Social media - the difference in how we consume memes
‘While memes were conceptualized long before the digital era, the unique features of the Internet turned their diffusion into a ubiquitous and highly visible routine’ (Shifman, L., 2013. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Boca Raton: CRC Press.)
Content flows swiftly from one medium to another, memes have become more relevant than ever to communication scholarship. (Shifman, L., 2013. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Boca Raton: CRC Press.)
‘The internet is especially adept at compressing humanity and making it easy to forget there are people behind tweets, posts and memes’ (Wortham, J., 2017. Why The Internet Didn’T Kill Zines. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/magazine/why-the-internet-didnt-kill-zines.html> [Accessed 12 November 2020].)
‘They shape the mindsets, forms of behavior, and actions of social groups’ (Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). A new literacies sampler. New York, NY: Peter Lang.)
‘Memes vary greatly in their degree of fitness, that is, their level of adaptiveness to the sociocultural environment in which they propagate’ (Aunger R. (2000). Introduction. In R. Aunger (Ed.) Darwinizing culture: The status of memetics as a science (pp. 1–24). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.)
‘The meme-as-virus analogy sees the similarity between memes and disease agents. Taking epidemiology as its model, it considers memes the cultural equivalents of flu bacilli, transmitted through the communicational equivalents of sneezes’ (Alvarez, A. (2004). Memetics: An evolutionary theory of cultural transmission. Sorites, 15, 24–28. Retrieved from http://www.sorites.org/Issue_15/alvarez.htm)
‘Memes diffuse at the micro level but shape the macro structure of society; they reproduce by various means of imitation; and they follow the rules of competitive selection’ (Shifman, L., 2013. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Boca Raton: CRC Press.)
Is satire dead? (no)
‘Political satire seems virtually impossible these days. How do you make fun of leaders and institutions when some of them are so bonkers. But satire is still healthy, if you’re willing to look in the right place: horror stories’
“Get Out” released a month after the inauguration, that ushered in a new era of political satire. Satire unmasks hypocrisy, while horror puts a face on our worst fears. The movie resonated with Americans who were shaken by the return of a racist ideology to the White House. The film worked as satire because it offered a fantastical version of real-life horrors, creating an imaginative space where audiences could process the truth without confronting it directly’
‘Satire also draws us in by promising to humiliate those who have power over us. Usually this humiliation is played for laughs, but that release doesn't seem to be enough anymore. “Parasite” invites viewers to revel in the blood-soaked decline of a wealthy, privileged family.’
‘It makes sense that todays most effective satires give tangible form to unacknowledged American nightmares’ (Newitz, A., 2020. Opinion | Political Satire Isn’T Dead. It’S Been Turned Into Horror Stories.. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/opinion/halloween-horror.html> [Accessed 12 November 2020].)
Is satire dead? (yes)
‘our defining satirical tradition has always been rather different: tangential, playful, surreal, creating amplified hyper-realities that excel politics rather than reflect it.’ (Williams, Z., 2016. Is Satire Dead? Armando Iannucci And Others On Why There Are So Few Laughs These Days. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/oct/18/is-satire-dead-politicians-held-in-contempt-armando-iannucci-few-laughs> [Accessed 12 November 2020].)
Two personnel notes. First, there are no women in this piece; political satire is a very male world. Second, as Armstrong said bluntly: “Talking about satire feels like death. If I heard somebody go, ‘Now I’m going to write some satire’, and I had to think what that person looked like, I’d think, ‘That person looks like a wanker.’” - Jesse Armstrong (co-writer of Peep Show)
“when a complaint is made about a satire show, the reply goes out immediately: ‘The intention was never to offend.’ The intention was to offend. If it hadn’t offended, it wouldn’t be funny. If we have beliefs, religious or political, and they’re not strong enough to stand up to a joke, then they can’t be that good.”- Armando Iannucci
Iannucci believes that in this polarisation – excessive sensitivity quelling humour on one side, radical insensitivity masquerading as humour on the other – comedy has come to replicate the new extremes of politics.
‘O’Farrell says, and not just because, without it, satire has “sort of died, really. There’s no pedestal to pull them off. The public hold them in such contempt.” - John O’Farrell (creator of Spitting Image)
‘Satirists are there to prick the pomposity of the establishment. That’s an over-beaten piñata. Everyone’s kicking the shit out of the establishment.’ (Williams, Z., 2016. Is Satire Dead? Armando Iannucci And Others On Why There Are So Few Laughs These Days. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/oct/18/is-satire-dead-politicians-held-in-contempt-armando-iannucci-few-laughs> [Accessed 12 November 2020].)
‘Tracking to further extremes, it is really hard to mock Nigel Farage: he is already a caricature of a little England neo-fascist, defending Trump’s pussy-grabbing. He is a mockery already, and he isn’t laughing.’ (Williams, Z., 2016. Is Satire Dead? Armando Iannucci And Others On Why There Are So Few Laughs These Days. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/oct/18/is-satire-dead-politicians-held-in-contempt-armando-iannucci-few-laughs> [Accessed 12 November 2020].)
‘A more plausible theory is that political correctness has made satire much more dangerous.’
‘I’m not sure you can blame the decline of political satire on these attacks on free speech. After all, some of the most celebrated works of satire have been produced under the most brutal, oppressive regimes. A case in point is Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, an indictment of life in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Admittedly, it wasn’t published until 33 years after Bulgakov’s death, but the fact that satire was considered so subversive by the Soviet authorities gave it a power and importance that it lacks in liberal democracies. Forcing satire underground keeps it alive.’
‘What accounts for satire’s declining health? I don’t hold with the textbook explanation, which is that standards in public life have sunk so low that nothing a satirist could come up with could be as bad as the reality’. Young, T., 2015. Is Satire A Dying Art?. [online] Spectator.co.uk. Available at: <https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-satire-a-dying-art-> [Accessed 12 November 2020].
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