The Emoji Story

From February 16 to March 2, 2021, The Emoji Story was regularly streamed at the Museum of Modern Art.^[7] The museum additionally held a Q&A between Lee and museum curators, as well as created a video on how emojis are designed.^[8]

In 2021, Adobe and Emojination partnered together to "support the development of new emoji proposals that further global and diverse representation through virtual documentary screenings of The Emoji Story, community events, workshops and more."^[9] The same year, Harvard University's CS50x course streamed the film to students with Adobe's support.^[10]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 12 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7/10.^[11]

The Hollywood Reporter found the film smart and amusing, specifically through its "clever touches relating to its subject matter, such as an emoji version of the pre-show theater announcement and graphics of emojis related to the topics being discussed scattered liberally throughout the proceedings."^[6]

Remezcla found "many joys in Shane and Cheney’s documentary," such as Flor Coelho's proposal for a maté emoji and appreciated the film's "questions about the universalizing potential of these small pictorial representations: the language we use not only reflects but helps shape the world we live in."^[12]

In Bloomberg, Max Raskin pushed back against the Unicode Consortium's role in determining which emojis should be officially included, writing: "The personal quirks and idiosyncrasies of the subcommittee are on display in the documentary when it is revealed that there aren’t more vegetable emojis because the members don’t like vegetables. These should not be the people dictating how the digital world expresses itself."^[13]