A Brief Over Analyzation of the Meme
The Meme is defined as (Dictionary.com)
a. a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.
b. a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the Internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way.
Memes have easily become a token symbol of the current social media movement. They are ways for different individuals and groups to connect for a moment through a simple image paired with the perfect relatable statement. Each meme has target audience and predetermined meaning.
The art form a meme involves the use of semiotics.
In this meme staring Drake in his 2015 Hotline Bling music video, Drake caught in the midst of a dance move that is taken out of context to be now portrayed as someone regretting their dietary and financial choices. To break it down, in terms of semiotics this image could be easily understood on a basic level by a mass group without the context of knowing who Drake is or where the still came from. There is however a cultural reference to knowing who this Canadian rapper is and that this moment was captured from such an iconic video. This meme’s connotative and denotative meanings are the same do to its ability to speak to a large audience.
Similarly in the above meme the viewer doesn’t need any context to understand the intended meaning other then the prier experience of being too impatient to wait for your left overs to cool. In other cases however the consumer of the meme needs intertextual knowledge to fully appetite the wit of the meme’s curator such as the below image.
In this meme Drake is now stopped by a cop and then proceeds to explain that the most violent weapon is love. For this images full denotative meaning to be understood by the viewer is that they had the prier knowledge of knowing that Drake is known for his emotionally charged raps where girls have done him wrong in the past. Without this insight people draw their own cognitive conclusion to what the image is truly trying to express.
Speaking of meme’s if your a history buff who also loves a good meme I recommend following #memehistory where current meme’s and are put into the context of historical events.
