, but he gets overlooked because Harry’s always the star and something’s always happening to Harry.
Right. And then he’s the last out of his brothers, always overlooked. And it’s that whole, him having imposter syndrome sometimes as well and overcoming that. And even in Deathly Hallows, leaving in a snit of anger. And how many times have we left things in a snit of anger? I am known for that. Because my number one go-to is, “I’m not doing this.” And I move, I’ll just go for a little bit, I might circle back. But you know, like Ron did, he came back, but we all do that. Because we sometimes lead with emotion and that was one of the things that I really enjoyed between the moral compass and the foggy mirror.
When the distinction was made that in The Hobbit, “the world order is easier to digest because we’re able to divide visual language by archetype with”, as you said, “the elegant elves, the rough dwarves, the wise wizards, rather than based on the individuals.” So we’re really doing group identities at this point.
And the book says “Readers and viewers don’t have to exert much effort to understand the political climate of the world and can be casual consumers of the story versus with the foggy mirror. The readers are required to be entrenched in the lore of the world to truly understand their motivations that can come from deeply traumatized or flawed characters.”
And we talked about this before, where I said, after reading this, I was thinking there are so many chat rooms and videos, and all of these threads that break down the history of beloved characters from TV sitcoms, movies, drama series and we spend a lot of time trying to understand their history and not all the times are we giving that same grace and holding space for maybe our co-workers or our neighbor. We don’t care, Betty, that you had a hard childhood. What I need to know is where’s Ghost? I haven’t seen Ghost, is he dead? That’s what we do.
Jessie Kate Bui
It’s so true that if you think about the energy you put into like, learning about like, oh, well there’s this subgroup of the culture of the elves or this character switches to this motivation and, oh, it’s probably because this, but yet we don’t give that same grace or energy towards somebody who’s struggling, we go – “We’re having conflict. It’s just cuz they’re crazy.”
Nichole Pitts
Yeah. We love to throw that out.
Jessie Kate Bui
So you’re not satisfied with saying they’re just crazy on the fictional show, but somehow you’ll do that.
Nichole Pitts
And then it’s the whole thing of using “crazy” as a descriptor when it actually can be very offensive. It’s like, well, are you trying to say that they’re less than because of a mental illness or what is it?
And sometimes bucket it into these arbitrary categories so that we don’t have to get uncomfortable and maybe deal with something that we need to, maybe there’s a bias that we need to get into. And that’s one of the things that I found interesting when you were talking about how our viewpoint, our own bias really impacts design, and you talk about experiential versus voyeuristic. What is experiential and what is voyeuristic?
Jessie Kate Bui
Yeah, so like we’re talking in this example, we’re kind of using the idea of like, how is the camera framing the story? So in the viewpoint of it, we can use that in our daily life to think of like, what is our view on the situation in this case, it’s very literally like, what is the view?
How are we looking at it in a practical sense? And so experiential would be the intention ofthe director or the creator is to help the audience feel as if they were there as if they were experiencing this immersing themselves in the situation. The Great Gatsby, as an example of the film with Tobey McGuire going into this party and just being this cacophony of noiseand loud and music and dancing. Now, if we were to portray that in a literal sense, like how it historically would have looked. We would see people wearing modest, according to our current standards, modest clothing, dancing to old fashioned music.
We would not feel a sense of rebelliousness and youthfulness and excitement and loudness. So the director, in order to create that viewpoint, uses a lot of very rapid moving camera movements so that we could never really sit with anything long enough. It’s like you’re being tossed through a crowd.
You just like, can’t really focus and register a lot of the information. He also modernized the music. So it would feel more youthful, feel more rebellious. He modernized quite a bit of the fashion. He pulled from modern fashion designers. So it would feel current. It would feel edgy. It would feel forward thinking.
And so all of those things, intimate, moving shots, never really spending time, too much registering any one piece of information and being thrust into the emotional, immersive feeling of something that captures the heart of that scene or rebellious, youthful forward thinking group, having a blast. So we needed to make it more contemporary if you wanted a experiential idea viewpoint.
It really crosses that time. You know, it’s like it’s time travel, right? We’re able to kind of bridge something in the middle so that we can relate to the feelings of that time. Maybe learn a lesson that that time was able to learn, but apply it to our current life a little bit more directly.
