These two articles were really interesting to read together. While Miller discussed in vague terms what the dominant/subordinate relationship can look like in various social aspects (in two specific forms), Cheney & Lair got into the nitty-gritty of American politics among various administrations and assigned “dissent” to certain movements before getting into our “culture of fear.” While there is a lot to unpack among the two of these articles, there is one connection that popped out to me. “It is not surprising then that a subordinate group resorts to disguised and indirect ways of acting and reacting,” Miller wrote this on page 228. And on page 203, in the epilogue of Cheney and Lair’s article, they discuss the relationship between the constant fear surrounding the US’s borders and position in the world with the day-to-day lives of citizens: “Taken together, these fears hinder the full expression of democracy itself, inasmuch as dissenting opinions are suppressed or are not even considered.” I couldn’t help but think about social media when I put these two things together. All the memes about nuclear war, global warming, school shootings, police brutality–they’re really funny, and they’re funny because they’re real and on people’s minds. These are jokes made out of genuine concerns–laughter is the best medicine, after all. There’s a lot of violence in the world and there’s a lot of violence in the States that people don’t want to acknowledge, but the prevalence of these popular, dark-humor kind of jokes shows that the Dominant group (whatever group may be, depending on the issue) is not ignorant of the underlying issue. This kind of humor communicates the issue, but also creates a sort of mental distance between the reader/watcher and the actual situation.
Domination/Subordination + Dissent = Memes
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Your modern connection to memes and social media does, in fact, show the mental distance between the viewer and the problem at hand. While we all do enjoy our memes on Twitter and Instagram, they are often problematic when commenting on serious issues because they are not a real call to action, but allow people to sit back and laugh.
Your connection to social media memes made me think of black people. On social media, people tend to make jokes about the current situations and black people tend to do the same thing. My friends and I have joked about very serious situations like slavery or incarceration because they are very real fears of ours.
I agree with Anna’s point in saying that I like your modern day connection with memes but I think it shows our mental disfunctionality. We are all able to sit back and laugh at something and doesn’t accomplish anything and I know sometimes they aren’t meant to do so but they are given an opportunity given that they are looked at so much and given so much attention they could accomplish something.
I think this is really cool, that you were able to connect these ideas to something that we actually understand. I really agree that we use humor to distance ourselves from serious problems that we dont want to deal with.
I really liked how you made the connection between social media and the memes that are on there. By posting the memes about serious issues, like school shootings, we believe that we are discussing the topic and bringing attention to it but, not in the right way. I believe it is our generation’s way of being able to cope with all the terrible things going on, like you said “laughter is the best medicine”.