Meme-ing

The rhetoric of praise and blame in the digital age

Wired magazine usually surprises me in a good way. I’m not prepared for them to take a shot at current electronic popular culture moves, but here we are.

In a recent article, Wired argues that the recent moves to cast Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a Marvel hero, or meme-ing him otherwise is dangerous. It trivializes him as a person, flattens this real human being’s experience into entertainment, and it is, well, just inappropriate and somehow dangerous.

Kate Knibbs writes:

But politicians aren’t meant to be idolized, even in their finest hours. That was, in fact, the point excerpted from Zelensky’s speech. And there is a difference between admiring a leader’s actions and adulating them like a K-pop star. Believing that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an atrocity and that Zelensky is behaving courageously does not mean that it’s wise to apply the googly-eyed logic of fandom to his actions. In fact, it’s distinctly unwise. Treating Zelensky like a superhero—call it Marvelization—recasts a geopolitical conflict in which real people are really dying into entertainment, into content.

I wonder where this “rule” comes from where a politician is not meant to be idolized. It begs a lot of questions here. But more importantly, it assumes we are idolizing the politician Zelenskyy, not Zelenskyy the man who is – in most people’s opinion in the U.S. I’d say – going well beyond what a politician would do, acting out of synch with typical politician identity and presenting something, well, admirable and noble to us, something that most of us wish we would be able to do but might not be able to do if we were in his position.

What exactly are we to do when we admire someone? What if someone impresses us to the point of embarrassment: I don’t think I could do that even if I knew it was right. I know I’m not alone in thinking at night that if I were in his position, I wonder if I could do what he is doing. Could I make that sacrifice? Could I take on that risk? How much do I really commit to my beliefs?

Such questions are fantastic for exploring what it means to be heroic or admirable. This is not trivialization, but conversation starting. This indicates, in a recognizable language, incredible behavior worth our attention.

Throughout human history we see various figures lionized and compared to literary figures who serve as models for behavior, attitude, or the like. But they are not just models, they are fountains of potential meaning. Comparing Zelenskyy – or meme-ing him into a Captain America image – doesn’t close off possibilities but opens them. What does it mean to act heroically? What’s the comparison here? What’s the feeling, and the thought in the viewer? What is behind the smile of recognition when we view it?

The “memeing” or “Marvelization” of a political figure is just the modern application of what we’ve always done to people who are in leadership roles who do something that is out of character enough to call attention to the gap between “normal” politician behavior and what they are seen doing. It’s tough to call attention to such an obvious “absence,” but that’s what such associations help us do. Look at this unexpected correspondence.

Or better yet, look at this figure that we do not have the words to appreciate in our own terms. I must borrow the words, the images, the meaning from something else. I must grasp for an equivalence, even in fantasy.

It’s incredible for Wired to miss this and call the meme – our pop culture moment – trash in so many words. Also incredibly ignorant to think that entertainment is always preceded by the word “mere,” and never has political import.

The Marvel franchise I don’t really like either, but I can appreciate the direct line between admiration of these fantasy characters and the idea that public figures should attempt to live up to the moral and ethical standards of practice that such figures symbolize. This is such an ancient practice it’s weird to call it historical. We are driven to do this as human beings it seems.

Is it fandom, or out of place hero worship for Walt Whitman to “meme” Abraham Lincoln in “O Captain, My Captain?”

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

This of course is not a meme – it’s one of the best American poems ever written. But the feeling is so similar. Whitman is trying to communicate what Lincoln meant to him and chose a (literal) vehicle to indicate importance and admiration in a way that the reader can appreciate.

The medium wasn’t chosen because it was high-brow, but because it communicated – created thought and feeling in the audience – that would hopefully lean toward admiration and praise. Whitman here is showing through poetry that he wished he could have Lincoln see the crowds of supporters and admirers – the influence – that he had as a leader.

He chose poetry; we’d choose photoshop. The only difference here is some kind of snobbery that Wired, of all outlets, wants to defend. The indication is admiration for someone who we wish more people were like. The method of indicating this – communicating this – should come in the forms that are comfortable and popular in order to indicate and communicate the significance. Popular forms are often debased in their own time, nostalgically fawned over later as high art.

Why do we think memes are trivial? It seems that because they are ours, and in our moment, they are to be mistrusted. They feel flat to us, because they are not seen through a nostalgia for a time when popular culture was something better. But by its nature, pop culture is always of its moment. This doesn’t mean it’s not doing good work.

In addition, the meme indicates the “gap” between our expectations and someone towering above them. We’ve come to expect so little from our politicians and elected figures that it is very difficult to say something really meaningful when they go well beyond our ruined expectations.

Yelenskyy, to most people in the democratic world, represents an elected official who is behaving in heroic ways. These are ways that escape normal conversational modes of making sense. This feeling has to be expressed – but conventional ways don’t show it. You could say that someone is an “awesome” leader or “incredibly brave” but there’s no indication of the extreme nature of the gap there to cover in that articulation. But making Captain America memes out of Zelenskyy conveys that he’s not just a hero or behaving heroically – he is an extreme, beyond belief hero. He’s beyond anything we could expect. The ridiculous nature of the meme is what it is trying to communicate: This man, what he is doing, is as believable as the recognizable superhero.

Here’s another “meme,” this time in a poem from Hermann Melville about John Brown. Was Hermann Melville guilty of Marvelization – the devaluing of someone making a heroic sacrifice for what they thought was just and right – even though they had little chance of success?

Hidden in the cap

      Is the anguish none can draw;

So your future veils its face,

      Shenandoah!

But the streaming beard is shown

      (Weird John Brown),

The meteor of the war.

Appreciation of Brown as a symbol that cannot be denied, even at the moment of his execution, even if they try to cover his face – the war is coming. There’s no way around the powerful symbolism of John Brown’s visage, which, to Melville is the visage of the horrible war.

This kind of expression is simplistic, but that’s how powerful communication happens. A reduction is not a distillation or removal of meaning. It’s not trivialization. When people meme Zelenskyy – just as when they compose verse about someone vital, someone who sacrificed beyond what anyone expected of them – they are adding to the ability of various audiences to appreciate who they are and what they did.

Appreciating how someone sees a person doing something incredible is not universal. It is adjusted in ways that are made meaningful by the creator for the audience. And that audience might not include you. The audience they try to reach is the one they think matters most. The way they do that, the methods used, and the meanings implied are chosen not to be flat, but to be rich. The mistake Wired makes is thinking that this is a flattening of value when its’ just not made for them to appreciate.

Zelenskyy memes are encouraging us to notice now what’s happening, how he’s acting, and are attempting – in their own weird way, like pop culture always does – to celebrate, praise, and honor actions that might not be fully appreciated in the moment they are happening. They also might not include us, which is the reality of rhetoric, where speakers really want to reach audiences they care about, getting their attention in ways that they think are powerful and meaningful – but just to them.

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