In contrast, the voyeuristic view is the opposite. It’s like, we’re sort of stepping back. We’re taking time. We’re taking in the image. We’re saying like, for example, with Downton Abbey we have all these stiff traditions and propriety and rules of this polite society.
And we’re needing to learn those and take those in and believe them so that we can fall into the gossip. We need to contextualize and believe this world to make the gossip feel punchy. We’re kind of poking, we’re sneaking in. And so we want it to be realistic.
We use a lot more still shots, a lot more pulled back shots to kind of establish things. We wanna maybe see more of the full costume so that we can say, oh, this is from this era. This is from the 1910s, twenties, thirties, whatever. We’re really wanting to notice that information. If something is awry, it’s going to feel jarring in a voyeuristic viewpoint.
We don’t wanna feel like we’re suddenly some contemporary things slipped in. It’s gonna take us out. But because of that establishment, there’s a scene where they’re all around the table. I think it’s in the first or second episode. And the matriarch of the family says something like what’s a weekend because it’s so beyond her, like, she doesn’t even perceive of this because she doesn’t live in a world where she works nine to five.
And so in order to get the payoff of oh, she doesn’t know what a weekend is? And we wanna like gossip about it? We had to believe that that made sense. If we were to put that in experiential story, it might just fly past us. It’s so subtle. It’s so quiet. You’re listening to every word, every little flick of an eyebrow, it’s like, oh, oh, oh, what did they say? Oh, they said this? And so we need all that information.
Nichole Pitts
I love that. Well, even with Downton Abbey, that was when I first was like, “I need to be a Duchess because I don’t wanna know what weekends are either.”
Jessie Kate Bui
I don’t wanna know what that is ever.
Nichole Pitts
And every day I immediately was like, I need to be Mary, I don’t wanna be Carson who is working all the time and have sift the wine into the decanter and all of this. I was like, that’s a lot of work. It was one of those things where you couldn’t relate, but they brought you in because they were petty.
And as you said, it was the gossip, but you were like, well, what is going on now? And the little cutting lines where you’d say, “I can’t wait until grandma gets back here because she’s gonna have something to say.” And then even the class dynamics, when you think about the new heir that had to come, who was a lawyer.
And how that shook up the socioeconomic and class status in the dynamics between them, because they were like, “What’s this work stuff. Why are you soiling your hands?”
Jessie Kate Bui
Exactly. And those are the kinds of things where you’ll have scenes on those shots where they’re sort of having dinner for the first time, when he’s coming into town, you see a lot of comparison.
We’re getting information. This is what they look like. This is what they look like this, they said this, but they said that, see how they’re different? We need to like, see all that information. So that those little moments like, well, you know, I have to work and it’s like, what is that? And I have a weekend.
Well, what, like, what is that? All those things are funny because we’ve been given all that information how they’re different.
Nichole Pitts
Exactly. In the book you talk about really four power elements: the established power, rising power, the foreign power and the people. Let’s start out with the established power. What’s that?
Jessie Kate Bui
So it’s somebody who’s been sort of in charge for a long period of time. You can think of things like Queen Victoria, how long was she in charge? How much influence did she have in establishing the way things looked, buildings, society, rules, etiquette, all these things she had a lot of time to create those standards to set standards. And then you have the rising power. This is the power. That’s like the child of the established power. This is the kid who doesn’t wanna do it the way that mom and dad did it because, you know, I gotta find my own thing. I gotta find my own way. And so they’ll oftentimes contrast that with maybe more escapist, adventurous types of attitudes. It’s the teenager kind of vibe. They’re trying to find their own and so they’re doing things in the opposite way.
Nichole Pitts
Almost like a Prince Harry.
Jessie Kate Bui
Yeah exactly. Right. It’s a really good example. It’s sort of like, what if the way that they did it, isn’t the best way. And what if I can find a better way and, improve on it or change itto shake things up.
