Week 10 - Putting together the pieces

Revised RQ: How do memes regarding American politicians and sexual assault suggest demeaning or dismissive behaviors towards women?

The upcoming research will examine how memes have been used in American society to address an overall dismissive and demeaning behavior from many american politicians and celebrities towards women in regards to sexual assault. Far too often we, as citizens, see a complete ignorance and disrespectful behaviors from those with power in our society who simply dismiss the lived experience of sexual assault survivors. It is imperative that action is taken to cease this behavior, and memes have been one such anonymous way to express dissent against these powerful figures. This research will use Shifman's (2013) research on memes in order to develop appropriate methodology moving forward. While types of humor were initially considered in reviewing my sample, I decided that I could not determine intent of the creator, or why it may be humorous to others. Instead, I will be using Shifman's (2013) arguments of Memetic Success to breakdown the memes.

One of the most important features of Shifman's memetic success is positivity or humor. I argue that they are not likely to be re-sharing not on the content being positive, but rather a sense of ally-ship through support of a meme that casts the perpetrator in a bad light. I think that this will be largely involved within my study, particularly with Trump being a main player in this sample. However, he is such a divisive figure (as are the other men featured in the sample), that I believe that another of her traits, provoking "high-arousal" emotions, will be equally as dominant (Shifman 2014, p.75). We can see how some horrible actions such as sexual assault present "crimes...so outrageous, so shocking, and so extrememe that remaining indifferent...almost impossible: (Shifman 2013, p.77). I want to examine particularly the events surrounding each of the meme's focus, and explain how they are playing on high tensions regarding figures, and how that hot topic fuels their success. Other features such as packaging and repetitiveness of other memes will be considered on individual basis, but do not appear to be as common at first glance.



Fig.1


Fig. 2


These two particular examples from my sample can show offer some important insight into my research. Figure one begins with a smug smile from Donald Trump, and text that parodies the popular "Most interesting man in the world" advertisements from Dos Equis beer. The text mentions his complete transparency for his unacceptable treatments of women, and how he seems to be more than happy to talk openly about his opinions. I suggest that posting and re-sharing this meme in this highly charged political climate exemplifies how people wish to share negative images of trump in an act of political activism. As Trump may believe he rules Twitter, the internet has engaged in a war of sorts of political statements through memes. Furthermore I think simply Trump or sexual assault are such hot topics at the moment in American media and society that either one of the two offers substantive success for a meme, let alone both. We can further see in Figure 2 that there is a notion that this issue of dismissive nature towards women, or what can be simply deemed immoral behavior, has a long standing in American politics. By using three popular (in notoriety) presidents, this memes plays on many years of pent up political sentiment that Shifman would classify as high-arousal emotions. I believe this too shows some ally-ship to modern causes such as #metoo where entire systems of opression are being challenged rather than a single person.
This research using political figures is highly charged simply due to the nature of divisive American politics. Although this serves to cause memes to be emotionally charged, extra care will be taken to examine other underlying features the memes present in order to result in the best research conclusions. Long standing American institutions are being challenged daily, and the war is constantly raging in the internet.