memes and fan art

The first meme I like- kind of. The creator has chosen shots of the characters' expressions that are interesting and full of potential interpretation. It really wants to be funny, but the ambiguous context would lead someone unfamiliar with Pride and Prejudice to believe that the Bennet women harbor some secret in the novel that the meme is playing off of. In that sense, it would be esoteric for those viewers, likely giving them an idea that the meme might be funny if they knew what was actually going on in the scene. I mean, if you don't know how something is deviating from the original, then it's difficult to "get the joke" or feel confident that you understand the intention. For those who ARE familiar with P and P, they know immediately that the reference to a secret isn't related to a real theme in the book, and that the creator has just inserted dialogue that is only clever (in my opinion) because it matches the shots and expressions well. I couldn't really say what the creator of the meme had in mind as far as intention goes, but here's my semi-educated guess: Because the Bennet family really does not have a lot of REAL problems ("oh no! we aren't the richest or most popular gentle people in the neighborhood, and we only have a few servants! oh no! my daughters aren't all getting married right away! ...oh wait, yes they are... oh no! lady catherine is mad at me and we had an argument... oh no! my younger sister is a tramp and had sex before marriage, we are all RUINED!!"), it is intriguing to position the Bennet women as harboring a more dramatic "secret". Plus, the first and last shots of Mrs. Bennet and then Lizzy ARE pretty awesome, and just begging for a 'voice-over'. The "you bitch" line makes me particularly happy, however, because it is in line with Lizzy's actual character and spunky personality (although she would probably have said, "you silly girl").

The Willy Wonka meme really only requires the knowledge that some while ago, somebody wrote some "classic" book that people have made movies about and that apparently makes some people feel special for having read it. The condescension is clear. The Spider Man meme is purely to brown-nose.

In the fan art.... well, let's see. The formatting reminds me of my mormon-girl days, and of those mormon ads my stepmother would hang in my bedroom for me that contained motivational and righteous messages. I'm not sure where the basic template/concept originated, but it has obviously been around a while and is very recognizable: select a picture on any topic from the internet, scanned from a photo-album pic, or anywhere, add a little text if the picture alone is insufficient, and then slap it with an afterthought title and subtitle that accurately sum up the creator's intent. In the above fan art, we have Mr. Darcy in his famous scene of painstakingly confessing his overwhelming love for Elizabeth... when he says, "In vain I have struggled it will not do, my feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you," he essentially IS saying, "I want to press you up against the wall...." The feeling remains the same, but we have crossed cultures here in the mode of expression, and I find it delightful. Though, delightful as I find it to be, it's not amazing. You can use a picture of anything and come up with something clever to say about it, or find a way to mix it aesthetically or otherwise with some opposing or related cultural concept. And as far as lay-out goes, even I could make something like this. Center the picture into a frame, insert a text box, title and subtitle, and you're done. The familiarity of this style of fan art within our culture propels its meaning after that. This style is a "passing whim and fancy" of fan art culture. I liked Manovich's example of DJs: they don't technically create something from scratch, rather, they compile and mix existing elements. Granted, what they create is "unique" in the sense that it is their version, and certain DJs are more popular because of their unique style of arrangement that more audiences appreciate. Such methods of selection and combination support both the realist and romantic ideals of artistic creation. If everyone in our class has a personalized screensaver on their computers, we are all "unique" to some extent. Then again, we all have "unique" screensavers on our computers, so really, we're not that unique at all.

P.S. I love how much this chapter had me thinking about "identity".