MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

The term “meme” was first coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book “The Selfish Gene,” in which he defined memes as behaviors, ideas, styles or usages that reproduce, evolve, and mutate through cultural imitation; Dawkins pulls the word “meme” from the Greek ‘mimeme’ meaning ‘imitation,’ and claims these “memes” behave similarly to genes, but on a cultural level. Of course, the particular brand of meme that we are most familiar with is the internet meme – the (usually humorous) image or “viral video” that has some specific phrase or linguistic form associated with it, and which is repeated in a variety of contexts, usually with the goal of being humorously relatable. There are “classic memes” like Bad Luck Brian or Pepe, “recycled memes” that have “died” and “come back,” and “new memes” that are constantly being circulated, some dying out quickly, others becoming “classic memes” over time. These memes constantly cross-reference each other, and most memes have such layered referential humor that they require an extensive knowledge of memes not only in order to be funny, but to make sense at all. Surprisingly, a fair number of these memes utilize medieval illumination for their humorous references, usually getting the viewer to identify with the somewhat bizarre “mood” being expressed by the medieval figure (who is, in typical medieval fashion, either smiling while being stabbed in the head or playing a trumpet out their ass). There is a certain exclusivity and culture of gnosticism imbedded in memes. This paper will analyze the “medievalism” of meme culture, first by examining possible medieval equivalences to meme culture (namely Greek myths and hagiographies) and then by examining contemporary memes which re-contextualize medieval illumination and marginalia. Ultimately, stripping medieval images of their context problematizes modern and medieval ideas of truthiness, referentiality, authority, and experience.