FUTURE SHOCK: THERE IS NO EXIT
Or the 4 Phases of Understanding Idiocracy
Introduction
The 2020 United States Presidential election was heralded as the most consequential election in a lifetime, with voter turnout reflecting that perception. With over 160 million voters, the importance of the election was understood by parties on either side of the political aisle whose ideologies continue to repel more than ever before. Those who voted against Trump let out a collective, 4-year sigh of relief upon the announcement of Biden’s victory, or rather Trump’s presumptive loss on November 7th, marking an end to an era marred by populist demagoguery, vitriol, and division. However, feelings of relief quickly subsided amongst younger constituents when the realization settled that the Vice President of the administration that gave rise to President Trump would now be assuming his job. Internet memes, not conventional media, served to reflect youth attitudes toward the election and skepticism about the future of the country now in the hands of an ageing institutional centrist politician. The term meme is a vernacular derivative of mimesis or imitation; highly accessible, shareable, and ironic photoshopped images, they reflect cultural attitudes, with the degree of meme diffusion across the internet serving as a proxy for the prominence of particular perspectives. Future Shock: There is No Exit uses viral memes posted by young adults in the anticipation and wake of the 2020 Presidential election to study the cynical, skeptical and facetious youth attitudes regarding politics, and more broadly the future, amid a turbulent transition of power and global pandemic.
PHASE 1: HOPE
Source: Brad Troemel
In the weeks preceding the Presidential election, a parody Joe Biden campaign advertisement by artist Brad Troemel went viral online, garnering over 50,000 shares and hundreds of thousands of likes across Twitter and Instagram. The meme focuses entirely on a smiling Joe Biden, whose broad smile is accentuated by bokeh blurring a tree-filled background. Joe’s happy demeanour and natural context work to convey him as the Democratic party typically presents him; a suburban everyman candidate with a folksy centrist charm. A fun-loving grandfather. His broad smile functions in the same capacity as the outstretched arm of Marcus Aurelius in Bronze statues; to convey him as a benevolent, empathic leader. The low-angle shot is further leveraged to present him in an authoritative, commanding position, or as someone fit to lead the nation. However, he is not menacing. A light radiates from his heart, almost like an entrypoint to heaven. This imagery is important, especially in the context of the American political arena which is deeply rooted in Judaeo-Christian values and appreciation for Christian traditionalism. To Christians, light is inextricably linked to divination and truth, making the light permeating from Joe Biden’s heart invoke a sense of trust and inherent good. These elements work in unison to present Joe as a good-hearted, relatable, and reliable leader. Although the meme was a spoof, it was proliferated by believing Democrats as it was ultimately aligned with the party’s representation of Biden. Of course, the true intent of the imagery subverts that representation, which was how both conservatives and the skeptical youth who also shared the meme widely understood it; rather than a charming ageing statesman with a heart of gold, these audiences viewed him as a mentally and morally defunct institutional candidate whose friendliness was marketed to outweigh his failings otherwise.
PHASE 2: ACTION
Source: @moma.ps5 and @patiasfantasyworld on Instagram.
The day of the election, @patiasfantasyworld posted this meme to their 250,000 followers as anxiety ran amok as voters acted to cast their ballots. The vertical triptych begins with a plain image of a plane deploying bombs with the label “Republicans,” critiquing the warmongering attitudes commonly associated with Republican leaders, like both of the George Bushes. The falling bombs then direct our gaze to the second image, an identical plane deploying bombs adorned with “Black Lives Matter” and LGBTQA+ flags. The parallelism between the first and second panels critiques the pseudo-progressive posturing of the Democratic party relative to the Republicans. Like the decorum on the plane, the Democratic party often dresses itself up as comparatively forward-thinking, although ultimately the behaviour of the party and its leaders commit similar, if not identically atrocious actions as their Republican counterparts. Outside of the superimposed flags on the plane, the images are identical. The second group of bombs directs our gaze to the final image in the triptych, showing the result of the bombs; exploded buildings covered with an American “I Voted” sticker. Throughout early-voting and on the day of election, millions of Americans took to Instagram and Twitter to share images of their “I Voted” pins as testaments to their commitment to their democratic duty. However, the last panel of the triptych appropriates and subverts the meaning of the sticker by superimposing it on the bombed village underneath the Republican and Democrat bombers alike. Rather than a symbol of democratic duty, the meme serves to condemn the complicity of both sides of the political aisle in the destruction wrought by the American military-industrial complex. The message of the visual path traversed across the triptych is clear; whichever political path is chosen, the same atrocities will ultimately remain in different packaging.
