I started off using the emoji keyboard provided but I found it limiting, and I was more familiar with my phone's emojis. That led me to https://www.iemoji.com/ which is what I used for this emoji story. I actually started a few times and struggled. I haven’t watched many movies lately, so I relied on my memory, which for some of the movies I picked, was not good enough. So I settled on a classic that had solid memories for me. I started with the title as it ended up being the easiest part of the task, and then went chronologically. I relied on words and ideas, and did not use syllables. Although I did proceed chronologically, I often found an emoji that I would type in before it was needed, or went back and added more later. I found gender a struggle and was annoyed there was not a feminine/masculine sign to make things clearer, so I had to use a bathroom sign, or a human representation to show that gender role. The other struggle I had was with the passage of time, and change. I found the emojis were limited to convey both of those concepts the way I wanted to. I made my husband look it over, and while he said it made sense, he knew what the movie was as I talked through the task with him. I think because my title should be easily understood, knowing the movie, will make it easier to follow the story. Though, if someone has not seen the movie, I would be interested in their interpretation of what happens from their perspective.

The main piece of reading that connected strongly with this task was Bolter and his statement about our culture being a visual culture (Bolter, 2001). I think this is especially true as the world is conveyed using visual media. Commercials, TV, movies, social media, tik toks, emojis, and my favorite, GIF’s. I admit that I have had entire conversations with only the use of GIF’s and emojis. Something about typing ‘Haha’ or ‘Lol’ does not convey it as well as the laughing emoji. The addition of a visual adds context to a written form that would not have been present without it (Bolter, 2001). Writing ‘Haha’ could be perceived as a sarcastic laugh, but when you put in the emoji, the context becomes clearer. It may also be faster to find a quick GIF that expresses emotion instead of typing it all out. Questions do come out of the idea of context though. I read emojis with a certain cultural, racial, and gender context. If those contexts were changed, the reader may have different interpretations of the context of certain emojis.

References:

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Chapter 4. Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110