What elements of storytelling are being relied upon here?

The image above is meant to loosely relay the narrative from the musical Les Miserables, relying purely on emojis.  For me personally, this example is perfect in evaluating how effectively emojis can convey a narrative, because not only do I have extremely limited prior knowledge of Les Miserables, but also only recently bought myself a smart phone, so my personal emoji databank has only ever consisted of those made up from the 12 button keypad numbers and symbols, such as 🙂 , :’( , 😉 and <3 (and even that last one rarely gets a workout).  So it’s fair to say, that upon first ‘read’, the first line of Les Mis in Emojis read something like this: “locked padlock, sad face, unlocked padlock, happy face, man farts”.  I was clearly interpreting them far too literally.  Cheating a little, after reading the synopsis on Wikipedia, it becomes clear that this is about a character that is released from prison.  Rejuvenated and educated with a new way of thinking, turning back to the collection of emoticons however, proved less fruitful than I’d anticipated.  From the emojis, I could guess Les Mis was a musical judging by the many musical notes emojis (although this is influenced by previous knowledge), and that it was at least partially set in France (but this could be guessed from the musical’s title itself).  Knives, guns, explosions, skulls and crying-smileys (is that a paradox?) hint that there’s probably some death and murder in there too.  It quickly becomes clear that the elements of storytelling that are being relied upon in this instance is that not only does one need to be more cryptically-minded in interpreting the emoji chains, but also more importantly to have actually seen Les Mis, at least to fully appreciate the effort the creator of this piece has gone to.  Les Mis in Emoji is very similar to a project Emoji Dick designed by data engineer Fred Benenson, who translated each line of Moby Dick to emojis.

  To what level is the viewer an actor in this particular media object?

It would be hard to call the audience an actor for this particular media object, largely because I don’t feel as though the audience in this instance are as much a part of the narrative as they are agents of interpreting it.  The audience are given a substantial amount of agency in intervening in this work, with the ability to produce their own narrative; they are participants in the story, as opposed to being a character.

  Is it the story or the plot that’s being told?

After first defining the difference between story and plot, where story indicates a series of events much like a history timeline does, whereas a plot adds dramatic, thematic and emotional significance to the story, it is safe to assume that the Les Mis in Emojis conveys only the musical’s story.  Using the first line as an example, we can establish this character has been freed from some form of captivity, but that is all.  We have no way of knowing for sure whether he is a protagonist or antagonist (if indeed he is male), where he was imprisoned and for what reason, and if he escaped or was released.

  Have/has emoji altered the way we communicate?

It would likely be a stretch to say that outside the world of social media and mobile devices that the emoji has impacted upon or even altered the ways we communicate with those around us.    However, in that world, the emoji has dramatically changed ‘text talk’ at least for the foreseeable future.  Emojis allow us to communicate without typing a single word, as ambiguous as they can be as superficial.  Linguist Ben Zimmer has described the use of emojis as “completely organic”, with people making their own rules up as they go.  Some even believe the emoji has literary potential.  Personally, I just prefer to send a 🙂 rather than implicitly state “I am happy” and sound like the talking dog from the Disney Pixar film Up .

  What cultural customs does the emoji tap into – does it change those customs?

Again, I doubt whether the emoji has changed any significant cultural customs outside of the digital realm.  It’s not as though smiling emojis and love hearts are being attached to the end of wedding invites or crying faces are being engraved into the dead’s tombstones.  Instead, the recent prolific use of the emoji in text speak reflects the rapidity and lack of time most people seem to have to share with others in today’s society, and conversely signifies the ‘Gen Y and Z’ who are just getting lazier.