Facebook, with its ability to allow almost anyone to offer their opinions, or in many cases, a link to someone else’s opinion, has evolved over the years to become more than just a social networking site to share pancake recipes and play games. Due to the huge demographic it serves (practically anyone with Internet access has a Facebook account nowadays), it operates very successfully as a platform for the general public to address current events and important issues in society – somewhat like an online newspaper fueled by public contributions. Twitter functions in much the same manner – the 140 character limit on tweets doesn’t stop those who have points to make from making them, and it certainly doesn’t limit discussion about these points either.

For today’s blog post, I was thinking about the reach of such social media sites in raising awareness of issues that are important in society today. The feminist community of Twitter is widely acknowledged for being what it is – a group of individuals looking to educate others on their ideals of achieving gender equality in society, and help them understand why these goals are so important. In particular, there tend to be certain “Twitter-famous” individuals who spearhead the movement and, due to the convincing manner in which they argue for womens’ rights, have thousands and thousands of followers, with a publicity reach spanning across many cultures and borders. One such example is Alexis Isabel Moncada, a 17 year old girl of Mexican-American descent who founded the Feminist Culture account, and its corresponding webpage. She created the account when she was 16, with the intention of increasing awareness about social issues, mainly focusing on gender inequality but foraying into topics like race and sexuality – a quote from the website’s About page reads “Every feminist problem will be discussed, because our main priority is making sure everyone is heard.” It can be said without much argument that her cause was wildly successful – the account now has over 137 thousand followers, with daily comments of approval on the articles on the website, and appreciation for Alexis’ contributions to raising awareness of gender equality issues. The manner in which she and a team of writers educate people about such crucial issues is truly admirable- the credit goes to Twitter, and the amazing way in which it allows one to reach out to such huge numbers of people.

Facebook, too, is one such place where discussions about current events and social problems thrive. The recent attacks of terrorism in Paris on November 13th spawned shocking waves of hate acts towards Muslims worldwide, due to the false assumption that Islamic ideals are the ones upheld by ISIS. In response to this, many posts addressing the issue of racism appeared on Facebook, clearly with the intention of mitigating the unnecessarily negative outlook from people towards Muslims as a group. An example is this photo, which, using the image of children, has the assumed purpose of trying to prove racism to be nothing more than a construct created by society. The comments show that the photo doesn’t quite meet the expectations of what it was supposed to achieve, but it did stimulate discussion of this topic – which is, after all, the purpose of the social networking site, isn’t it?

For this week’s blog post, I decided to focus on the representation of life narratives in film production. I was thinking about the types of successful movies we know to be based on true stories, my question pertaining to their variety. Do only certain genres of life narrative possess that extra quality which makes a producer go “Hm, this would make a good feature film”? Or do all personal stories stand a decent chance of being dramatized? What about the representation of narratives that might be considered controversial? With this in mind, I spent some time scrolling through IMDb’s Biography tag, jotting down titles that were both memoirs and famous enough to sound somewhat familiar, with surprising results. It’s not just the autobiographies of well-known individuals that make it big, an example being Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Instead, we see contributions to this category of film from all kinds of sources – from an American football player (The Blind Side), to survivors of hiking expeditions gone wrong (Everest), to sufferers of physical and mental illnesses (The Theory of Everything/Girl, Interrupted), to Chinese martial artists (Ip Man). There’s even a successful movie following the life of a pet dog (Marley and Me). The list and the variety go on.

It can be seen that the genre of life narrative does not seem to have a major influence on how successful it can be as a movie – Marley and Me made over $242 million in the box office, while Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom only made something over $27 million. Now my question turns to the reception of these movies, and the reaction they elicit from viewers. Are they able to draw out scholarly responses to the underlying topics broached in these films? A search through a UBC Library database proved this fairly quickly. 12 Years a Slave, a film about one man’s experiences with slavery, also furthers the exploration of identities and representations of gender in that context, as covered by Tara T. Green in her paper Black Masculinity and Black Women’s Bodies: Representations of Black Bodies in Twelve Years a Slave. Elizabeth Marshall, in her article Borderline Girlhoods: Mental Illness, Adolescence, and Femininity in Girl, Interrupted, describes issues of gender concepts and tackling mental illness while growing up, as depicted in the film.  Joyce B. Ashuntantang, in her article Hollywood’s Representations of Human Rights: The Case of Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda, covers the cinematic portrayal of one man’s work during this historical occurrence, and the concurrent representation of human rights. It can be seen from these examples that film portrayals of life narratives can indeed lead to the closer examination of any theories or concepts which the movies give nods to, but rarely tackle head-on, with the aim of increasing awareness of these topics – providing a satisfying answer to my question.

Sources: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=marleyandme.htm

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=mandela2013.htm

Ashuntantang, Joyce B. Hollywood’s Africa After 1994: Hollywood’s Representations of Human Rights: The Case of Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda. Ohio University Press, 01/01/2012. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.

Green, Tara T. Palimpsest (Albany, N.Y.): Black Masculinity and Black Women’s Bodies: Representations of Black Bodies in Twelve Years a Slave. 4 Vol. SUNY Press, 01/01/2015. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.

Marshall, Elizabeth. The Lion and the Unicorn (Brooklyn): Borderline Girlhoods: Mental Illness, Adolescence, and Femininity in Girl, Interrupted. 30 Vol. Johns Hopkins University Press, 01/01/2006. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.