You’ve Heard of Dada, Now Get Ready for Memes
An analysis of a tumblr post I made for a class
Internet meme culture is incredibly diverse and varied. A common thread throughout is the use of the absurd. Many memes will have a punchline that seemingly has nothing to do with the rest of the joke. The main consumers and creators of memes tend to be millennials, who have grown frustrated and disillusioned with the world they live in. Their sentiments bear a striking resemblance to the sentiments people felt in the wake of World War One. Their world had descended into senseless violence and hopelessness. In response, the Dadaism art movement came into fruition. Dadaism’s main theme was that of nonsense and absurdism. The authors of the post provide strong evidence and comparisons to highlight the similarities between the Dadaism art movement of the early 20th century and modern day internet meme culture.
The blog post being analysed compares the current meme environment online to the Dadaism art movement of the early twentieth century. The original poster, or OP, illustrates this point by briefly explaining the origins of the original Dadaism movement. They describe how, in the wake of the first world war, people felt they lived in a world that no longer made sense, where “conventional logic led to the senselessness of a world war”. In response to the war and the environment that led to it, they made strange anti-art that defied “the conventions that brought about that atrocity in the first place” (inrealityadream, 2016). The OP compares this environment of a world that no longer made sense to the social and political environment millennials grew up and are now living in. They use memes and shitposting to “vent some of the frustration and hopelessness and dissatisfaction” they feel in the modern world. They’ve grown up in a near-constant state of war, lived through a recession caused by a wealthy few who faced little to no consequences for their actions, and are frequently called lazy and entitled by the preceding generations who caused most of the problems they face today (inrealityadream, 2016). The internet meme culture they’ve cultivated uses the absurd and nonsense to cope with this world.
In the wake of World War One, people in Europe found their world plagued by senseless violence and the atrocities of war. In response to this and the factors that led up to the war, artists started making art that defied the conventions of the time. This art became known as Dada or Dadaism. It became a form of protest against and a critique of the establishment and nationalist rhetoric. Raoul Hausmann’s “The Spirit of Our Time” sculpture was a complex metaphor to illustrate the government’s inability to make changes necessary to create a better post-war Germany. The wooden head is limited in its functionality to what is attached to it; take all that away and it is just a block of wood.
Meme culture, and Tumblr meme culture in particular, bears striking similarities to the various Dada art movements. The use of absurd and surreal humor permeates virtually every level and is the main form memes will take. Outside observers often time have trouble understanding internet memes as they have trouble coming to terms with the fact that some memes have no meaning and there is nothing to understand. The only reason using “gun” as a punchline is funny is because it is unexpected. It replaces the usually expected punchline and is slightly jarring. The abrupt and random change to an otherwise normal and well known phrase or joke is what makes it funny. It challenges conventional thinking the same way Dada art did in the past. Early Dada artists did this in response, sometimes as a protest, to the establishment who’s conventional practises led to a World War. Memes do so now in reaction to various events and truths coming to light that create a world where the establishment is almost overwhelmingly corrupt and untrustworthy.
The blog post being discussed does an excellent job of bringing to light the similarities between memes and Dada art. The OP provides a brief yet solid explanation of what Dada art is and its origins before they launch into comparing it to today’s memes. The examples provided illustrate and support their claim very well. One strong example they discuss is comparing the Dada sculpture of a clothing iron with tacks attached to the bottom (Figure 3), rendering it useless, to bath bomb posts that involved throwing technology into a full bath (Figure 4), rendering the technology useless.
The post makes a clear comparison between memes and Dada art and provides strong examples to support this claim. The world that led to the Dada art movement is disturbingly similar to the world today. The establishment and those in power are corrupt and the people who suffer from this corruption feel powerless to do anything. So they create nonsense that can be surprisingly effective at giving people a voice that will not be silenced. At first glance, Dada art and memes may seem silly and devoid of substance, which they may be. But that could very well be the point.
