One of the earliest
forms of entertainment to spread across the internet was humor (Kuipers, 2006).
The features of the internet turned the spread of content into a visible
process, within it humorous user generated content as a whole, and internet
memes in particular (Shifman, 2011). Based on Shifman’s (2011) categories of
humor, I can identify the sampled memes as related to two groups – the first,
the ‘Incongruent’ group of memes, revels memes that feature “an unexpected
cognitive encounter between two
incongruent elements” (Shifman, 2011). For example, The “Hanukkah
and Santa” meme, in which Santa
Claus mistakenly slides down the chimney of a Jewish family kindling the
Hanukkah Menorah. The encounter of the two religious rituals creates a comic
effect, but at the same time reinforces the implementation of religious
rituals. The Jewish characters in the meme are portrayed as religious – the
father is wearing a black suit and a black hat, identified with Haredi Judaism,
he has long sidelocks and a beard. The
mother and the daughter wear pious cloths: long skirts and long-sleeved shirt;
and the young boy wear a kippah. On their table there are dreidels and
traditional Hanukkah foods
including potato pancakes and jam-filled doughnuts. On the mantel there are
candlesticks used for the lighting of Shabbat candles. This meme
simultaneously creates a comic message and a religious reinforcement of
normative religious rituals.
The
second category of memes found in the sample is the “superior” memes, featuring
unintentionally funny message. The meme of Adele is one example, when her facial
expression coupled with the typo of the “Ad Lo Yada” (Until one no longer
knows) creates a new meaning in Hebrew – “Adele no longer knows” referring to
one of Purim’s tradition of drinking wine in order to keep with the jovial nature
of the Purim feast.
A
third type of meme, not included in Shifman’s (2011) categorization was found
in my sample. This is a meme that features Disney’s Aladdin character, and can
be recognized as ethnic or racist humor. This kind of humor employs race
stereotypes, as can be seen in said meme, published during Passover. In this meme, Aladdin eats bread (which is forbidden during
Passoverfor European Ashkenazi Jews) and the written text states – “thank god
for making me Yemeni in Passover”. This meme can be interpreted as an attitude
toward the Ashkenazi perception of the lightly religious demands employed on
oriental Jews, among them the Yemeni Jews. This meme’s humor labels the Yemeni
Jews (as an indicator of all oriental Jews) as religiously inferior, and the
Ashkenazi Jews as more religiously devoted. This kind of religious humor can
rhetorically support racist conceptions of ‘truth’ (Weaver, 2011) especially in
the ethnically torn Israeli society. In my last blog post I have suggested that
function as a tool for reinforcing religious acts and creating clear religious
boundaries of the community. The example of the Yemeni meme demonstrates this
conclusion but also adds another cultural layer of cultural-ethnic-religious
boundaries maintenance.
Case
study question:
Based
on Jenkins’s description of convergence culture and participatory culture,
Shifman’s representation of the internet as a postmodern field of
representation and Amerman’s definition of lived religion as highly individual,
self-authorized practice, I would like to focus my case study on the question:
What
are the features of the Jewish internet meme, and how do these features
represent the postmodern nature of online participation?
Bibliography:
Kuipers,
G. (2006). The social construction of digital danger: debating, defusing and
inflating the moral dangers of online humor and pornography in the Netherlands
and the United States. New Media and Society, 8, (3), 379-400.
Shifman,
L. (2011). An Anatomy of a YouTube Meme. New Media and Society, 14,
(2), 187-203.
Weaver,
S. (2011). Jokes, rhetoric and embodied racism: a rhetorical discourse of
racist jokes on the internet. Ethnicities, 11, (4), 413-435.
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