Your Favourite Book Will Not Be Ruined By Memes
By Arts & Lit Editor Luca Cavallo
Movies and TV shows are losing their narrative significance to online meme culture. This gif has been used in thousands of memes conveying different relatable or absurd jokes. The origin of the gif is from Breaking Bad, when Walter White watches his brother-in-law, Hank, die. A recent viewer of the show has voiced their concern online about how ‘Ozymandias’ (the famous title of the episode) was ‘ruined’ for them, and that when Hank died, they said, ‘look it's the Walter White gif!’ and that ‘all emotional significance was lost’. Several other powerful moments from Breaking Bad, such as when Walter’s partner Jesse yells ‘he can’t keep getting away with this!’ have also been trivialised on X (Twitter) and TikTok. The show’s central antagonist, Gus, is now ‘sus’. His stoic bodyguard/hitman, Mike, is almost exclusively referred to online as ‘Kid Named Finger’, but I’m not explaining that one to you, no way.
GIF from Breaking Bad.
It feels very strange that media should be reduced to humorous tweets, but it wouldn’t be fair to say that ‘meme-able’ content isn’t something that has always been included in entertainment. Quote-worthy one-liners or catchphrases are common in the style of sitcoms. For example, I do not know who the Fonz is, but I know that he says ‘Ayyy’. Writers create these iconic lines to get into their audience’s heads quite literally (I will not, however, be watching Happy Days). In today’s media, gifs have taken over catchphrases as a recognisable and memorable moments taken from the larger context of the show/movie they represent.
By taking the gif out of context, a blank canvas appears above the gif for anyone to apply a caption or scenario that can summarise the tiny film. ‘Out of Context’ content has consequently grown in popularity. YouTube videos up to 30 minutes long will compile random clips from a TV show and claim them as their own comedic creations. This notorious (though very enjoyable) example takes The Amazing World of Gumball’s absurd humour to an entirely new level of confusing hilarity. It seems that the ‘Out of Context’ style of chopping up entire TV episodes into bite-size pieces pertains to the 6-second rule of Vine. As our attention spans grow shorter, we are less interested in the full context of a scene, we just want the instant gratification. The original show or movie now exists separately from the supposedly similar ‘Out of Context’ compilation of it created online. This process is a double-edged sword, as it increases the popularity of the original media, but devalues the key scenes that are transformed into relatable gifs.
Finally, the good news: this process cannot be done for literature. Their lack of visual images, and their very apparent need for a good attention span completely eliminates any ‘meme-able’ quality. Literary works with illustrations can also be taken out of context, as we see with manga comics such as Chainsaw Man and children’s books like Frog and Toad are Friends. But luckily books can only be enjoyed as intended, and not made into compilations to watch at 2 AM.
