I’ll be the first to admit, I haven’t been out to the movies much in, say, oh … the last seven years. Yes, coincidentally, since I’ve become a parent. So, I might be wrong here, but the movie Julie & Julia was the first movie that I know of with blogging as a central focus.
Even though I couldn’t care less about Julia Child, and cooking in general for that matter, I was excited to see this movie. And that had everything to do with the blogging.
I first became fascinated with blogs when I was on maternity leave with my daughter in 2002. I had gone from running on a non-stop ride of intellectual stimulation as a full-time senior communications advisor who was also finishing up a Master of Arts thesis (yeah, baby, I collected that piece of paper with a very big belly!) to spending my days with a creature (sure, I grant you, an enormously cute creature) who didn’t speak, much less seem interested in discussing literature. So, during nap times, I turned to the internet.
The internet granted me a way to connect with others. The internet was my best friend.
Well, that’s not exactly true. But it was a friend that could meet an erratic feeding schedule, a friend that could comment and share opinions on being a new mother, and a friend that assured me I wasn’t the only one who was knee-deep in culture shock.
The books at Chapters didn’t tell me the real scoop on this new motherhood thing; they were full of rosey tales or sanctimonious pronouncements. The internet, on the other hand, had a wicked sense of humour. And although it seems to be considered an “inferior” form of blogging these days, the mommy-bloggers were a salvation of sorts.
From there, I started lurking around on all sorts of blogs. I loved reading people’s perspectives. Un-edited perspectives.
On blogs, one finds marital spats, frustrated swearing, blissful swearing, dirt and fairy dust. In short, real life. For someone like me who can’t stop reading, blogs are reality tv — but better.
And just like reality tv, blogs can get messy. Dooce got fired. Raymi the Minx got undressed. And countless others shut themselves down voluntarily to stop the hate mail.
I expected a movie about blogging to step into some of this mud. Afterall, it was the real life story of Julie Powell, who started up a blog in 2002 when she was a newly wed and still searching out a career path.
Julie & Julia does touch on some key topics, like balancing the blog with your other real-life relationships and the fine line between expressing yourself versus invading the privacy of your loved ones. But it didn’t go deep enough for me. Or real enough. Or just enough — maybe I just wanted more.
What did you think?
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