The radical elegance of memes for hard-to-describe feelings
Meme creators are just modern-day collage artists.
These 8 words drive modern-day friendships: Did you see the meme I sent you? Online communities with millions of people bond over repurposed images with new captions. The 5–10 seconds of a co-worker interpreting an image, gif, or video of a meme precedes a shared chuckle. Big brands are now leveraging memes for virality and reach.
Underneath the informal tones of memes, there’s a level of sophistication and elegance to how hard-to-describe emotions are communicated. How are memes shaping the way we communicate and process information? What do their spinoff narratives say about current times?
If we boil it down, memes are just modern-day collages that use similar tactics as contemporary collage-artists like German Dada artist Hannah Höch.
How are memes and photo collages similar?
Memes often use the iconic Impact typeface in all caps with a thin black outline (Vox did a deep-dive on the origin of this “de facto font”). They are widely circulated on the Internet that often have imagery or components found in mainstream media. Whether the inside joke or understanding is within college students or any person living through a pandemic, the niche of people who can join in is limitless.
More recently, we’ve seen Coronavirus memes that have spread important public health recommendations with internet humor. The Wash Your Lyrics website mashes up the lyrics of your favorite song to a handwashing infographic detailing the appropriate time length.
The rapid virality of internet meme culture was shown after the 2020 Vice President Debates. The infamous fly that landed on Mike Pence’s head led to the creation of a meme account @MichealsFly in less than an hour after the debate ended. Joe Biden’s Presidential campaign store jumped on this bandwagon and immediately started to sell fly swatters as merch.
Whether it’s memes of Kim Kardashian’s all-black silhouette at the 2021 Met Gala or a Facebook group with millions bonding over Zoom memes, there are spin-off narratives being created. Odd mash-ups or collaborations ditch the original source and instead capture a punchy-relateable feeling.
Hannah Höch‘s photo montages from mainstream imagery
In parallel to modern-day Internet memes, German Dada artist Hannah Höch used photographs from the everyday world to create photo montages that became controversial commentary.
The photographs selected by Höch have a backstory of where it was originally printed, distributed, or captured — each individual photo that Höch cut out could stand alone as its own narrative. However, when she intentionally decides the placement of each of these pictures they collectively create a new story together.
The discourse these photo montages provoked was often time associated with the post-World War I in Germany where the “New Woman” of the 20th-century was being more of a concept. The Berlin Dada movement was focused on making sense of society by criticizing the system itself.
By using art to critique society, the role of artist and photographer evolved to become more freeform in which it wasn’t so much about the craftsmanship or traditional techniques but instead utilizing art as an instrument to be useful for greater change.
Breaking down Hannah Höch’s photo collages
Höch’s 1919 photo collage Bourgeois Wedding Couple captures female and male characters with distorted and exaggerated features. She cut existing photographs and pasted them on top of one another. This act of cutting and pasting work that she had no part in photographing is in itself a critique of the prestige or exclusiveness that exists in art.
This photo montage overall creates a mechanical and rigid depiction using the various photographs in order to critic the absurd obsession over materialism within marriages.
The identities of both the man and woman are concealed which is overridden by the cutout knee-high boots and big fashionable hat. Further suggesting that ads and messages rooted in these consumer goods are washing away individualism and making everyone a carbon-copy of the lifestyle that is being pitched. The accentuated characteristics of the women with their legs being replaced with a new set of disproportionate legs also critics the sexist standards that are being conveyed in these consumer-driven initiatives.
The radical and accessible qualities of Internet memes
In Internet culture, the power is in the number of retweets, shares, and likes. What motivates someone to DM a meme is a shared unexplainable sense of relatability where one feels seen or heard.
Often by the third time I’m asked how my day is going I wish I could ditch words and let the memes do the talking on my behalf. It’s only then do I recognize just how eloquent they are to capture the essence of my hard-to-describe feelings. Memes with their magical flurry of images and sometimes text and sound reveal just how limiting words are. It gives us a space to reclaim how we truly feel and critique the original sources.
Future generations will need to take two steps back to grasp at large the collective complex contexts surrounding individual memes. Höch’s radical and rebellious application of photomontages paved the way for Internet communities to use memes as a way to create new stories and explanations for themselves.
Why does that one particular meme make you grin so hard? It just does.