his campaign slogan “Make 
America Great Again” is meant 
to be an act of reclamation, the 
execution 
leaves 
something 

to be desired. In fact, many of 
these 
ridiculous 
soundbites 

have become commodified into 
t-shirts, hats and other forms 
of apparel. When these words 
are converted into vehicles for 
corporate exploitation, the value 
of retaliating against Trump’s 
malicious words is essentially 
neutralized and lost. The same 
goes for Trump supporters trying 
to reclaim critiques of Trump; 
during the 2016 presidential 
race, Hillary Clinton’s comment 
about Trump supporters being 
a “basket of deplorables” was 
reclaimed as a positive label and 
a literal symbol of pride among 
Trump’s most loyal advocates.

Today’s 
political 
memes 

operate 
as 
a 
frustrating 

paradox: In one sense, they 
capture the absurdity of the 
current 
administration 
and 

American politics as a whole, 
but 
simultaneously, 
they 

can 
normalize 
and 
enable 

problematic discourse, granting 
Trump and other like-minded 
bigots 
more 
exposure 
and 

attention. It’s an accessible, yet 
counterproductive 
and 
lazy 

tactic that only amplifies these 
dangerous platforms. Political 
memes may be uplifting as 
rallying cries at protests, and in 

some cases, their impact could 
enlighten and inspire people to 
get more involved in political 
discussions. 
But 
considering 

the wider effect modern-day 

political memes engender, they 
really do nothing but satisfy 
and reinforce the political self-
interest of the person making the 
meme and the people they share 
it with.

Despite 
the 
smugness 

underlying 
today’s 
political 

memes, they still have the 
potential to influence political 
conversation for the better. Vic 
Berger, a video editor for the 
now-defunct Super Deluxe and 
an outspoken critic of Trump, 
juxtaposes real-life interviews 
and mishaps made by Trump and 
other members of the GOP with 
uncomfortable zoom-ins on their 
faces and jarring sound effects 
(most notably the sound of an 
air horn). The result is surreal, 
strange, hilarious and sometimes 
harrowing. Instead of merely 
using Trump’s words against 
him, Berger brilliantly conveys 
that American politics is as 
farcical as it is terrifying. Other 
online users have capitalized on 
fabricating celebrity clickbait 
as a way to get people to vote, a 
strategy that, while certainly 
manipulative, 
deserves 
some 

recognition for its cleverness.

If memes reflect and dictate 

the conversation surrounding 
trends in pop culture, political 
memes should find a way to do 
the same with the conversation 
surrounding trends in politics. 
And if political memes have the 
power to change the way we 
understand politics, then they 
should at least have the courtesy 
to communicate an incentive 
that’s both entertaining and 
compelling.

In 
other 
words: 
meme 

responsibly.

NEW MEDIA NOTEBOOK

It’s no secret that social media 

is a volatile virtual battleground 
where both ends of the political 
spectrum clash and converge on 
hot-button topics. But amid the 
mucky mess of heated Twitter 
threads 
and 
essay-length 

Facebook posts, people seem to 
have found comfort and stability 
through arguably the greatest 
postmodern art form produced 
on the internet: memes.

Like most general memes, a 

political meme can be a source 
of humor, a comedic avenue 
that connects and familiarizes 
us with political figures and 
social issues that, in a real-
world context, aren’t nearly 
as engaging. They shape the 
way we understand those who 
govern our country, either by 
poking fun at their out-of-touch 
personalities or championing 
their ability to identify with the 
American public.

The “meme-ing” of President 

Obama, 
in 
particular, 
was 

impactful in how the internet 

and American society at large 
perceived him during his time in 
office. The relatability of his cool, 
friendly demeanor translated 
well online, whether through 
his goofy facial expressions, his 
interactions 
with 
celebrities 

or 
his 
endearing 
bromance 

with former Vice President Joe 
Biden. His supporters would 
re-contextualize 
photos 
and 

videos of him as humorous and 
silly, while his critics would 
depict him in an offensive and 
oftentimes racist light.

“Thanks Obama,” a common 

sarcastic 
critique 
meant 
to 

ridicule Obama’s mistakes, was 
reclaimed as a satirical, self-
deprecating meme by liberals 
and 
even 
Obama 
himself. 

