The Story of the Person of Royalty and the Person who Fought for Royal People: 200-word Write Up
Fourth-wave feminism reminds us that with a change of medium comes a change of message; McLuhan would have approved. The fluidity of online discourse has allowed for a more globalised and queer-positive narrative to take root, expanding feminism into mainstream discourse. However, with hashtag activism and the succinctness of the online message in today’s era (think: 140-character debates), the word “feminism” has suddenly turned vulgar. Through what medium can one communicate an awareness of patriarchy and non-binary genders without turning their audiences off?
This short 27-page narrative (with 5 extra pages of dictionary references) is delivered in the form of a pseudo children’s book. It depicts the typical knight-rescue-damsel narrative, while avoiding gendered nouns and pronouns. It finally ends by reversing the typified gendered roles of the male saviour and female hostage.
By revisiting a medium that first educated us in a pre-digital era, this juxtaposes new messages with old materials, inviting its readers to not only interrogate the prevalence and impact of gendered words, but to also interrogate the cultural symbols that were embedded into our childhood and especially, the mediums through which we push for change. Hopefully, through such revisions, do we inspire the stories of our future.