You know what I love? Memes. And art. Memes and art. You know what else I love? Combining them.

So let’s talk art. Specifically Surrealist art. Specifically René Magritte. You guys all know I love me some Magritte, especially if you read my last blog post explaining this whole blog. The piece of art I talked about in that blog post is actually the same one I’m talking about here.

Take a look at this. Looks like The Treachery of Images, right? Well, except for that teeny-tiny itty-bitty detail down there at the bottom. That definitely does not say “this is not a pipe”. It’s not even in French. She doesn’t even go here. What’s the deal.

Before we break down this classic meme, let’s talk about the classic artwork. This pipe is one of the masterpieces of René Magritte and its original title is The Treachery of Images. Painted in 1929 and in Magritte’s signature word-art style, the piece proposed a paradox: a painting of a pipe was not a pipe itself. The work calls out previous art and art viewers habit of allowing oneself to become so immersed in a piece of art that one forgets that it is merely a representation of life. The piece is a hallmark of Surrealism, which as a movement grew out of the previous Dadaist or Dada movement, which in turn was a reaction to the pre-World War I Rationalism movement. You get it. Art movements grow out of art movements, such is life. It’s like kids criticizing their parents.

After Dada essentially imploded, Surrealism picked up the baton. Surrealism was rooted in the same “anti-art” bases as Dadaism, but instead of focusing on negation it portrayed more positive themes. Dadaist and eventually Surrealist artists criticized Rationalism, the realism in it, and how it set limits on the what constituted art. Surrealism was essentially the antithesis of Rationalism: a wild cocktail of myth, primitivism, Marxism, and Freud.

(Ahhh yes, I can hear Joseph McCarthy screaming from beyond the grave.)

“Thanks, Hayley, for that crash course in art history that we probably all scrolled through without reading. But what about the meme?”

The meme obviously has a clear difference in phrasing. The phrase “bitch I might be” was originally coined by rapper Gucci Mane in the 2006 song “Pillz”. In the song, the phrase is used multiple times as a sarcastic and mildly aggressive way of saying “so what if I am” to a girl in the club asking if Mane was high. It wasn’t until 2013 when Gucci Mane was arrested and put on trial that Reddit user hellpony submitted a photoshopped screenshot of the trial with the fake news byline reading, “Rapper Gucci Mane responds with ‘bitch I might be’ when asked if guilty.” The image took off all over the internet and social media and eventually the phrase itself became a meme.

“Okay so you’ve turned art into a meme and posted it all over my Facebook page. So what.”

You! Absolute! Fools! This isn’t just a meme.

 

This is a generational symbol.

Look at what Surrealism has become: the status quo of art. What’s that Batman quote about dying a hero or living long enough to see yourself become the villain? That’s Surrealism right now. From an art-focused perspective, tagging The Treachery of Images with “bitch I might be” is our generation’s way of saying, “You 👏 don’t 👏 get 👏 to 👏 decide 👏 what’s 👏 art 👏,” emojis and everything. Ironic, considering that’s exactly what Dadaism and Surrealism were doing.

However, interpreted on a larger scale, this meme—this seemingly inconsequential conglomeration of pixels on the internet—reflects the global temperature of the Millennials and Gen-Z. Memes themselves have spread to almost every corner of social media (like pests…or mold). Look at how memes are produced and consumed in modern internet culture. The tone behind them is exceedingly amoral and anti-establishment. Sarcasm, irony, nihilism: the pillars of satiric meme culture. Theorize what you will on how they got this way, but memes have become a coping mechanism for an entire generation sustained by social media. Taking The Treachery of Images and completely turning it back on itself by not only associating it with a meme, but making it into a meme, creates a microcosm of generational thinking in just 250 kilobytes of digital image. If you want to understand the Millennials or Gen-Z just look at the memes. Chances are they’re not just entertainment.

“Wow, Hayley, you’re really wound up about memes and mass generational thinking and what it means for modern society and their expression through technology and social media.”

Bitch I might be.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Sources & Credits

Post title quote by exeunt-pursued-by-a-bear

“Bitch I Might Be.” Know Your Meme, 25 Sept. 2013, knowyourmeme.com/memes/bitch-i-might-be.

“Dada Movement, Artists and Major Works.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm.

“Surrealist Movement, Artists and Major Works.” The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm. “Dada Movement, Artists and Major Works.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/movement-dada.htm.

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Surrealism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 1 Dec. 2016, http://www.britannica.com/art/Surrealism.

“The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe) (La trahison des images [Ceci n’est pas une pipe]).” The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe) (La trahison des images [Ceci n’est pas une pipe]) | LACMA Collections, collections.lacma.org/node/239578.

Brian Feldman. Internet Memes are Value Neutral, But Do Reflect Cultural Moments. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/10/03/can-a-meme-be-a-hate-symbol-6/internet-memes-are-value-neutral-but-do-reflect-cultural-moments