Sunday, February 11, 2007

Male Narrative in Political Blogging

Recently, I was watching a movie on an experimental film maker, The Search for Maya Derem. Maya Derem was one of the firsr writers of feminist film and she was one of the first propagators of the theory known as female time vs male time. The theory is along the lines that male time is narrative, linear and often goal-oriented. Female time builds, basing off of the theory that women see life and time as a process of building through the birth and child-rearing process, while men are action and problem-solving oriented.

This led me on a tangent in terms of the blogosphere and the style used in blogging.
Is the style of narrative used in blogging and more so in political blogging inherently male? The style is typically characterized as impersonal and linear in narrative. Classic female narrative is personal, emotional and building.

Retrospectively, female narrative has been dismissed, for example Nathaniel Hawthorne's quote “damn’d mob of scribbling women”. Presently, female narrative is still dismissed - some of you may remember Hochman's NY Times article on Mommy Blogs that was underhandedly sarcastic of the entire mommy blog diaspora of writing. Or the fact that any serious political blogger considers himself infinitely superior to the personal online diary blogger (classically represented by the female teenager).

Or even worse is the online seperation of male and female occuring in the blogosphere: www.blogher.com, www.feministblog.org, Wikichix, LinuxChix, Ubuntu women, etc. But is the online seperation essential in order to recover/make prominent the female narrative? Is there a universal, happy-medium style of narrative that men and women can co-agree on that takes both sides into the equation? Or am I missing the feminist argument completely?

Interestingly as well was Maya Derem's skill in choreographing the camera into the film shooting sequence, literally moving the camera as if it too was a dancer in the play. Famously she filmed a kung-fu artist and had the camera react to his movements. Do we understand or take narrative structure into a choreographed dance as we blog? One can see a much more liberal style being applied in commenting - from the short and sarcastic tort, to the reactionary repeat your line and comment, to the formal, essay structured retort. Unforunately there isn't a whole lot of variance in actual writing, it is still in a journalistic/essay driven style.

Funny - I thought about how I could try to write this piece in female narrative, in a way that it 'builds'. But ultimately it hurt my brain as I'm about the most linear-minded person around - but maybe some of you will find this less linear then my other posts.

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