Saturday, March 18, 2006

Torn apart


split
Originally uploaded by on-the-run.

(that’s the picture)

Deeper meming
I was thinking about different genres of memes – remixes, jokes, flash games and so on and wondering what (if anything) lies underneath the varied content. What sort of messages are carried by different memes?

For example
I was keen to post today that my favourite movie this year so far is Capote, my favourite novel is Never Let me Go, my favourite song is this (Regina Spektor) and my favourite exhibition is James Turrell.

And then
It be came clear I was replicating a listing meme – my favourite things – what I’m consuming (my allegiances). Then, in turn, it seems that the listing, ranking and rating meme runs through popular culture. There are any number of TV programmes on ‘Your Top Ten Glamrock Artists’, ‘All time favourite sitcoms’, ‘Best Hollywood Musical’ and of course the whole annual merry-go-round of awards. Top ten fiction paperback, top ten this, and top ten that. And it usually runs on a dream of interactivity/participation. You, the people have your say. But does all this fill a political vacuum created by a saturation of consumerism?

On Wednesday, Caroline Bath’s fascinating seminar explored ideas generated by classroom work on participation with five year olds. I was fascinated by the way she described the ‘almost religious silence’ when it came to voting in one of the classes. It reminded me how seriously we are supposed to take voting - even when we’re voting about the banal which, lets face it, it usually is. The gospel of democracy (the bloody mission of much recent military action) is the mandate to ride roughshod over the objecting minority, the no-voters, the issues that weren’t in the manifesto and so on. So, is the listing-ranking meme just a cloaked ideology of ‘democratic’ consumerism?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Guy :) I don't have anything meaningful to add here about memes but am doing the rounds of blogs today because it has been ages since I did. I know I owe you an email - sorry it has been chaos my end here. The memes I do are more an identity play I think - the one I just did wasn't too fun though because it constructs me in a way that I think makes me look pathetic but when you're tagged, well you just do it to keep the ties between you and the tagger strong - well... I do anyway :) Happy blogging,
A

Guy Merchant said...

Hi anya! I love the 'doing the rounds of blogs' bit - like droppping in on friends in the neighbourhood. Good to hear from you, your comments on the social identity dimension of blogging give it another spin. Thanks for dropping in.

Guy Merchant said...

Hi anya! I love the 'doing the rounds of blogs' bit - like droppping in on friends in the neighbourhood. Good to hear from you, your comments on the social identity dimension of blogging give it another spin. Thanks for dropping in.

Guy Merchant said...

oh bugger, I double posted...and all just to say I meant the social identity dimension of memes and tagging NOT blogging!

Anonymous said...

*laugh* There's an edit button you know. But now you have 5 comments to this post! We must try one day to make a post provocative enough to incite over 17 comments to beat DrJoolz's record.

Anonymous said...

and that was not anonymous, it was from moi!

Anonymous said...

So does that count as one comment or two!!?

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