Narratology

Environmental sociologists have described hopelessness and distress related to their research results, while US citizens report increasing rates of climate anxiety and grief. This chapter looks to the field of narrative medicine for methodological means of exploring such distress. Medical narratologists, such as Rita Charon and Arthur Frank, have explored the ways that patients tell the stories of their physical and psychological health. Like the psychological narrative presented by a patient within a medical appointment or therapy session, songs are presented as similar psychological narratives expressing the pain and stress of individual and societal threats to the environment alike. As case studies, the chapter looks at songs from the album Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth (1967) by folksinger Malvina Reynolds. Perhaps the album’s best-known song from its use as the theme song to the sitcom Weeds (Showtime 2005–2012), “Little Boxes” portrays the psychological and environmental implications of (sub)urbanisation. Two other songs on the album (“God Bless the Grass” and “What Have They Done to The Rain?”) deal directly with climate change. After a methodological presentation, these songs are presented as a dialogue between Reynolds’s experience in 1967 and the listener with present-day applications.