The Digital Narrative of Perez Hamilton

PerezHamilton.com parodies pop culture gossip monger Perez Hilton by blogging about major events of seventeenth century American history.  The site functions as a digital narrative by exhibiting components explicated by Bryan Alexander in The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media.  Perez Hamilton presents a sequence of content in linear time to convey a historical narrative in a contemporary, comedic style.  It operates as a series of “short-short stories” that is part online diary, part character exposition (Alexander 58-59).  The text is accompanied by historical images embellished with doodles à la Perez Hilton.  By relaying past events in a chronological narrative order while incorporating culturally relevant linguistic and visual cues, Perez Hamilton succeeds in creating an effective intersection of past and present for the education and entertainment of a digital public audience.