Matt Tung 4th Blog Post
After spending the last class on Friday analyzing memes and talking about "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community" by James Porter, I now realize how much prior knowledge we need to have in order to interpret and appreciate certain books, movies, TV shows, memes, etc. I entered the classroom that day excited to see my fellow classmates' memes and have a good laugh, however, I unexpectedly learned the idea of having prior knowledge and how that affects our own understanding of these memes. It first hit me when we looked at Sammy's meme.
In this meme, it took me a while to really understand what it was trying to say. It incorporated three different things you had to have knowledge of: the roses are red poem, Guardians of the Galaxy (specifically Groot's catchphrase), and the famous super-suit line from the move the Incredibles. Even though I understood it, watching Professor Stockman tried to understand the meme himself gave me great insight. If you haven't watched even one of the two movies depicted, you won't be able to understand or appreciate the meme as a whole. Since prior knowledge can vary between person to person depending on age, race, gender, and geographic location, not everyone will have the same prior knowledge. Therefore, it is important to really know you're own audience and what their prior knowledge might be. I think this is applicable to everything in life, not only understanding memes. This new concept of understanding your audience and using that to your advantage can be incredibly useful. For example, if you're writing a paper meant for Tik Tok users, you reference a few famous Tik Tok dances that only Tik Tok users will know in order for them to connect to your paper more. I very much enjoyed the last class and hope we do something similar again (vines are good too).
In this meme, it took me a while to really understand what it was trying to say. It incorporated three different things you had to have knowledge of: the roses are red poem, Guardians of the Galaxy (specifically Groot's catchphrase), and the famous super-suit line from the move the Incredibles. Even though I understood it, watching Professor Stockman tried to understand the meme himself gave me great insight. If you haven't watched even one of the two movies depicted, you won't be able to understand or appreciate the meme as a whole. Since prior knowledge can vary between person to person depending on age, race, gender, and geographic location, not everyone will have the same prior knowledge. Therefore, it is important to really know you're own audience and what their prior knowledge might be. I think this is applicable to everything in life, not only understanding memes. This new concept of understanding your audience and using that to your advantage can be incredibly useful. For example, if you're writing a paper meant for Tik Tok users, you reference a few famous Tik Tok dances that only Tik Tok users will know in order for them to connect to your paper more. I very much enjoyed the last class and hope we do something similar again (vines are good too).
I actually did not know these references when this meme was shown in class. I have never seen Guardians of the Galaxy and I do not remember much from when I watched the Incredibles. Although I didn't understand this meme, I understood the majority of them. Therefore, I understand that a lot of the memes require prior knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know the first reference to this meme as well. I have never seen Guardians of the Galaxy but I understood the Incredible reference. It seemed as though I was the only person who didn't get it so its good to know that someone else didn't have the prior knowledge as well!
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting meme involving presupposition, along with the ones that you posted on the blog. Very nice analysis in your post.
ReplyDelete