PHASE 3: ELATION
Source: @melvinkaminsky and @on_a_downward_spiral on Instagram.
The day Joe Biden was pronounced president-elect, a video of Kamala Harris calling Biden to congratulate him was shared widely on social media. In this combined display of memes shared with over 160,000 users on Instagram, a screenshot of that video depicts Kamala Harris celebrating the victory. The image leverages a symmetrical balance with the images of three women on either side of Kamala; included are BBQ Becky, Permit Patty, Cornerstone Caroline, Svitlana Flom, Golfcart Gail, and Amy Cooper. All of these women went viral themselves for frivolously calling the police on African-Americans for trivial misunderstandings, or worse, nothing at all. Their spatial prominence and symmetrical balance help convey the prevalence of these racially-motivated occurrences and their formalized normalcy in society. Our attention is then drawn downward to a portrait of a clapping Kamala, as if cheering on herself. However, there is a catch; the fragmented portrait is actually composed of African American men Kamala Harris had convicted for minor drug-possession infractions during her tenure as District Attorney of San Francisco. The image is captioned with “GURRRRL TELLEM”, appropriating the congratulatory message shared in the initial viral video and transmuting it to appear as if Kamala is encouraging the women around her. This is employed alongside a filter with high exposure and saturation giving the portrait a dream-like feeling of artificiality that compliments the use of the portrait of Kamala and the six images of the women to subvert the victorious nature of the initial viral video. Rather than cause for celebration, this meme critiques the Biden-Harris win as a symbolic illusion. Instead of a guiding light of progressivism in the hangover of a Trump presidency, Kamala’s past actions have served to show that her administration will likely perpetuate existing social norms and institutions, not revolutionize them.
PHASE 4: REALIZATION
Source: @on_a_downward_spiral on Instagram.
Spongebob Squarepants is an American animated television series that has run since 1999. In its 21 year tenure, it has become a cultural hallmark for its absurdist humour, striking a chord with members of Generation-Z and their parents alike. The meme shared amongst 160,000 Instagrammers shows Sandy the Squirrel toppling a tongue that she believes to be the Alaskan bull worm they are hunting; however, she is actually standing on its tongue, in its mouth. The meme appropriates the context established by the clip from Spongebob to leverage sentiments of nostalgic humour and pathos to accessibly engage both members of Generation-Z and their parents with the critical discourse explicitly outlined in the meme. The meme was posted when Joe Biden was pronounced president-elect, at which point Democrats across the United States were taking to the streets in celebration of their historic victory. However, this meme served to challenge the complacency signalled by such a widespread, celebratory reaction in a manner both direct and meta. In the meme, Sandy topples the tongue which resembles a phallus, a common psychoanalytic symbol of male generative power. Sandy has conquered the phallus-shaped tongue, symbolizing advances in contemporary gender equity and overarching social progress. Conversely, Spongebob hides behind a breast-shaped mound, a psychoanalytic symbol of nurturement in youth. Thus, Spongebob (and the creators of the meme itself) represent youth challenging conventional notions of progress in the context of more systemic, institutional issues many young people view as inherently flawed in the military-industrial complex that fuels the United States (the Bull-worm). The meme, therefore, appropriates Spongebob’s cultural prominence and uses psychoanalytic symbolism to engage viewers and communicate a sense of impotence and broader realization; although Trump’s loss marked the sterilization of a cultural malady, it was merely a symptom rather than the underlying cause.
