PODCAST + Discussion: "Memes And Oscar Drama With Drayton Benedict"

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The first "I Watch So You Don't Have To" podcast episode has been released! In this inaugural episode, I chat with my friend and fellow film enthusiast, Drayton Benedict (@frontrowrewind), about the recent Academy Awards Ceremony, the drama of film twitter, and the proliferation of meme-ified movies.

You can listen to the episode and return here for further discussion on how memes and social media have affected our cinematic viewing practices and expectations...

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A larger discussion about memes, movies, and fascist art...

In the age of twitter, instagram, facebook, and reddit, memes and gifs of movies are circulating faster than people are able to see the movies themselves. Films released via streaming services like Netflix and Amazon (The Irishman and A Marriage Story were big Oscar frontrunners this year) are more easily accessible, and therefore more likely to be seen by people who come across the memes and become curious about watch the film.

Noah Baumbach's A Marriage Story enjoyed quite a bit of meme circulation, specifically the scene in which the main characters (played by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver) are arguing in their home. The tension-filled scene from film was widely used to comment on other pop culture debates, including Baby Yoda, other popular memes, #MeToo controversies, the quality of the show Friends, and even the film itself.

Source: Tweet by Ben Rosen (@ben_rosen), Dec 7, 2019.

Source: Tweet by Mike Trapp (@MikeWTrapp), Dec 8, 2019.

Similarly, the fight scene between Jo (Saoirse Ronan) and Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) in Greta Gerwig's Little Women produced similar fodder for online memes (Jo says, emphatically, "I can't. I can't. I've tried it, and I've failed. I can't," in response to Laurie's confession of love). Ironically, directors Gerwig and Baumbach are married in real life -- is there some kind of connection between their romantic fight scenes that have both gone viral?

Source, clockwise from top: Tweet by gina (@eyesvvideshut), Feb 16, 2020; Tweet by Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson), Feb 17, 2020; Tweet by Katie Kaufman Rogers (@katie_k_rogers), Feb 18, 2020; Tweet by Lane Moore (@hellolanemoore), Feb 17, 2020.

Both fight scene memes from Little Women and A Marriage Story resemble other popular argument memes, such as Woman Yelling at a Cat and American Chopper. In virtual spaces that do not often leave room for nuance, these memes provide an outlet for sparking conversation or expressing opinions that might otherwise be ignored or misunderstood in word form.

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This year's Academy Awards are the not first to embrace the meme-ification of cinema. Luca Guadagnino's 2017 film, Call Me By Your Name, was heralded by gifs of the actors (Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet) enigmatically dancing in the streets of Italy. Before the film really took off in theaters, social media-savvy audiences were itching to see their favorite gifs come to life on the big screen.

This counteracts the narrative that virtual spaces are replacing other media spaces (e.g., movie theaters and watching TV in your living room). Memes and gifs popularize films and TV shows in a way that create a new kind of interactivity: tweeting and meme-ing and watching and streaming go hand-in-hand, generating fresh ways of engaging in "water cooler conversations" in an era when many people interact online more than in physical work spaces.

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So what does all this meme (mean)?

In a delightful article titled "Walter Benja-Memes," Robby Hardesty, Jess Linz, and Anna J. Secor expand the theoretical concerns initiated by Walter Benjamin in his seminal work, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and applies these concerns to the modern-day meme. Benjamin fears that mechanically reproduced art may lead to fascist aesthetics by numbing audiences into accepting mass culture.This echoes Freud's description of "art for art's sake" (151) and is echoed by Horkheimer and Adorno's revulsion toward the "sameness" of mass culture (94).

Hardesty, Linz, and Secor see the same dangerous potential in memes, stating: "The meme lives to fly, visiting and guiding...the soul of the meme is affect, affect for affect's sake, shared because it is possible to share" (p. 12). But the authors are also mindful of the active (rather than passive) "practice[s]" enacted by meme creation and circulation, which are just as important as the "content" of the memes themselves (p. 1). What we do with a meme reveals just as much about our culture as what the meme contains.

For Hardesty, Linz, and Secor, online spaces are "deterritorialized" from the material world, and memes are virtual tools that then "re-territorialize" the virtual with material elements (p. 6). Suddenly, twitter feeds morph from textual conversations into a smattering of playful images and captions that evoke a range of emotional reactions. These embodied experiences destabilize our assumptions about the virtuality of social media: there is, in fact, a body connected to each catchy twitter handle, to each vitriolic facebook post, and to each filtered image on instagram.

This embodied "re-territorialization" of virtual spaces also brings a lack of control. Memes create a multiplicity of meanings; no one person or group can claim authoritative meaning over viral memes. This unboundedness can be freeing or it can be frightening, which is precisely Benjamin's fear. Benjamin (along with Horkheimer and Adorno) is concerned that art without meaning, especially when it is mass-produced, will groom audiences to become consumers of fascism as they are groomed to consume mass-produced popular culture.

And yet, those of us gleefully tweeting and meme-ing do not do so out of ignorant consumption; there is a thoughtful debate stage constructed by memes, even in all their silliness. Memes and other image-based jokes build a public platform through a common language that holds meaning without becoming fully essentialized. In other words, memes invite participants into a conversation that may never find a (definitive) ending. While this may seem troubling to some, most issues are not of the type that will be definitely solved or agreed upon, and memes allow for flexible conversation amidst complicated issues.

But some tough questions deserve solid answers -- most notably, the historical (and increasingly present) crimes of fascism and white supremacy require retribution and atonement beyond mere acknowledgement. "While memes do not promise justice, they do promise movement" (Hardesty, Linz, and Secor, p. 14). We do not have to accept injustice, and memes allow for comedic relief amidst tension-filled times. Memes alone can sink us into hollow inaction, but they can also provide movement. If humor is an essential release that creates solidarity and spurs on collective action, then laughing at fascism may be the first step to dismantling fascist systems.

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Sources:

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. Trans. Harry Zohn, from the 1935 essay.

Freud, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between The Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1919.

Hardesty, Robby, Jess Linz, and Anna J. Secor. “Walter Benja-Memes.” GeoHumanities 5, no. 2 (July 3, 2019): 496–513. https://doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2019.1624188.

Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2002. Originally published 1947.