Julie and Julia

Julie and Julia is a blog turned into a book turned into a film. The story revloves around cooking and blogging. It starts when Julie Powell, an office cubicle worker gets tired of her job and experience an identity crsis. She embarked on a Julie/Julia project as a mean to bring some colour back to her life. Cooking has always been her passion, hence she decided to blog on the process of her learning journey for every dish she picks up from a famous cookbook published by Julia Child.

From the film, it is evident that Julie idolizes Julia and percieves her to be a perfect and mystical figure. In comparison, Julie is seemingly a total opposite of Julia. To Julie's mother, her daughter is merely a self-centered blogger who is too absorbed in her own impossible-to-complete project and neglects the other aspects of her life.

Things were rough during the initial stage of Julie Powell's mission, however, she managed to attract a whole lot of readers after a while and in my opinion, her primary ingredient was her good writing. She spills her innermost thoughts and feelings and links them to the dishes that she was learning to cook. Slowly and gradually, she developed a loyal readership. In Julie's case, blogging proved to be a good way for her to express herself. It became a platform for her to organize her thoughts and build up her self-esteem. By winning a group of audience who appreciates her, it boost her confidence and ascertain her self-worth. Sadly, Julie got too obsessed with her challenge and her husband finally lost his temper and walked away.

This movie can easily be related to writing as it shows the power of writing to inspire and change lives. Julia's famous recipies could reach out to a wider group of audience with the help of her book's publication. Similiarly, blog writing changed Julie's life. There was not much anonymity in Julie's blog as she was pretty self-disclosing with her posts. However, it will not do good if she did publish every single detail of her life story online. She made a wise decision by not blogging about the tiffs she had with her husband he would be displeased knowing that she announces their problems to everyone.

This leaves me with a nagging feeling towards blogging. How is one to decide the amount of information to disclose then? If bloggers are completely honest in a blog, they would place themselves in a dangerous position as their whole identity is literally exposed to the whole wide world. Besides, people who knows the blogger personally may be upset if the blogger mentions their interaction ever too often in details. On the other hand, by hiding too much information, the blog seems insincere and impersonal. A whole list of positives and negatives can easily be link to the idea of blogging. But for now, to cut things short, what I find most inspiring is the way Julie managed to find her personal writing voice and interact with her readers in a virtual world of blogging.