And then you have the foreign power. These would be like people who are invading maybe it’s imperialistic, maybe it’s evangelism. You see people coming in to teach their beliefs to other cultures, but either way, they’re coming from some place that is different than the location and in that way can impose their power on the native culture. They might strip thenative culture’s identity by saying, well, you need to live the way that we live. This is our opinion. This is the best way to be. It’s oftentimes in those power dynamics of someone kind of invading another culture, however altruistically in their mind, that sort of strips the other of the identity. And then the people is the people, right? It’s when the powers get too imposing. Maybe we run out of food, we run outta water, we have too many problems happening because who is in charge is sort of creating havoc, then the people rise up and demand change. So this might be French Revolution or things to that measure. There’s all sorts of examples. One thing I think is really important to kind of pin in this one is that this power dynamic, we often think of it in the large scale of like societies and countries, but this can happen in a family.
This can be, this is the number of the family who’s established, follows the rules. This might be mom and dad or something like that. And then here’s a rebellious teenager. And then here’s the one that’s like coming from a new point of view, or maybe it’s an in-law like it’s married in and shakes up the dynamic from a foreign point of view.
Nichole Pitts
That’s a really good point. With the established power, you mentioned Queen Victoria and one thing I did not put together was that Queen Victoria really birthed the monarchy of so many countries between Russia, Spain, Denmark, all these places and the power of that reach. But even if we go to Elizabeth the First, before Queen Victoria and how that standard of beauty was really set because she used lead paint and white powder on her face that was to cover up the scars from smallpox.
It became a beauty thing. So that was like, yeah, we have to really have this lighter skin. You’re really trying to be as pale as possible. And as England was colonizing these other countries, you think like India and the colorism of that’s just one of the countries that have an issue with colorism. So you had a lot of these skin lightning products that were sold in so many countries in order to achieve that standard of beauty. And it’s just interesting to me on how an established power, something that they may do for their own personal vanity becomes a cultural phenomenon.
Jessie Kate Bui
I mean, this is a big reason why I felt so passionate about this book was it’s like let’s unveil the man behind the curtain so that we can then decide how much of these things we want to actively participate in. Or how much of this is subconsciously out of our understanding, we are participating in without making a active choice. I think like Devil Wears Prada is a good example where they talk about the color that the lead character Anne Hathaway is wearing. And she’s saying oh, that sounds like so silly what you’re doing with fashion without realizing that she is wearing a piece that was influenced by the runway. Whether or not you’re actively participating, you’re participating like it’s happening because it happens at such a large scale. And so just understanding that allows you to have more power over your own life and how the ripple effects that you create are where you’re sending them.
Nichole Pitts
Yeah. That’s a great point looking at really where you’re influenced by society and you don’t really connect that to understand, oh, I might be saying I’m standing up to something, but what you’re wearing is influenced by that very thing that you’re trying to reject. Yeah. When you talk about foreign power I was also thinking about the war in Ukraine with Russia and looking at how that was even covered and how the Africans were treated that were living in the Ukraine trying to get out.
And with the people, I was thinking about the #metoo movement and George Floyd, cuz that was another one of, okay, we’ll rise up sometimes I feel like it’s a trend and there’s some performative action there, but you used a great example of The Beatles in the book and I wanted to know if you could expound a little bit more on that.
Jessie Kate Bui
So yeah, we have this idea that in 1966, they had set aside their mod style to make their own opinion about what they wanted to say, what kind of statements they wanted to make but we had them be like, these are the guys who like fit the bill. They fit this style that everybody liked and then shifted it. Used their power that they were gaining as the people to make a statement, make a movement that contrasted what they set out to do at the beginning. I think another example I want to bring up because I feel like this might be a little bit more exciting.
So we have things like kicks essentially really nice, well designed expensive sneakers and these are a symbol of the people. And why would fancy sneakers, super cool, decked out sneakers, be a symbol of power? They’re sneakers. These are working shoes. Yes. Right. These are examples of someone who has been able to transcend their working class, gained power as the people. And then instead of modeling after the established power, they actually elevated the meaning behind the sneakers and said, “Hey, the working class is great, is worth all of this attention is worth the extra design, the expense, because this is our power that we gained, not a power that was given to us. not one that we inherited or had to change ourselves or our identities to fit their agreements.” So similar with The Beatles, they were able to shake things up once they had power and then that creates a new movement. So these are the kinds of things that I love about this people narrative.
Nichole Pitts
What’s interesting though, with using the kicks as example correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like a lot of these sneakers are still owned by big companies like Nike. So there’s still a financial benefit to their traditional established power. So my question is, where can we empower ourselves to where that money is not going towards this more established power that may look at this as a commodity rather than uplifting and putting a spotlight on this particular culture or group?
