viz. - Activism

Political (In)action in the Meme Generation?

Sarah G. Sussman — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 21:04:54 +0000

Dawkins playing a midi breath controller in Saatchi video. Image Credit: Saatchi.com

This will be the first post in a three-part series in which I will explore the relationship between memes and civic discourse.

What is an internet meme? Though most young people can instantly recognize a picture of Philosoraptor, Feminist Ryan Gosling, or a Lolcat, few know the history of this ubiquitous term. Nevertheless, show a room full of undergraduates an image of Nyan Cat, and you'll immediately elicit laughter and a sense of camaraderie. In that moment of laughter, however, it seems worth asking: what exactly is bringing consumers of memes together? From UC Davis’s “Pepper Spray Cop Meme,” to China’s “Big Yellow Duck” meme, how are memes shaping their viewer’s and creator’s understanding of activism and history? Is a comical form treated with such levity an effective means of communicating about more serious matters?

The term “meme” was first articulated by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene in order to describe the way some ideas are spread through society in a pattern that is similar to the transmission of genes. At the time of writing The Selfish Gene how could Dawkins have predicted that within a few decades, his words would be used to describe a unique by-product of the digital age, one which has mutated and grown to such an extent that even the proudest luddites are hip to Lolcats? Check out this video of Dawkins for a fun (and highly visual) overview in which Dawkins links his theory of the meme with the other life it has taken on online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GFn-ixX9edg (for more background on the video, click here: : http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/20/new-directors-showcase) In the video he appears bemused, the unwitting but delighted progenitor of a term “hijacked” by internet culture.

Playfully embracing the term’s fluidity he says, “In the hijacked version, mutations are designed, not random. . . In some cases this can take the form of genuinely creative art, but now that I think about it, mightn’t somebody argue that all creative art comes about through something like a mutation in the mind?” These last words echo before a projector displays layered, brightly-colored collage imagery. At one point an owl shoots lazer beams at a cartoon rendering of a purple brain emerging from Dawkin’s head and then he begins playing a riff on an air midi. Hello Pied Piper of the web, here to whisk our generation away to Nyan Cat land. Eventually the screen is left only with the fluorescent hues of spilled oil. Is this a commentary on the enticing but polluted nature of the internet? Dawkins himself said that memes could be “Good ideas, good poems, as well as driveling mantras.” How do we, as consumers of culture, define the value of internet memes? In next week’s post I’ll look at several popular memes in the context of activist movements and large scale catastrophes and ask whether these are “driveling mantras,” rallying cries, or something in between.

For more on memes, check out this interview with Dr. Simone Sessolo on DWRL’s podcast, Zeugma http://dwrlpodcast.libsyn.com/simone-sessolo-interview-mp3

Reading Crowdsourced Justice: The Case of Fitness SF

Laura Thain — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 22:46:37 +0000

Image Credit: Passive Aggressive Notes

Last Friday, the DWRL hosted an RSA webinar featuring Dr. Rita Raley, Associate Professor of English and the University of California Santa Barbara. The webinar, which was broadcast over Google Hangouts thanks to our audio/visual team here in the DWRL, encouraged interactivity via social media and generated a lively discussion. I wanted to follow up on Dr. Raley’s talk about tactical media as speculative practice with an example from this week’s headlines: the “hacking” of a San Francisco based gym’s website by the site designer himself.

Fitness SF contracted Frank Jonen, an independent web developer, to design their website in May of 2012. On February 15, after nine months of non-payment, Jonen took action by re-claiming the website he designed as a means to “out” Fitness SF for non-payment.

His letter alleged, in part, that “Fitness SF preferred to ignore our invoices instead of paying them” and that “[a]s a result [Fitness SF’s] is no longer operational.” Jonen might have left it at that. Instead, his letter issued a call to arms. Under the heading “Do you hear the people sing, who will not be paid again,” Jonen appealed to other freelancing developers, designers, and journalists, saying, “I am also writing this on the behalf of the tens of thousands of freelancers and small businesses out there facing larger corporations who can afford to starve them out. In the movie/visual effects business this is already prevalent. Large studios awarding work to smaller studios or freelancers in the hope they won't stand up to them when it comes to loads and loads of unpaid work.” Finally, in a call to action, Jonen made heavy gestures toward solidarity among “the little guys” of the digital world: “An injury to one is an injury to all of us. We need to make a stand against crooks like this. If you'd like to join us in this fight, cancel your gym memberships, post on their Facebook pages, Tweet about it or even pass this on to a journalist.”

