memes.cjtrowbridge.com

Anti-Capitalism - Media

First Seen:

2024-04-02T06:35:20.489492+00:00

Gemma-3-27b's Take:

Okay, let's break down this meme through several theoretical lenses. It's a darkly humorous piece that packs a lot of social commentary into four simple panels. **Visual Description** The meme is a four-panel comic constructed with minimalist, stick-figure-like drawings in black outlines on a white background. The style is intentionally crude and reminiscent of internet "rage comics" or early webcomics. * **Panel 1:** A stick figure with exaggerated round eyes and a wide, somewhat manic grin, is depicted walking. Text above reads "hey corpo press, how's it going?" * **Panel 2:** This panel features a screenshot of a Bloomberg tweet. The tweet reads "We're dying younger. That could be really good news for our employers bloom.bg/2vJdiIM". Beneath the tweet is a chart depicting declining life expectancy. * **Panel 3:** The stick figure from panel 1, still walking, with the same exaggerated expression. * **Panel 4:** The stick figure, but now with a bloodied face, simply reading "Jesus Christ." The visual crudeness juxtaposed with the grim subject matter is key to the meme’s impact. --- **Foucauldian Genealogical Discourse Analysis** This meme powerfully illustrates how *power operates through discourse* as analyzed by Michel Foucault. * **Discourse & Power:** The "discourse" here isn’t a conversation, but the way information is framed within capitalist media (the "corpo press"). The tweet isn’t simply reporting a negative statistic; it *re-frames* declining life expectancy as potentially *beneficial to employers*. This is a shift in framing that subtly naturalizes the prioritization of profit over human life. * **Genealogy:** A genealogical approach would examine the historical conditions that allowed this framing to become possible. We could trace the rise of neoliberal ideologies that emphasize individual responsibility and market efficiency, leading to a de-emphasis on social safety nets and worker well-being. The genealogy would reveal how this discourse emerged from specific power relations and isn’t a neutral observation. * **Biopower:** The meme touches on Foucault’s concept of "biopower" – the ways in which modern states and institutions seek to manage and control populations, including their health and mortality. The tweet treats life expectancy as a variable to be optimized for economic gain, exemplifying this control. * **Subjectivity:** The stick figure’s reaction (“Jesus Christ.”) demonstrates the shock and disbelief at this normalized framing. It highlights how this discourse seeks to shape subjective experience, and the moment of rupture when that attempt fails. --- **Critical Theory** The meme aligns strongly with key themes within Critical Theory, especially as developed by the Frankfurt School. * **The Culture Industry:** The “corpo press” is a clear embodiment of what Adorno and Horkheimer described as the “culture industry.” It isn't producing genuine information; it’s producing a commodified version of reality designed to reinforce existing power structures. * **Ideology:** The tweet functions as an example of *ideology* in the Marxist sense – a set of ideas that obscures the true nature of social relations. It presents a reality where worker death is acceptable *if* it benefits profit, effectively masking the exploitative nature of capitalism. * **Domination:** The meme reveals how seemingly neutral reporting can be a form of domination. The framing normalizes a situation where human life is subordinated to economic interests, perpetuating a system of inequality. * **Enlightenment Critique:** The meme’s dark humor is a form of critique, mirroring the Frankfurt School’s critique of the Enlightenment. They argued that reason, if divorced from ethics and social justice, could become a tool of oppression. --- **Marxist Conflict Theory** This meme is a stark illustration of class conflict as understood through a Marxist lens. * **Exploitation:** The tweet explicitly frames declining worker life expectancy as potentially good news *for employers*. This demonstrates the fundamental contradiction of capitalism: profit is derived from the exploitation of labor. The meme highlights that the cost of production (including human life) is externalized onto the working class. * **Class Struggle:** The stick figure’s reaction (“Jesus Christ”) is a visceral expression of the alienation and suffering experienced by the exploited class. It’s a moment of recognizing the brutal reality of their situation. * **False Consciousness:** The tweet is an example of how ideology can create "false consciousness" – a distorted understanding of social reality that prevents the working class from recognizing their own exploitation. The framing attempts to normalize a situation that is inherently unjust. * **Surplus Value:** The meme implicitly references the concept of surplus value - the difference between what workers produce and what they receive in wages. The reduced life expectancy is a means of maximizing surplus value for employers by reducing long-term costs. --- **Postmodernism** While not a primary reading, elements of postmodern thought can be applied. * **Hyperreality:** The meme suggests a kind of hyperreality where the *representation* of suffering (the tweet) becomes more real than the suffering itself. The framing obscures the actual human cost of economic policies. * **Deconstruction:** The meme deconstructs the seemingly neutral language of business reporting, revealing the underlying power dynamics and ideological assumptions. * **Irony and Parody:** The humor is deeply ironic and parodic. It mocks the detached, calculating logic of late capitalism by presenting a grotesquely absurd proposition. --- **Queer Feminist Intersectional Analysis** While the meme doesn't explicitly address queer or feminist issues, an intersectional lens can add further layers of understanding. * **The Disposable Body:** The meme highlights how certain bodies are deemed disposable within capitalist systems. Historically, marginalized groups (women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, disabled people) have disproportionately borne the brunt of economic exploitation and environmental hazards. The "disposable body" is a key concept in queer and feminist theory. * **Precarity:** The tweet speaks to the increasing *precarity* of labor – the erosion of job security and social protections that leave workers vulnerable to exploitation and economic hardship. This precarity is often exacerbated for intersectionally marginalized groups. * **Reproductive Labor & Care Work:** While not direct, the framing implicitly devalues life itself, connecting to feminist critiques of how reproductive labor and care work are often undervalued and exploited within capitalist systems. In conclusion, this meme is a powerful and multi-layered piece of social commentary that invites analysis from a variety of theoretical perspectives. It’s a darkly humorous indictment of late capitalism and its dehumanizing consequences.

Llama-3.2-11b's Take:

This meme is a humorous take on the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and the economic downturn that followed. The image shows a person asking "How's it going?" and the response is a news headline "We're dying" followed by a graph showing a sharp decline in the stock market, and finally "In Jesus Christ". The meme is a darkly comedic way of poking fun at the dire economic situation and the use of a phrase typically associated with a religious or spiritual context in a mundane and irreverent way.