I’m Patti, a freshman majoring in biochemistry. Growing up, I was dead set on becoming a paleontologist, although now I’m not exactly sure what I’d like to do. I took an urban ecology class my junior year of high school and I think it awakened something in me. The well-being of the environment is something that’s always been important to me, but my urban ecology class made me consider not just how large corporations harm the environment, but how urban cities harm the environment as well (and how we suffer from urban expansion, as, naturally, we’re part of the environment). From that point forward, I think I managed to turn every research paper I had to write for other classes into criticism of urban expansion and the importance of reintroducing walkable cities into our environment. Gentrification is another issue I'm very passionate about. I’ve never really had much interest in visual art (in fact, the last art class I took was in eighth grade), but I have been playing the drums for a couple years now, and music is a very important aspect of my life. One of my favorite songs is “Prison Song,” by System Of A Down, a song criticizing the corruption of our prison system in America, and a lot of my other favorite songs tend to have similar vibes. I really value the role music can play in political activism.
Understanding Patriarchy:
“Because they do not have an experiential reality to challenge false fantasies of gender roles, women in such households are far more likely to idealize the patriarchal male role and patriarchal men than are women who live with patriarchal men every day.”
I’ve seen this phenomenon first-hand. My grandmother was married to her husband for forty something years and was forced into the idea of womanhood my grandfather had for her, despite her desire to be more than just his wife. She gave up art when she got married, and she got used to her needs being second to her husband’s. When he passed away, she felt like she had been freed. In recent years, she has become aware of and acknowledges the privilege that men have in our society and the harmful roles that are thrust upon men and women. However, my aunt, my grandmother’s sister, has a very different perspective on gender roles. She never got married, and instead finds herself trapped in miserable relationships every couple years. She truly believes that her life is meaningless if there isn’t a man in her life to serve. Her current boyfriend is a disgusting man who continuously ignores her wishes and does whatever he wants. Yet, still, she is unequivocally loyal to him. Moreover, her son is in his thirties yet she still treats him like a baby; she cuts his fruit for him when he asks, he makes him food even when she’s overwhelmed with orders in the kitchen of her son’s restaurant, and he leaves her to work at the restaurant all alone quite frequently if there’s a wrestling match or sports game he’s particularly interested in watching. To juxtapose, my father, raised by my grandmother, takes care of my grandmother when she’s sick and takes her to all her doctor’s appointments. My aunt is extremely jealous of my grandmother’s relationship with her son, but she doesn’t realize that her own son treats her the way he does because she taught him that, as a man, he has every right to shove all his responsibilities onto the women in his life. Now, because of my aunt’s obedience to the patriarchy, she’s miserable, and the men in her life are incompetent on their own. Of course, it’s not her fault that the men in her life take advantage of her, but her enabling of their actions, and therefore the upholding of patriarchal standards, certainly haven’t helped her cause.
“Passive male absorption of sexist ideology enables men to falsely interpret this disturbed behavior positively. As long as men are brainwashed to equate violent domination and abuse of women with privilege, they will have no understanding of the damage done to themselves or to others, and no motivation to change.”
It’s men’s ignorance of the way in which our society oppresses the spirit of every American, that results in the denial of the issue as a whole. I feel like a lot of men don’t have a name to put to the feeling, so they opt for blaming women for their issues and even go as far as to claim that men are an oppressed gender and more so than women. Ultimately, these issues will be near impossible to resolve without every person taking a deep look inward and questioning the role they’re made to play in our society. The patriarchy benefits from the ignorance of not only men, but everyone.
What Memes Owe to Art History:
“Through humor, memes incite a collective reaction to everyday life as well as reveling in it, in a format no less playful than it is political, decoding the murky structural screw-ups, paradoxes, and hypocrisies of our current political climate."
In a sense, memes are like a group project. They’re not the work of one specific artist, but built on the reactions of the collective.
“It isn’t so much about visuals, but instead digs deep into the cultural architecture of memes and their political power as a networked critical resistance, where their abilities to incite and inspire, to problematize and be problematic in equal turn, offer a mirror image of our volatile present as much as their avant-garde heritage."
The imagery accompanying memes is never very complex, and often the same formats and photos are used over and over again, yet the message is still received. It goes back to the accessibility of memes. Because memes are so simple to understand, the messages they’re trying to send are easily understood by the viewer, giving easily digestible commentary on often complex topics.
Memes Are Our Generation's Protest Art:
“ The ability for the meme to empower and push back can be really powerful. They’re definitely sites of resistance against perceptions of abuse of power. They spread so quickly and evolve and transform, and it’s hard to shut them down in the way other forms of communicative protest can be silenced.’"
I think the accessibility of memes is a little bit of a double-edged sword. Because memes are so easily accessible and spread so quickly, both conspiracies and important information that may not be accessible because of suppression or whatever reason, are spread rapidly. It becomes harder to distinguish fact from delusion, especially because the nature of memes encourages viewers to immediately consume the message behind the meme without doing much thinking.
“Memes can spread far more quickly than the songs or art projects of previous generations, and there’s such a low barrier to entry that anyone can make them; they can go viral in a matter of minutes."
As the quote states, the simplicity of memes means that anyone can make one. This allows for people to create something reflecting their values and opinions when they may not have had any other avenue for creation. It’s also one of the most accessible art forms under capitalism because it doesn’t require the time and expenses that other art forms require (capitalism limits the amount of free time people are allowed to have to engage in hobbies and experience emotional fulfillment).
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