Image Source: Twitter

Hundreds, if not thousands, of users did just that. The story was picked up by several online national news venues, as well as other kinds of digital media. A Passive-Aggressive Notes subscriber, for instance, submitted the letter as an artifact of her own experience.

Simultaneously, Fitness SF crafted their own response via Facebook.

Image source: Fitness SF Facebook page

As the negative press poured in, the page’s moderators could hardly delete comments as fast as they were posted. Rather than angering posters, those sympathetic to Jonen’s plight interpreted the move as Fitness SF’s white flag of surrender. In short, all of Fitness SF’s attempts to defend themselves were ill-received and rhetorically ineffective on the large scale. As a direct result of these ill-advised PR moves, Fitness SF’s Yelp ratings took a nosedive.

Image Source: Google Search for Yelp ratings

And what were commenter’s major grievances? The vast majority of the conversation’s participants expressed disgust at Fitness SF’s inability to handle a simple billing dispute privately and called the gym out for unprofessionalism and image mismanagement.

Image Source: Screen Captures from Facebook

More than one commenter expressed displeasure at the gym’s use of the word “hacker,” interpreting it as a sign of additional ineptitude.

Image Source: Screencaptures from Facebook

The vast majority of Jonen’s supporters aligned their interest with his through the language of commerce, whether or not they themselves openly identified as small-business owners negotiating an increasingly-corporatized world. Although Jonen’s complete letter makes significant gestures toward anti-capitalistic attitudes, his internet audience sanitizes these claims by identifying Fitness SF as a “rule-breaker” rather than an emblem of systemic disadvantage. In short, audiences saw the relationship between corporations and small businesses as characteristic, not a flaw, of modern capitalism, and defended common business practice as the chief arbitrator of such disagreement, rather than the source of it.

In staking such claims, audiences also tended to place their faith in the court of public opinion, rather than a court of law, as the ultimate arbitrator in such a case. The frequency of comments identifying a “public relations” blunder exhibit audience awareness of content manufactured exclusively to manipulate them and a distaste for instances in which corporations unsuccessfully do so. In a strange rhetorical twist, those who participated in the debate often cited Fitness SF’s public airing of grievance as the most egregious event in the conflict, ignoring the fact that it was actually Jonen’s letter that launched the dispute into the public sphere. Commenters sent a distinct message to corporations: “Don’t, as a rule, expose me to or consult me about your private disputes—I am not interested in an ethics of disclosure. But if you do, expect me to disagree with you.” Similarly, audiences were much more like to agree with an individual’s complaint against a faceless corporation when the individual, as Jonen did, unmasks himself. But from such internally inconsistent rhetoric, it seems such audiences can hardly be counted on to take action outside of digital environs; their activism begins and ends in a brief digital moment that claims “going viral” as its chief mode of social change.

Perhaps I might, in closing, examine the digital artifacts this brief flurry of activity leaves behind. The news articles might be permanently linked to the gym as a Google search result, but Facebook comments will either eventually become buried under new material (as Facebook is notoriously difficult to navigate chronologically) or perhaps deleted all together. The longest-standing artifact that testifies to the controversy’s existence is the reviews of the business itself, now permanently tainted by the reduced average the complaint has brought to review pages like Yelp, despite these kinds of comments and ratings being in clear violation of Yelp’s policies against hearsay (“We want to hear about your firsthand consumer experience, not what you heard from your co-worker or significant other. Try to tell your own story without resorting to broad generalizations and conclusory allegations”). It is no coincidence, then, that a site that operates on a logic of consumer empowerment and crowd-sourced value judgments to cloak business promotion in democratic election will probably testify longest of the freelancer’s struggle against corporate America.

Everyone's an Activist, All 99% of Us. Right?

Calliope — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 23:34:59 +0000

Image Credit: Screenshot capture of photograph by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

The photograph above was featured this week in The L.A. Times' coverage of the Occupy Wall Steet movement's one-year anniversary. The caption provided beneath the photo states, "A man wanting to join the Occupy protesters on Monday is told to leave Wall Street." The image gives pause, not because a policeman is pictured confronting a protester, but because the man's ethos seems incongruous with that of the anarchist-inspired OWS movement. My recollection of the "Occupied" zone in downtown Austin last winter calls to mind the image of a different kind of a protester, one who looks as committed to battling the elements as he is to changing the status quo. This unidentified man, however, does not look prepared for the scene of mayhem he is allegedly trying to enter. With a cigarette balanced precariously atop his coffee cup, he looks like he's just popped down from the 20th floor to grab some more uppers. It's amusing (or disheartening, depending on your outlook) to imagine him scrawling "99%>1%" on a scrap of paper before venturing into the mob that separates him from the nearest Starbucks. But this is pure speculation. It's equally likely that the man in the photograph is an overworked reporter, or an analyst who has thousands of dollars of debt from student loans. Perhaps he was walking by the OWS demonstration, got inspired, and decided to join on a whim. Either way, the photographer caught him looking weary, unimpassioned, and in a moment of half-hearted negotiation with the police, which is why this photo provides a useful illustration of the phenomenon known as slacktivism.