Jessie Kate Bui
This actually starts to overlap into this idea of appropriation and I know that was something that you wanted to talk about because this happens in both fashion, the music world like mainstream hip hop, underground hip hop, things like that, where, as soon as the established power sees an advantage, they’re going to say, “Hey, let’s make that our own.”
As soon as the majority sees some interest or fascination with something, let’s make that our own. But in doing so, they start to redefine the meaning because when you tie this idea of wearing a sneaker that has a meaning of empowering the people but the money that I spend goes to the established power, am I really paying homage to the meaning and supporting the original source? Or am I appropriating it and allowing them to continue to appropriate and redefine the meaning of that object?
Nichole Pitts
Yeah. And that’s really where I struggle with these months or holidays like Juneteenth and black history month because you see a lot of these large companies commodifying the culture, but not really providing the understanding about it so it’s like, yeah, “Hey, come get your Juneteenth ice cream.” What is that? You know, or here’s a watermelon salad. And it’s like, now we’re getting into stereotypes. And it’s understanding like where that is. And to the point that you were talking about with appropriation versus homage it’s where do you really understand what this is about so that you are showing appreciation for it because you’ve educated yourself so that you can do something that is helping to uplift a particular culture or community versus looking at how do I profit from them?
Jessie Kate Bui
Yeah. Right.
Nichole Pitts
Think about Kardashian and kimono. And it’s just like, seriously, that’s one of the things where I’m like now, I thought everybody knew what a kimono was, come on.
Jessie Kate Bui
You’re like, wait a second. Nobody Googled that?
Nichole Pitts
I was right in her team at this point. I was like…
Jessie Kate Bui
No. Right? And so this is where we run into this with cultural appropriation versus really homage, like you’re saying, how do we support something that we’re not maybe directly a part of, how can we engage in those things?
It feels so daunting and it feels so overwhelming. I think that people just stall oftentimes, cause they feel like there’s so much. I don’t know. I don’t even know like now what am I wearing is every like, oh my God, now your whole closet feels compromised because you don’t know what to do.
And I think when there’s complex problems, there can be simple solutions to start. And I like to think of complexity as layers of simplicity. And so you need to go to the core layer and the simplest place to start to tackle this problem isn’t to try to change the world or change these big companies. That’s too beyond you until you feel locally resolved. So understand the meaning of the object, learn the stories behind the things you engage with on a day to day basis. If you love sneakers and you love cool decked out crazy colored sneakers, learn the story behind the sneakers.
And once you learn that story, it’s even more intuitive to know how you can act to align with that. Like more honorable I guess of respecting the source of that meaning, and that story, because how sad would it be if you really love a symbol and in your ignorance and how you engage with it, you diminish the power of that symbol for the people it actually sort of necessary for, or it creates a part of their cultural identity?
Nichole Pitts
I love what you said about with complexity. It’s layers of simplicity, because that makes so much sense. I mean, it’s so simple. Yet, so complex at the same time, I had never even thought about that. And even in this example, if we think about you have a particular sneaker and you’re compensating the designer, but you wanna pay homage, then, one of the simple things is engage your employee resource groups. If you have an employee resource group of that particular community, then that can give you different viewpoints because not each group identity is a monolith, so there’s gonna be different viewpoints of that very same thing, but it’s great to put in there, hear that socialize it with a group that reflects society. Then look at, okay, we’re gonna roll this out, but maybe also identifying what sort of charities or organizations can you give a portion of the profits to? Because you know, we live in a capitalist society, we wanna make money and I get that, but how do you pay it forward too? If this is something that you really wanna highlight to continue to educate on this particular thing, what is your launch campaign about this?
Jessie Kate Bui
Right. And one of the benefits of these established powers is oftentimes tools, resources, they have manpower to execute things like creating multiples of an object. And it might not be something you can do as an independent creator representing your identity. So being able to partner with these things in ethical ways and saying, Hey, let’s team up so that we don’t compromise the meaning and the point of this. But we can still, run our companies and work together.
I think one of the solutions on a little bit of a broader scale, is the power of the people and to say these companies aren’t gonna change. Established powers don’t change until you demand it because they figured it out. They have a way of operating. There’s no reason to shake the status quo here.
