Process
For this task, I used an emoji keyboard to type out the emojis. Spacing was key. Instead of plotting the emojis line after line, like a paragraph of text, I made the story visual. As Bolter (2001) stated, “the buttoned style is about writing with images rather than words” (p. 72). The document became a canvas for these images, instead of a page off a word processor. The blank canvas blurred the edges between the medium and the setting. Each space is intentional; they represent a new scene, a new day, a new character introduced, the distance between characters, a change in setting, or the insertion of dialogue or thought.
I am a frequent emoji user myself, so I am already familiar with the symbols. It was a delight to recall some very seldom used, “off the grid” emojis for this task, and to find close replacements for emojis that did not exist. I only encountered a few challenges when I realized some emojis are not universal, and are not compatible across devices and platforms.
I came across a few of these “emoji story” books before and I’ve played those “guess the meaning of this combination” emoji games. From my exposure, I was inclined to think that every emoji stood for a word or a syllable. For this task, it was natural that I started off with this mindset and proceeded to transcribe the title of the movie this way. However, I soon realized that the process would be too complex and challenging if I decided to transcribe each and every word from the plot with emojis. If I used direct syllabic/word transcription, I would probably need to take an extra step and draft the text first, before dissecting each word on both a semantic and phonetic level. This would be quite troublesome and could be avoided if moving images could be transcribed with images also. The movie is very vivid and I could easily paint a moving picture in my head. My strategy was to encapsulate the actions and dialogue visualized in each major scene with emojis. A movie is not one without the feelings. I distinguished the actions with “emotion emojis” to represent the vibrant, visceral emotions that strongly drive the characters’ motives. The emojis are akin to snapshots of the moving pictures.
I was not particularly picky with choosing the film. However, I had considered a few others before this pick, but changed because they were more dialogue based and less “visual.” These were the mundane, slow-moving films. I imagined that it would be difficult to illustrate these plots as there are no major events signature to the film. This may be the key strategy to plotting the movie with emojis: to effectively identify, visualize, and compress the core message of the movie with its signature scenes and representative objects.
Reflection
In the world of instaculture, social media, and instant messaging, getting a point across is as easy a simple emoji, a photo, or a meme. If you are in the loop, if you know the inside jokes, the message generated from the images are easy to decipher and less literal than you would think. However, one must really be in touch with popular internet culture to understand this nuanced communication method.
I’ve seen countless “if you know, you know” captions underneath seemingly mundane photos. Sometimes, I’ll see a mass of users commenting the same emoji or phrase repeatedly in the comments section, all already participating in a community that I have no idea exists. New “text talk” acronyms and even gestures full of hidden meanings are emerging every other day. What does this all mean? This is probably why there is a “OutoftheLoop” Reddit community for members to question these trends and Quora is also abundant with similarly confused users.
I believe that these trends and expressions are socially, contextually, and culturally situated. Two cultures may have completely different interpretations of the same emoji. Bolter (2001) also suggested that printed text is often subject to decontextualization and refers to face-to-face (visual) or telephone (auditory) conversations as a means to enforce meaning that would otherwise lead to many interpretations. Emojis, while potentially not as accurate as a face-to-face conversation, could provide more customized, visual cues to the reader. This especially holds true with the emotion emojis when used not sarcastically (although sarcasm is also arguably difficult to detect through text or images). Some emojis have double meanings or are usually used ironically in popular internet culture. Some emojis can be analogous to something intangible – an experience, an emotion, or an expression. Although emojis are releasing more variations and customizations to appeal to different communities across the globe, are they truly universal?
Are the emojis in this task literal or metaphorical? How does this impact how the reader interprets and visualizes the story? How do cultural influences, personal anecdotes, and level of engagement and immersion in internet culture impact how we translate the emojis back to stories? When we read a text, we tend to visualize the story as it unfolds between the words. We feel through imagery. As we read others’ emoji stories, do we then automatically translate the emojis back to text and then visualize the plot through the words? Or do we translate the emojis directly into the visuals of the movie, using the images as a guide?
Furthermore, is it possible to accurately transcribe a movie plot – or any story for that matter – with emojis, without any chance of misinterpretation or multiple interpretations?
References
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110