Slacktivism (slacker activism) describes a distinctly inactive method of supporting a cause. The steps slacktivists take to achieve their supposed ideals require little effort, cost, or forethought (many are easily performed through social networks' approval systems and news/media sharing functions). Despite this, some have argued that the proper channeling of slactivism can lead to positive social change.

I want to suggest, in a very rough and cursory way, that the OWS man's paper-bag appeal to the 99% is similar to slacktivists' tags and tweets. The encompassing nature of Occupy's slogan--"We are the 99%"--has diluted the definition of an activist, and extended it to include anyone with a sign who wishes (temporarily? disingenuously?) to harness the power of an enormous group. Social media platforms can have the same effect. With the right virtual signage anyone can pose as an activist; anyone can reap the social and commercial benefits of participating in far-reaching online campaigns; and finally, anyone can avoid accountability for actions and purported views by maintaining distance between real and digital identities. (I might be accused of doing that in this very blog post.)

Yet on the other hand, the makeshift, handmade quality of the OWS man's sign marks it as an analog, not a digital, production. It has the appearance of a homeless person's battered highway sign--a text that demands attention because of the dissonance between its sensitive message and crude medium (i.e. cardboard). Thus, the OWS protester can claim a certain ethical connection to his sign that is unavailable to wielders of pre-made placards, like the attendees of the recent Democratic National Convention (below). Visuals from the DNC got me thinking about what it means, and what is argued, when one waves around a sign that is identical to hundreds of others nearby, and that was designed, manufactured and supplied to you by a political organization. In the landscape of a highly visible crowd such as the DNC's, one's voice is essentially reduced to one's sign. A crowd that enthusiastically agrees to broadcast a unified and pre-determined message is one that values a brand of solidarity over the opportunity to air personal sentiments or opinions. Or perhaps it is simply made up of individuals who are used to re-posting and re-tweeting ready-made internet memes and allowing those rhetorical texts to speak for them online.

Image Credit: occupyilluminati.com

In light of the eruption this month of violent demonstrations all over the Arab world, the question of how activism can and should evolve seems all important. I won't outline directions for that evolution here. But I will say that the kind of conviction that has mobilized thousands to take to the streets of Muslim countries, recasts the Occupy Wall Street photo (above), along with the possibility that progressive U.S. activism is becoming more dispersed and mainstream, in a sober light.

TOMS' "One Day Without Shoes" - Awareness, Activism, Advertising?

ebfrye — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 02:45:18 +0000

"One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS via Youtube

Today TOMS shoes conducted its second annual One Day Without Shoes campaign in which anyone (wherever in the privileged world) was encouraged to go without sandals, boots, sneakers, etc. The intention behind the event is to "raise awareness" for what it's like for the millions in less developed countries who daily go without adequate protection for their feet and, as a result, are at risk for serious infections. At the risk of sounding like a cynical jerk, I'm going to raise some questions about how the campaign attracts an audience through compelling visual tools and ultimately how it benefits those for whom it claims to be raising awareness.

From what I've observed by looking at the TOMS website and performing minimal internet searching, the campaign appears to be quite popular with high school and college kids, many of whom, it can be assumed, already wear TOMS shoes. Like other activist branding campaigns, this one predictably makes use of respectable celebrities. A screenshot from the video above shows that Demi Moore was into taking off her shoes:

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS via Youtube

So was Kristen Bell:

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS via Youtube

In addition, the campaign maintains a viable internet presence by encouraging its participants to post videos and photos. Students have been tweeting about the response they've received from administrators and passerby. Curiously, the Twitter feed resembles a composition notebook, perhaps emphasizing that it's acceptable to be distracted from class for such a good cause.

