Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
A Defense of Form: Internet Memes and Confucian Ritual
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Brown, Nicholas J. |
| Copyright Year | 2014 |
| Abstract | By applying the normative basis of Confucian ritual activity to the repeatable designs of internet memes, this essay explores the ways in which socially recognized forms can allow individuals to engage in thoughtful activity with what is represented by but cannot be reduced to form: the particulars of human experience. The goal of this insight is to suggest that the value of art and ideas cannot be isolated from how individuals interact with them, and thus critique should examine how well an idea or piece promotes an active, creative, and critical relationship to a person’s own experiences. To a generation that spends a large amount of time on the internet, memes have become a part of life. Although they appear infrequently on professionally-minded websites, one click into the realm of social networks, blogs, and forums reveals that internet memes are posted and referenced almost constantly. The notable internet meme research website Know Your Meme explains, “Internet memes have risen in popularity with the rise of Internet Culture as more and more people identify with and participate on the Web as their primary method of expression and content consumption.”1 Given their prominence in modern entertainment and communication, memes undoubtedly have cultural importance and should be subject to critique. But what about them can we critique? To answer this question, we must first know what makes a meme. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a meme as “a cultural element or behavioural trait whose transmission and consequent persistence in a population, although occurring by non-genetic means (esp. imitation), is considered as analogous to the inheritance 1 “About Know Your Meme,” Know Your Meme, accessed December 8, 2013, http://knowyourmeme.com/about. 20 Stance | Volume 7 | April 2014 of a gene.”2 In simpler terms, Know Your Meme describes an internet meme as “a piece of content or an idea that’s passed from person to person, changing and evolving along the way.”3 According to both descriptions, the nature of a meme is organic—it is a cultural process akin to the biological processes that perpetuate life by creating diversity. The key attribute of a meme, then, is the way that its common form is used differently in each reproduction. Each type of internet meme has recurring elements by which it can be recognized. These elements might include a repeated image or character, a common text or speech pattern, an expected action that takes place, a specific graphic layout, or other similar structures of content. Because the formula of a meme is explicit, those familiar with a meme recognize its reproductions by name even more easily than one might recognize the genre of any work of art, film, or literature. Thus, the savvy viewer already understands the way the meaning is meant to be portrayed. The form provides the context for the jokes or observations that each individual meme is making with the content that is not already prescribed by the form, including any breaks from the expected form. Over time, these individual changes become part of the general form of the meme, as new versions of a meme are inevitably made with the old versions in mind. In this way, memes maintain an awareness of their own history; they bear the stamp of their genealogy in each particular creation. Let us look at an example. An internet meme that has recently been popular is referred to as “Doge,” which is, according to Know Your Meme, “a slang term for ‘dog’ that is primarily associated with pictures of Shiba Inus (nicknamed ‘Shibe’) and internal monologue captions.”4 Typically, a manipulated photo of a Shiba Inu will include text in the Comic Sans font scattered across the image, with formulaic words such as “wow,” “much,” “such,” and “so” paired with words, occasionally misspelled, that are related to what is happening in the image. Part of the humor is derived from the cuteness or oddness of the dog’s expression and imagining the pronunciations of the words. The text is often implied to represent what the “doge” is thinking. To make one’s own version of a “doge,” one would begin by taking an image of a 2 Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “meme,” accessed November 20, 2013, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/239909. 3 “About Know Your Meme.” 4 “Doge,” Know Your Meme, accessed February 9, 2014, http:// knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge. Nicholas Brown, “A Defense of Form” 21 dog and similarly captioning it by following these rules. There are then many things one might choose to do to make this “doge” different than the normal instance of the meme, such as how one manipulates the image of the “doge,” what setting it is placed in, and what kinds of words are chosen to fill in the captions. This example might already have one wondering: what is the point of an internet meme? Some might suggest that memes are a low form of art or even question if we can refer to them as art at all. They are a logical product of the internet age, successfully propagated because they are instantly understandable, extremely repeatable, and easily sharable. People catch on quickly, become fluent in the rules, and soon feel like a clever member of a community from the comfort of their own homes. On a cultural stage that is democratically accessible to all (at least, to all with internet access), memes appear to be the lowest common denominator, a medium that asks little of both its audience and its creators. Many would argue that this makes them trivial or reduces their meaning. But if we want to remain critical towards meme culture, we should neither write off memes as harmless entertainment nor approach them with the instinctive resistance we often have toward popular culture. We first need to have a good argument as to what about them can have value or be problematic. This task is not specific to memes, of course, but I believe that internet memes have an explicit awareness of their own forms that makes them unique. This awareness, I will argue, actually gives them the potential to have great expressive value, a value that can easily be overlooked by a deconstructive postmodern worldview that asks us to be resistant to forms and their biases. Because memes use a repeated form as a means for expression, I find them to be reminiscent of the account of ritual action in Confucianism as described in The Analects of Confucius.5 I will use the ideas of this tradition to examine how the familiarity of a repeatable form can be used positively and creatively, which in turn will provide a standard by which we can productively critique memes and other popular culture trends. At first, Confucianism sounds nothing like internet memes. Confucianism is an ancient Chinese philosophical system that seeks to make virtues and ethics into an achievable practice. It is a methodology for cultivating an ideal communal existence and passing 5 Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr., trans., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999). 22 Stance | Volume 7 | April 2014 it down to others. Internet memes, on the other hand, are images or other media files that require little practice or technical skill to make, and they rarely aspire to do more than entertain. A “doge” is not likely to have a significant impact on one’s ethical approach to the world. Despite the dissimilarity, the two concepts share common traits in their methods of expression. In the Analects, li or “ritual propriety” is what most directly provides a blueprint for how one should act in order to achieve the ideal Confucian existence, and it is what I find analogous to the forms of memes.6 In short, li is the ritual tradition that guides proper actions and interactions in social circumstances. Though the norms of li during Confucius’s time are not described in detail in the Analects, the purpose of adhering to li is frequently discussed. It is this purpose that will give us a way to articulate the potential value of cultural objects such as internet memes. In Confucianism, li serves as a vehicle for positive personal transformation because it improves interpersonal expression. To explain this interpretation of li, we must first discuss what the self is to Confucianism. According to Tu Weiming, Confucian thought believes that personhood cannot be realized in isolation from others because “human beings come into existence through symbolic interchange.”7 It is the expressing and sharing of meaning in a communal setting that creates the individual in any sense that can be considered human, given that a reflective self-awareness cannot develop without relating to other perspectives. Subsequently, Confucianism wishes to create effective relational beings. This does not simply mean that a person is able to communicate with others, but that all relationships are understood not to the extent that they are useful for personal gain but to the extent that other people have their own perspectives as well. To successfully be a person is to be attentive to other people, a mode of being that is best represented by the concept of ren. Ren is often translated as “benevolence,”8 but, as Tu notes, it is perhaps more meaningful for Confucian thought when it is considered as “co-humanity.”9 |
| Starting Page | 19 |
| Ending Page | 27 |
| Page Count | 9 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.5840/stance201472 |
| Volume Number | 7 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.bsu.edu/libraries/beneficencepress/stance/2014_spring/02Brown19-27.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.5840/stance201472 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