Former First Lady Michelle also 
garnered quite a bit of internet 
exposure. Originally used in a 
video promoting healthy eating, 
Michelle’s anecdote about her 
favorite fall vegetable (a sweet 
potato) and her quip about 
turnips (“Turnip for What”) 
quickly circulated on Vine and 
across the Web. Even after 
Barack’s second term ended, he 
and Michelle remain internet 

icons; 
their 
laid-back 
post-

presidency vacation photos and 
lavish 
presidential 
portraits 

provoked a series of memes on 
Twitter, many of which praised 
the couple for relishing their 
time away from the chaos of the 
White House.

While political memes like 

these can be innocuous, they 
also have the capacity to be 
simplistic, ruthless and even 
sinister. In the age of Trump 
especially, 
they’ve 
become 

weaponized 
by 
liberals 
and 

conservatives alike to combat 
one another online, manifesting 
in the form of tongue-in-cheek 
and trenchant jabs at Democrats 
and Republicans, senators and 
political 
commentators 
and, 

perhaps most of all, the President 
himself. Because of his political 
incompetence, frequent factual 
blunders and general ineptitude 
at being a normal human person, 
Trump is an easy target for a lot 
of negative memes that, though 
amusing at face value, aren’t very 
effective long-term takedowns.

While meme-ing Trumpian 

buzzwords like “nasty woman,” 
“bad hombre,” “covfefe” and 

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Red, white & meme: When 
politics & Twitter meet

SAM ROSENBERG

Senior Arts Editor

KNOWYOURMEME

—Verity Sturm, Daily Arts 

Writer

To me, the best part of the 

installation 
was 
watching 

people’s feet. It’s rare to see 

crowds of people 
collectively 
handling 
things 

gently, but if you 
looked 
at 
the 

ground 
at 
the 

spaces in between 
the books, you’d 
see a lot of fully 
grown 
adults 

carefully making 
their way through 
the 
dark 
street 

on their tiptoes. 
Nobody wanted to 
damage the books, 
and 
if 
anybody 

stepped 
on 
one 

accidentally, they 
would 
almost 

instinctively 
jump back. One 
guy was tripping 
over 
himself, 

trying to run through the 
crowd while shouting, “WE 
WON’T HURT THE BOOKS, 
WE 
WON’T 
HURT 
THE 

BOOKS.” Everybody around 
him instantly cleared a path 
— a collective agreement that 
books are at least a little bit 

precious, and we all want to 
protect precious things. 

— Asif Becher, Daily Books 

Editor

It’s quarter to 8:00, I’m 

walking home from The Daily 
newsroom 
and 
about 
five 

minutes in I’m very perplexed 
by 
the 
mass 
of 
people 

surrounding the intersection 
of State and Liberty. Ann 
Arbor streets only ever get 
this crowded for big sports 
victories, 
but 
the 
patient 

huddle gathered in front of me 
was quite the polar opposite 
of a revelrous, drunken mass. 
I had seen the metric ton of 
tomes coming back from class 
earlier in the day, but I thought 
it was nothing more than a 
24-hour art installation — and 
despite the sheer volume of 
books on the street, my lasting 
reaction was “cool.” Yet it just 
happened that I stumbled into 
the main event of “Literature 
vs. Traffic” like I do most good 
things in my life: accidentally. 
Albeit what I think is a silly 
name (if you actually want 
to pit the two entities against 
each other then remove the 
barricades, you cowards) I 
slyly sauntered my way into 
the magic of the moment. I 
heard around me that once the 

clock struck 8:00 any book on 
the pavement was ripe for the 
picking. My phone read 7:50 
but I think the fact kids were 
allowed to peruse the literary 
lot early made onlookers a 
little jumpy, so I dove in when 
there was enough people in the 
middle for me to go unnoticed. 
My first intention was to find 
“great books” that I had long 
missed out on and finally get 
an excuse to read them, but 
when the first cover I flipped 
over was “Heart of Darkness” 
I realized I wasn’t doing this 
right. 
Instead 
I 
trounced 

around looking for the most 
unwieldy shapes and bizarre 
illustrations. In a sentence I 
hope has never been written 
before, a giddy smile was 
brought to my face when the 
cover of a book I picked up read 
“L. Ron Hubbard: Scientology 
and 
the 
Fundamentals 
of 

Thought.” My coffee table is all 
the weirder now with pickups 
like 
“Decorative 
Victorian 

Needlework” and a Matlab 
textbook entirely in Chinese. 
Street books, thank you for 
being surreal, mysterious and 
a reminder of why we love to 
read in the first place.