Right? It’s functional so they change though when the people demand it. So when we start to see things like people demanding more authenticity, because they’re starting to see the effects of mental health in social media once that happens and people start to make enough of snuff about it well, now the company start to say, well, here’s the way that we do this. Or we take away the dislike thing, or we do these actions, but those actions come in response to the people, demanding it, and the people need information and understanding to demand. And so that’s why I think it’s so important to have resources. it was one of the reasons that I wanted it to be a physical book because having something that’s accessible, that we can translate into different countries and make it a price point that’s possible to have, or to donate allows many people to be empowered, even in their low income situations and have more diversity of viewpoint saying.
You know, we demand a little bit more respect about honoring these ideas and we have words and ways to articulate that so that it’s not lost in translation.
Nichole Pitts
How do you feel like social media has impacted these power dynamics? Like the established power or the foreign power? How do you feel like this is something that has made a difference versus if you think about The Beatles and their impact on culture, just from TV, that visual there and magazines now we’re in the current times? How do you feel that social media has impacted that?
Jessie Kate Bui
Well, I mean, I think one of the interesting things, and maybe coming from storytelling, I maybe noticed this a little earlier, cuz it’s design and storytelling where like, oh, Instagram is marketing. That’s just what it is. That’s what it makes sense is.
And I think a lot of people were thinking of it more as just community and conversation and now are realizing that it is that kind of tool. Everybody can be a marketer. So what’s happened is we went from having, our Mad Men, marketers that were aligned with the established people who could pay them to create these big campaigns and essentially establish, this is what we think about this idea.
This is what we think about this idea. And it’s been calculated by a group in power. Now we have social media. Which, when you understand how to use it and, and have it be like a healthy tool to engage with actually allows more people to create different opinions that then can become trends and different campaigns that make a splash and impact that don’t align necessarily with the established power.
And so I think it’s a great way to amplify the voice of the people as long as we are not succumbing to the way that the established power sometimes formatted it. So that it’s difficult to engage with. It can cause a lot of strain on mental health.
If you don’t understand how to navigate that speaker phone that you’ve been given, you can get verbally attacked or bullied in lots of different ways that are negative. But once we understand that we are walking out into a crowd in a giant forum and yelling things out, we use that tool very differently than if we thought it was more just like we’re in our house, in a home safe space.
But I think once we understand it, it does have the power to shake up the power dynamics. Very literally.
Nichole Pitts
I feel like accountability with social media is really important because I’ve noticed that you’ll have these trends of people speaking up and then there’s this form of activism of we’re going to handle it.
And then they’ll have a great statement or they have their black box on Instagram, but you look at six months to a year later and nothing much has changed. You look at even how the pandemic has impacted mental health and our companies really looking at how to address that.
Jessie Kate Bui
Yeah, I really like how you were pointing out, this idea that, we might make a statement andthen put a black box up or do something and then leave it.
And I think this is part of how, it’s been reframed for me as I’ve changed my relationship with it and investigated my relationship with it in order to kind of find something that was healthier. I found that it is a long term relationship. If you are creating something on Instagram I like to think in years and quarters and longer term ideas and it takes a long time for people to change their mind about something or to see a new point of view. It’s not gonna happen in one post. Right? You could even tell yourself advice 10 years later, give it to you. It’d be the perfect advice, the exact thing that you need to get a leg up. And it would just go over your head. Because you weren’t in the right mind state, or you had too many limiting beliefs that were in the way of you comprehending that advice. And so you think about that and if you wanna make a change, if you really advocate for these points of view and you really wanna use that tool.
Meet people where they’re at and spend time, if I want to advocate for black lives matter, I need to make a conversation of that. I need to break down what are my limiting beliefs about it, let’s have conversations. What are some of the things that I’ve learned over a longer period of time to actually make an impact?
It isn’t a one note thing. We want our world to be microwave convenient, but this is slow food style. Let’s take some time here, make some integrity in our choices so that they have lasting impacts & are more sustainable.
Nichole Pitts
That’s a really great point. And I think also managing our triggers when we engage in some of these conversations, cuz we all know that if somebody says a certain phrase or word and you’re just like, oh my God, then you checked out and they may be sharing something that is really critical or that you can go onto and be like, this really makes sense.
