The debut of the trailer to a new documentary titled American Blogger is causing a stir, though not exactly because people love it.
The backlash is focused on the trailer’s depiction of the blogging community as entirely white, seemingly affluent, hipster and crafty, when in reality it’s much more complex and multicultural than that. In fact the myriad voices from myriad backgrounds, ethnicities and experiences is a source of great pride for the blogging community, and thus there seem to be a lot of bloggers standing up to defend it.
The filmmaker, Christopher Wiegand, whose wife, Casey, has a blog called The Wiegands, decided to traverse the country to meet 51 of his wife’s blogger friends and interview them about, well, blogging. According to his own blog, Christopher says he was inspired by the connections he saw his wife making with people all over the country via her social media feeds, and he wanted to document this moment in American history because it could, perhaps, change the world.
Katherine Stone of Postpartum Progress reportedly said, “It’s the clueless creator of the creation who thinks I needed him to tell me that I could change the world. Guess what, dude? I’ve been changing it just fine for 10 years without your help.”
I have only seen the trailer, and I’d like to reserve judgment until I see the entire film when it debuts in June on iTunes. Overall I’m thrilled that someone is in fact documenting what can only be considered a phenomenon in American history, and a little jealous that I neither thought of it nor had the filmmaking chops to do it myself. (Is it possible that perhaps some of the criticism of the trailer stems from similar feelings?) The couple documented the entire experience on their blog, which I thought was pretty cool in and of itself. While I certainly noticed the lack of diversity in both the subjects and topics highlighted in the trailer, I don’t hold Christopher Wiegand to the same standard I might hold Steven Spielberg, so I’ll wait to see the film in its entirety.
Watch the trailer and tell us what you think in the comments section below.
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