Popular Culture Review Vol. 1, December 1989 | Page 17

True Stories as True Stories:

The Use of the Narrator in David
Byrne’s Films
A poet friend o f mine was visiting and, as I often do, I put
David Byrne’s True Stories on the VCR in order to entertain him.
It didn’t work. Instead of laughing and enjoying himself, my friend
told me that he didn’t find much humor in the ridiculing o f others.
“Come on,” I said, “you can’t be serious. Byrne is merely
pointing out how ridiculous we all are. H e’s not turning this into
a them-vs.-us’ put-down. H e’s recognizing the foibles of human
beings, o f Americans, and he’s just sort of gently poking fun at us
for possessing them.”
My friend wasn’t convinced. If it weren’t for the fact that this
film was made by a hip East Coast rock star about “a bunch of
people in Virgil, Texas,” i.e., people of small town America, he
might feel okay about it, he said. But otherwise he simply saw this
as an exploitative Him, a Him which points out the ridiculousness
of people in such small towns and which removes the hip, big-city
audience from these idiosyncracies. I thought about it. He had
some good points. Suddenly I was no longer convinced, either.
Hence, this study. What is David Byrne doing in this Elm?
W hat is his perspective? Does he truly care about the people in this
mythical small town, or is he using them for cheap laughs? I
consider the stories o f Raymond Carver, stories about the everyday
lives of Americans who are not unlike those in the film, which are
written with sympathy rather than cynicism or derision, which
avoid the irony often implicit in the subject matter. Does Byrne
share that appreciation for his characters? And I consider the bits
by David Letterman, bits which poke fun at “Stupid People
Tricks,” at people who collect hair or people who call hogs. What

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