Mixed emojions

banks of red lights
Lighting a fire under the allusion of words

I dearly love The Allusionist and picking just one great episode verges on the impossible. Helen Zaltzman’s podcast always fills me with joy and while I can’t rightly say this is my very favourite episode, months later it does still makes me laugh. I find I’m still quoting parts of it to other people (my dear, tolerant friends).

I’ll be honest, when I saw the word ’emoji’ in my feed I was tempted to skip it and let the emoji snobbery have its way. This episode delighted and entertained me, and has now utterly corrupted me. I have acute and incurable premature emojulation. I suspect Ms Zaltzman would be proud.

The Allusionist is frequently surprising, subversive and powerful. This episode was an early, shining example.

‘this is a subversive commentary on text, because the text is all about how women are just there to be seduced; they’re just body parts. So she’s saying, “They’re just body parts, are they? I’m going to pick them and put them in a pie.”’

Helen somehow waltzes us around, through and towards a truly serious underlying issue. While the episode is supposedly about emoji, there’s a whole lot more going on.

The episode’s under 17 minutes. Take some time out and sit a while under the penis tree of language, allusion and emoji.