Origin story

Before we move on, Rebecca, I want to linger on the origin story.

And this is also something about Stephen King I'm just going to put in the air.

And about all writers especially, storytellers, musicians, people that are in the public, be careful what the stories they tell you about themselves and the origin stories because I have a couple coming up in here in a minute.

Because the further story that he tells us, he and his wife Tabitha, he says he wanted to get out of Maine and he opens the Atlas and puts his finger down and it's Boulder, Colorado.

I don't know if I can believe that as far as I can throw Stephen King, which wouldn't be very far.

If

he weren't famous, we would believe it.

Like all of us have important origin stories about the librarian or the teacher that gave us something.

so you kind of you're like you're like tracking the edges of becoming a Batman fan but like I mean look

I did like the Robert Pattinson Batman but I'm not like re-watching that I would say that is my least favorite but you know what it is I do love origin stories

Interesting.

It's like the thing that comic book people complain about the most.

It felt really solid and like there was a really good build-up going on and then I think maybe at some point I kind of like remembered that I was like oh right yeah this is like a like a comic book villain.

origin story so you know I don't know there were just there were moments within it where like I kind of fell out of love with certain things some of the dialogue was very trite and I did not like that very much I feel bad because I feel like you can tell that there was a lot of really really good makeup work done but a lot of it seemed to have a CG overlay on top of it and I don't fucking know why which I didn't love very much either.

And there were just a few decisions and plot points to your point, some of the stuff to do with the kind of shoehorned little romantic aspect of things.

I wasn't a big fan of that either.

Mm-hmm.

So, like you see in so much of our pop culture, um, an origin story is compelling because you have this character who you already love and who you feel like you already know.

How did he come to be here? And I think that's why the origin story is so popular.

Um, and I think why-- it, it's probably why they chose that part of his life, because w- we all feel like we already know Anthony Bourdain.

You know?

... is he who we think he is? And so I think that's an interesting c- question.

I kinda wanna table that for the moment.

Um, the origin story thing and the, like, license for dramatization, I think is something that is very convincing as to why somebody would've chosen this, this part of his life.

And the tradition about the exodus and, uh, the people sort of leaving Egypt, think about all the, think about the moments in the Book of Exodus and, and the ones that follow where God says to them things like, "If you do this, uh, I will be your God and you'll be my people." Right? As if they're making a new deal.

Um, in, if you look at some of the prophetic texts that make no mention of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, uh, they will say things like, uh, you know, God will say, uh, "I found you in the wilderness, and I took you in, and I adopted you." And the, the sort of origin stories that exist in the wilderness or in Exodus, "I have known you since Egypt," says God.

Um, this is maybe getting a little bit, uh, uh, too in the weeds, but my point-

No, that's, that's great.

You, you still get a real sense that this is something that is not inherently good at all.

[upbeat music] The Social Network gave us an origin story for Facebook.

In The Social Reckoning, we see how that story has played out.

That's in a minute on Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

This story is titled 1536.

It was written by Tony DePaul and illustrated by Jeff Weigel and is a continuation of the origin stories by Leah Fork.

Now, we have four main origin retellings so far, which is not that much out of 2,000-odd phantom stories created from around the world in 90-odd years.

Now, I have not read all of them, so I may have missed a couple, but the main ones... is in 1936, written by Lethal and illustrated by Ray Moore, which gave us a week of the origin story.