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS website

Similarly, the information that the site provides about its purposes are limited but they use a visual rhetoric that recalls the educational system but emphasizes that this is an alternative to the usual schooling. Also on the website, above some photographs of children playing without shoes (happily, which is odd given TOMS' message), is this blackboard-style equation:

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS website

Is this an education in activism? If so, it's also an education in consumerism. Before the big day, would-be participants were edged toward and rewarded for their participation by such videos as this one that feature fashion bloggers, editors of mainstream magazines, and doe-eyed, hipster dream-girls who give advice on "how to get your toes ready" for the big day. See screenshot and accompanying video below:

Screenshot, "Get Your Toes Ready," TOMS via YouTube

"Get Your Toes Ready," TOMS via YouTube

The video demonstrates the pull of the campaign on other corporations and media entities. In addition to the fashion elite, videos and images of employees at AOL, Google, and Microsoft can be found on the TOMS website. Yet, obviously, the brand that benefits most is TOMS. Now, I certainly don't begrudge anyone a pair of shoes, and, full disclosure, I've owned and worn bare a pair of TOMS myself. But I am struck by how by becoming compelled to buy more TOMS shoes, the "students" are also able to participate in an event that expands the experience of a brand beyond what they usually encounter. TOMS has one-upped the Gap's RED campaign by creating an extended moment of bonding with one's peer group.

Screenshot, "One Day Without Shoes 2011," TOMS website

Because the rhetoric of the campaign provides little information for what its participants should do after they become and make others "aware," I'm inclined to say that participants are not encouraged toward a specific kind of activism but a more definitive aesthetic. Alternative education, attractive celebrities, the relief of comfortable, canvas sneakers after a long walk. This is California dreaming at its best...

"She lived happily on this earth for seven years": Ai Weiwei's Subversive Homages

ebfrye — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:00:46 +0000

Image credit: Screenshot, "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?" Frontline

After last week's posts examining representations of the aftermath of the events in Japan, I was especially taken by moving and controversial images from last night's Frontline piece tonight on Chinese artist Ai Weiwei dealing with the aftermath of the 2008 earthquake that devastated the Sichuan province.

Ai has come under intense scrutiny for speaking out against the Chinese government in recent years, and a studio that took him two years to build was torn down in January. The Frontline documentary by filmmaker Alison Klayman highlights many of his subversive actions and the ways in which he uses new media, particularly Twitter, to reach a broader audience and challenge the boundaries of censorship. Ai has advocated democracy in China and supported 2010 Nobel Prize recepient Liu Xiaobo (New York Times). Liu appears in the piece.

Image credit: Screenshot, pbs.org

Weiwei was particularly critical of the government refusal to take responsibility for what many viewed as flimsy construction of government housing and school buildings in the Sichuan province. After visiting the area and documenting its appearance, Ai was quite stunned by an image of children's backpacks (below):

Image credit: Screenshot, "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?" Frontline

In addition to surveying local survivors to document the number of deceased children and releasing those figures online, Ai a piece that functions as both an homage to the deceased children. The enormous installation covers a significant part of the exterior of the Haus der Kunst in Munich. The backpacks spell out a statement made to Ai by a mother of one of the victims--"She lived happily on this earth for seven years."

Image credit: Screenshot, "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?" Frontline

I don't have an extended analysis to offer for any of these images, but I am struck by the potential of documentary image (and Ai's extensive record-keeping) both as a communicator of pathos and as essential to artistic process. Also worth noting is the ability of the everyday object, particularly in our commodity-driven cultures, to communicate when multiplied and poised in a certain context. Ai is often called the Chinese Andy Warhol, but his multiplication of a mass-produced item, here a backpack, still insists on a human attachment to the mechanically made. Rather than stop at criticizing mass production or inscribing it glamorous irony, Ai Weiwei insists on its dual ability to invoke destruction on a grand scale and evoke, without fully representing, the particular.

The African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists

noelradley — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:16:27 +0000

"Revolutionary" By Wadsworth Jarrell Via Howard University

What does 1960s black nationalist art say to us today? TVLand's recent documentary on the Chicago-based Afri-COBRA movement suggests a few major takeaways. One is that images created for a community--by a community--inspire revolution. But I'd like to draw out a second theme voiced by former Afri-COBRA members who argue in a variety of ways that change starts with mind, and not the body.

"Wall of Respect" 1967 Via University of Chicago

The mural Wall of Respect was the beginning of Afri-COBRA activitism. The collaboration was meant to promote African-American heroes and artists while avoiding the physical clash that characterized racial rioting in 1960s Chicago. This begins the film's organization of artistic form (mind) apart from public protest (body). Artists created the positive imagery to change minds and insisted they were transforming their own minds. "We were confrontational in the sense that we were confronting ourselves and our people. We weren't confronting anybody else," said Afri-COBRA artist Napolean Jones Henderson. "We were challenging ourselves to see ourselves as we are."

