Blog Fiction
Having raised the issue of using blogs to create (fictional) narrative in yesterday's tutorial, the www has come up with an example for me this morning (via jill/txt). How might blog fiction challenge traditional notions of narrative, or how might it remain within that model?
posted by Karen @ 10:26 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I just had a look at Scott McCloud's comics, and thought it was really interesting. I liked the point he made in 'I Can't Stop Thinking' about the participatory nature of his style of comics - that to work it requires a reader to scroll down - that the medium requires embodied action from the audience (it isn't just text and mind, there is a body in there as well).
As to how the 'Roommate From Hell' blog will work - you know as much as me if you read the FAQ's:). I gather that is supposed to be updated until all the story is up there, and that a second narrative might be developed in response to reader's votes. This is currently giving me flashbacks to Dickens and other Victorian serial fiction, but that might just be me.
The Lovecraft Livejournal definitely counts for using blogs/journals as narrative, but the re-working aspect is rather fascinating. Any adaptation raises questions about the nature of both the original and adapted medium - what are the continuities, what does one medium do that the other can't, how does it do things differently?
It's also interesting to think about the differences between blogs and journals, and how the conventions of each are used in the different fictions.
I'm also thinking more broadly about the representations of blogs vs journals, and the histories of gendered technologies - at the moment I'm willing to make a link between blogs, masculine public sphere, and percieved important/worthwhile use of technology and journals, feminine 'gossip', and percieved trivial/frivolous use of technology. However, this is doing quite a lot of generalising, so feel free to expand or disagreee!
'Gossip' in historical context - the term originally comes from people asked to be god-parents, also other women asked to be present at a birth, but then developed to its more modern meaning (which was definitely gendered). From the Oxford English Dictionary Online:
3. A person, mostly a woman, of light and trifling character, esp. one who delights in idle talk; a newsmonger, a tattler.
4. The conversation of such a person; idle talk; trifling or groundless rumour; tittle-tattle. Also, in a more favourable sense: Easy, unrestrained talk or writing, esp. about persons or social incidents.
I have vague memories of a good article on women beginning to use the telegraph in rural Australia, and how their use of this technology was figured as 'gossip'. Bah, now I need to find that article (will post details if I manage to unearth it).
I'm not a livejournal user myself, so I think the people inside it will have a better idea of what goes on on the ground (as it were). But I do think representations of proper/improper and important/trivial uses of technology are interesting, especially as they relate to ideas of gender, race, and class.
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