by Mia Kishly
Memes are one of the most substantial characteristics of 21st-century material culture. As a viral phenomenon, its power on visual culture is pertinent. Memes are a way of expressing ideas, behaviors, styles, and even photographs posted on social media platforms for entertainment and humorous purposes. They have been circulating on social media platforms for years now and especially after a show or film is released. Thus, this makes them a part of internet and popular culture. The meme turns into a linguistic message whereby you need to have seen the film or show in question to understand it. Even after the film itself has been forgotten, you still find images and memes about it on the internet. Therefore, there is a relation between memes and film and television. In this article, I will be focusing on memetic culture through the eyes of several thinkers like Cartwright and Sturken, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Guy Debord.
To begin with, the internet and technology have become predominant in today’s society and have become integrated into our daily lives. There is an interconnection between the information gained and media content, computer networks, and communication technologies. In other words, there is media convergence here. “Media convergence is a concept that became widely used in the twenty-first century to describe the coming together of previously separate media forms and industries through computing and digital technology.” (Sturken and Cartwright, 2018, 220). This results in a change in the way the audience experiences Film and Television. With the rise of the internet, people no longer meet in person to watch a film together. They stream films online instead, and Teleparty is an example of that. Teleparty harmonizes video playback and adds group chat to Netflix, Disney, Hulu, and HBO. This means that not only do people get to watch films together, but they get to talk about them. “At the same time, the restructuring of the media industry through the rise of digital media had blurred many of the boundaries that had previously existed between forms of media. Media convergence had changed the nature of the movies and transformed television and the experience of the audience.” (Sturken and Cartwright, 2018, p.8).
Moving on, we can clearly and undoubtedly see a deeper relation between memes and film and television. For instance, up to this day, we still see memes revolving around The Matrix which was released 22 years ago. Even after the movie itself has been forgotten, you still find images and memes about it on the internet. In the case of The Matrix, the “What If I Told You” and the “Red Pill or Blue Pill?” memes are still popular. A meme is somewhat of a combination of images and words that tell a specific story. Even though you need to see the film itself to understand the meme, you still see it on your timeline. However, those who have not seen it yet may interpret it differently. I can relate this to Barthes’ linguistic message. Barthes explores the communication that occurs between visual arts, language, and music when they collide with one another. He does so by using semiotics and examining the different meanings that linguistic and visual signs imply. Today, linguistic messages occur as titles, captions, film dialogues, and many more. Therefore, this means that the linguistic message is present in every image. As every image has a different meaning attached to it, audience members could translate these memes in their own unique way.
In addition to that, there is a relation between social media surveillance and memes. Algorithmic surveillance plays an important role in modern surveillance. “When algorithms designed to track our browsing and clicking habits and our eye movements are computed to generate data about our patterns and habits, that data is computed to optimize strategies for marketing to us as individuals” (Sturken and Cartwright, 2018, p.291). This is in one way, or another related to Foucault’s panopticon. Social media platforms now collect your personal data and use it against you. For instance, the minute you watch a film, you see a meme circulating about it on your timeline. This way memes become marketing techniques to make films more popular. “Viral marketing deploys the meme networks through which people pass on ideas to their friends. These strategies began initially as ways of creating clever content that would attract attention online.” (Sturken and Cartwright, 2018, p.292). When a meme about a film goes viral, people feel pressured to watch the film itself. Therefore, Debord’s Situationist theory comes in handy here. Most of the time, behavior is affected by exterior factors, and we can clearly see it here. People have only become motivated to stream new media because of its virality or popularity. In other words, we can say that technology renovates our behaviors, interactions, internal thoughts, and opinions. However, Debord explains that we need to actively try to find a way to reclaim our lives from mass media and technology and self-emancipate from the spectacle. “The Spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” (Debord, 1967, p.7)
All in all, memes have definitely changed the way we view media. Even if many people consider memes to be purely jokes, we cannot deny the fact that they have been very impactful. For instance, through social media platforms and algorithms, memes have driven people to theaters and cinemas and accordingly have been very impactful on the film industry. However, we must not only think about their influence on the film industry but on other industries, institutions, and organizations as well. For instance, we can think of the role of memes in political matters.
References:
Barthes, R. (1977). Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang.
Debord, G. (1994). The society of the spectacle. New York: Zone Books.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. 2nd Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books.
Sturken, M. Cartwright, L. (2018). Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
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