The film continues a visual divide between politics and aesthetics. Historical marches, speeches, and sit-ins from 1950s America (in grainy black-and-white) appear less vibrant, if only in a visual sense. Against footage from the civil rights movement, Afri-COBRA paintings glow with rich "cool aid" colors and celebratory imagery. Afri-COBRA was a continuation and not a critique of civil rights, but the sets of images do register distinctly: domestic American civic imagery versus Africanist imagery, 1950s versus 1960s, documentary film versus imaginative new iconographies, African-Americans struggling to be seen at all versus African-Americans proactively setting out how they will be seen, often with non-Western forms or motifs.

Screenshot of JET Cover Via Googlebooks

Afri-COBRA art often plays up its own rejection of literal revolution, such as the bullet motif. The 1971 JET cover features one of Jet Jarrell's fashion pieces, a bullet belt. (The mixed media painting "Revolutionary" incorporates real bullets.) In the Jet cover, the model wears the bullets and uses a butcher knife, menancing signals that she has the means defend herself physically. But that's only the first step in the representation here. The idealized 1960s domestic setting, the assured posture of the female figure and her knowing stare communicate that force won't be necessary. Change is inevitable, it says to JET readers, and is happening from within. You don't have to believe in the mind/body split to buy Afri-COBRA project, for the art movement was never truly disembodied. The rhetoric of mind, rather, was about Afri-COBRA members creating life on their terms, avoiding socially proscribed behaviors and ways-of-seeing.

Meat is Couture? - Lady Gaga's Meaty Message

Cate Blouke — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 06:38:12 +0000

Image Credit: Lady Gaga at the VMAs, Designer Franc Fernandez

I realize that I may be a bit behind the times to be addressing (ha!) Lady Gaga's fashion stunt of last fall, but meat's been on my mind this week as I'm about to embark on 30 days of eating vegetarian - largely as a result of the text we're teaching in our introductory rhetoric classes here at UT: Colin Beavan's No Impact Man. But that's another story. Gaga's appearance at the Mtv Video Music Awards sparked controversy that dissipated rather quickly, and though this may have been due to the singer's own inability to adequately (or logically) explain the reasons behind her wardrobe choice, the images left behind offer a really interesting opportunity for varying and disparate interpretations.

While I was surprised (and a bit disappointed) to discover that Jezebel didn't have much to say about the dress, my immediate reaction was to think of the outfit as a commentary on female objectification. The dress literalizes an all too familiar trope - that women are just pieces of meat - and the contrast between the female body and the hunks of beef strewn about it seemingly negates the metaphor by calling attention to it. Yet considering Gaga's videos and her ethos in general, it could also easily be argued that the outfit does just the opposite (reenforcing the trope/idea/attitude instead of negating it), especially considering the precursor to the dress - her appearance on the cover of the Japanese Men's Vogue in a meat bikini. They say we are what we eat, perhaps we are what we wear, too?

Image Credit: Vogue Hommes Japan

Now, while Gaga argued that she meant no disrespect to vegetarians, that didn't prevent a backlash from animal right's activists and environmental groups. PETA was predictably outraged by her VMA outfit, though their response was surprisingly brief. Ecouterre.com, a website devoted to sustainable fashion, instead used the dress as a conversation point, exploring the environmental impact of designer Franc Fernandez's 50 lb. creation. I'm sure both organizations would disagree with me, and perhaps this is a bit of a stretch, but I can see how one might argue that the dress is in fact an argument for vegetarianism and animal rights.

Image Credit: Designer Franc Fernandez

For one thing, looking closely at the dress certainly doesn't make me want to run out and eat a steak. But it also opens up space for an argument through analogy - how is wearing leather any different from wearing pieces of beef? Vegetarians are often critical of those who abstain from meat but still wear animal products, and the dress seems to call attention to this complaint. It also calls into question what constitutes acceptable use - if we can eat it, why can't/shouldn't/don't we wear it? And vice versa? Would the fur trade somehow be more palatable if we ate all the animals we wore?

Gaga's dress wasn't the most appetizing wardrobe choice, but it certainly got some attention. Everyone should be please to note, however, that the dress won't be going to waist - according to People Magazine, the dress is slowly turning into beef jerky that will be preserved for posterity (not eaten).

(Apologies for the rampant puns in this post, but I simply couldn't resist).