But because they’ve said that word or phrase, or you’re like, “oh you’re part of this political group” or something like that, I can’t even take you serious versus let me understand where you’re coming from because the more informed you are than that can actually help your own arguments.
Jessie Kate Bui
Exactly. It’s a balance. And it’s a choice between your boundaries with your time investment and things like that. But again, it’s this urgency that’s making us feel like we have to act while we’re still in the triggered state. You can step away, you can chill off, you can go to a therapy session, you know, word vomit, all the thoughts out and then calm down, find a place of resolution and peace, where you go, okay, these are my boundaries. This is what I want to engage with. This is how I wanna engage and then choose to participate if the person’s not there anymore, that’s not gonna go anywhere anyway. If they’re only there to be, if 0.1 seconds later, you respond, then that shows their level of investment in actually finding out the solution or the point of view.
Nichole Pitts
That makes so much sense. And Lord knows, my therapist knows all about these people that trigger me, cuz I will be like, “Billy said X, Y, Z.” And she’ll be like, “Well, have you thought maybe Billy…?” “No, I don’t care what Billy’s thinking. He is worst. He’s now my nemesis.” I have created a whole Marvel movie behind this, right? This is my bias. I can’t take anything that Billy says seriously, because he’s said something crazy to me two years ago.
Jessie Kate Bui
That’s such a great example of how you can both be a moral compass and a foggy mirror. It’s like sometimes when we’re triggered, everything is simplified in order for our mind.
To be able to handle the situation. It can’t process the complexity you are in a compromised state. So it will simplify. This is the villain in my story. This is the hero, which is always me. Right? And you have to kind of navigate through that. It doesn’t mean it has to stay that way, but it’s unfair sometimes to expect that like suddenly you would be like enlightened and negotiable while you’re still in a, like a chemically compromised state. It’s like, give yourself some compassion, be black and white for a little bit, but you don’t need to like post yet.
Nichole Pitts
Exactly. Do you feel that these mainstream storytelling methods, power elements and these stereotypes impact how we view ourselves?
Jessie Kate Bui
Yes. This is something really important. We’ve been talking about how the established power can have effect on us. And we might not know the effect cuz we’re not tracking it down, that path to us, and the types of films that we consume, it affects our way of perceiving ourself and then acting in our life on a day to day basis.
According to the beliefs that we internalize, you know, if you already feel down on yourself and you don’t see yourself represented, you’re like, I don’t feel like I have value or I feel worthless and then you’re not represented or your struggles or point of view isn’t represented. It just reinforces the feeling of worthlessness.
Nobody else values that point of view. So it can reinforce lies. It can also break them down. It can also help dissect them and say, here’s another way to conquer this problem. So we are affected in the way we perceive ourselves how we perceive others. And then in acting that out and saying, maybe you watch a lot of movies where there’s stereotypes and it’s consistent.
And you grew up with that. That’s all you consumed, right? You would treat others as those stereotypes, which would reinforce the stereotype. And then that triangulates into, then I must be a stereotype as well. I am only limited to be able to be this kind of person.
It is a very influential tool. It can create lies and it can break them down and understanding how to tell a story, I think is an ethical, it’s a responsibility that I wanna take on so that I don’t create lies. But I can use fiction to help people tap into truth. Like it’s a very interesting dichotomy.
Nichole Pitts
And I think that is a great place to leave the podcast for this episode. On our next episode, we’re going to continue talking with Jessie Kate, and transition into what she was saying about the fictionalized storytelling and how we can learn to tell our own stories and understand our own limiting beliefs and stereotypes that we’ve put on ourselves and others. How do we reframe that narrative so that we can be more honest, transparent and authentic, not only with ourselves, but how we show up in society and with our families. So thank you so much, Jessie Kate, and thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you enjoyed it, please go on to iTunes or Spotify, or whatever you’re listening to and give this a good rating.
If you didn’t like it, then just go ahead and close out. Don’t touch anything. Just go ahead and close and we’ll look forward to seeing you on the next podcast episode with Jessie Kate to talk about her Parallax Method and how we create our own narrative that is specific for us. So thank you. And thank you, Jessie Kate.
Jessie Kate Bui
Thank you.