"Have a Good Day Dear" Covid meme

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     I chose the meme below because I believe it is relevant to many individual’s current situations right now.  The image of a child going to school with full plastic suit protection from Covid and holding a sign that reads “first day of school” is not the average first day of school photo that we are used to seeing from young children or even from adults.   However, our social, personal, and cultural climates have changed drastically due to Covid and I believe this meme is easily identifiable, relatable, and humorous to mostly western places in the world. According to Bratich, “... there are contextual factors related to social power. This type of innovative action is prominent ‘‘on occasion of a historical or biographical crisis, interrupt[ing] the circular flux of life.’’8 It is an ‘‘action that undermines and contradicts the prevalent belief-system of a community…,’’ (Bratich p. 65)  This meme relates to a historical crisis that is Covid-19.  The fact that students as teachers, professors, and school staff must take high precautionary levels to ensure that their institution is playing their part in keeping the pandemic levels down is unprecedented because a pandemic of this sort is unprecedented.  However, our social climate has changed in unison which is a positive thing.  We can all laugh at something like this and although unusual, it does not necessarily hinder our regard to parents who send their kids to school despite Covid happening.   This meme does contradict the prevalent belief-system of a global community of school goers and parents of school kids from the natural times almost a year ago now, when a meme like this would not make sense.  As our global community of school goers has had to adjust, so the humor adjusts with them and with the new situation.  Memes like these act as content to be analysed that help us rethink the present a little bit.  Although Covid is not a good thing, we can still find humor in it from memes like this and understand that our natural trust and belief-systems of health and cleanliness is altered at the moment. 

Bratich, J. (2013). Occupy All the Dispositifs: Memes, Media Ecologies, and Emergent Bodies Politic. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 11(1), 64–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2013.827351

Comments

  1. RosanaOctober 14, 2020 at 10:22 PM

    Absolutely Isabella. I think this is a great example of how people are using memes to deal with everyday life absurdities during this pandemic. I think this encapsulates the conversation that we had in class about humor - humor can be healing, and an escape valve to deal with some of our deepest concerns. As worrying as for some parents the return of their kids to school might be, Iaughing together can be a way to digest reality.

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