Colin Stokes: What Movies Teach Us: Finding Meaning in Films

The best stories, we are told, have morals: lessons to teach us about how the world works. From comic book superheroes to Disney princesses, our modern mythology sets the boundaries of heroism, justice, and victory in ways that reflect our values–and shape them. Acclaimed TED speaker Colin Stokes (Harvard ’96) weaves unique interpretations of popular movies together with humorous personal experience to unlock ways we can master the stories we live by.
Colin Stokes is a writer, public speaker, facilitator, and communications consultant whose three talks at TEDxBeaconStreet have been viewed more than 7 million times. Passionate about social justice and storytelling, he has worked at the education non-profits Citizen Schools and The Achievement Network, supporting their missions with marketing, design, employee engagement, and organizational learning about racism and inclusion. He has spoken at schools, non-profits, and corporations about parenting, privilege, and movies, which he knows about because he is a parent with privilege who watched a lot of movies. Before all that he was a high school public speaking champion from Texas, a VES concentrator (normally called an “art major”) at Harvard, and a professional actor in Boston and New York.