— Robert Mansuetti, Daily 

Arts Writer

BOOKS EVENT

This Tuesday Oct. 23, a public 

art project by the University’s 
Institute for Humanities called 
“Literature vs. Traffic” was 
installed on Liberty St. Over 
10,000 books covered the street 
all day, and pedestrians were 
invited to walk through the 
books and pick from them at 
night. Among the thousands 
of Ann Arbor residents who 
experienced the display were 
three 
Daily 
Book 
Review 

writers. These are their stories:

I went to the “Literature vs. 

Traffic” installment twice on 
Tuesday, once in the daylight 
and once after dark. In the 
daylight, the books looked 
like a scene straight from that 
Russian avant-garde film “The 
Color of Pomegranates” (you 
should talk to Emily Yang 
about it), their sun-dappled 
pages rustling ever so slightly 
in the breeze, giving the entire 
installment a sense of gentle 
motion — reliable aliveness, 
like that of an ocean. My 
daylight visit was before they 
opened the gates to the rabid 
bibliophiles, but let me tell 
you that didn’t stop them. I 

witnessed an elderly woman 
hop the fence and tiptoe out 
into the sea of novels and 
pick up one in particular that 
caught her eye. On the other 
side of the installment, one 
of the volunteers noticed and 
yelled “HEY, HEY, DON’T 
DO THAT YET! PUT DOWN 
THAT BOOK!” Pure comedy, 
heightened by the imagery of 
the fence around all the books, 
not unlike the fence penning 
in the little concrete stack 
of books statue outside the 
Clements library, which always 
just licked my funny bone. Isn’t 
it massively hypocritical to 
erect fences around our books, 
even the representative ones?

I stole away from my job for 

20 minutes at night to revisit 
the installment, my interest 
piqued from all the weird 
books students were bringing 
to 
the 
Perlman 
Honors 

Commons. On my power walk 
over, I witnessed student after 
student 
carrying 
veritable 

armfuls of weird, old, LED-
illuminated titles, something 
I doubt I’ll ever see again. The 
eavesdropping 
was 
prime: 

“Where is everyone getting 
all these books? The local 
bookstore?” “No, they’re in 
the street.” In the thick of the 

installment, pawing through 
these 
strange, 
picked-over 

tomes, I felt the weird sort 
of urgency one experiences 
in a crowded store: the need 
to 
examine 
all 

the items, to find 
the one you want 
before 
someone 

else does. It’s a 
slimy feeling. At 
least in this case, 
it was cut a little 
by 
a 
collective 

mirth 
at 
the 

bizarre selection. 
The 
guy 
next 

to me pondered 
aloud who would 
need 
a 
volume 

of 
homeopathic 

remedies 
for 

maternity 
pains, 

and 
the 
woman 

ahead 
chuckled 

at a guide to DIY 
RV 
maintenance. 

I 
left 
with 
an 

ancient copy of W. 
Somerset Maugham’s “Cakes 
and Ale” that I had once seen 
on a postcard, and “Charles 
Schwab’s Guide to Financial 
Independence” 
in 
Chinese 

because I’m not sure when I’m 
ever going to encounter that 
again. 

EMMA RICHTER / DAILY

10,000 books light up Liberty St. on Tuesday night

DAILY BOOKS
Daily Arts Writers

Among the 

thousands of Ann 
Arbor residents 
who experienced 
the display were 
three Daily Book 
Review writers.
These are their 

stories

Despite the 
smugness 

underlying today’s 
political memes, 
they still have 
the potential to 

influence political 
conversation for 

the better

6B — Thursday, October 25, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

