Memes: Pope Francis and Star Wars

In our discussion in class today we learned that memes often have deeper meanings within them than is often noticed at first glance. Over the past few years memes have become a very powerful tool in regards to understanding and discussing politics, current events, and everyday life. They have given internet users a new medium to express their opinions and do so almost instantaneously with the world.

In recent current events, Pope Francis met with Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk that refused marriage licenses to gay couples. This meeting between the two was extremely surprising and shocked a lot of people in the United States and the world. Pope Francis has been known for his more liberal perspectives regarding the Catholic church, although not changing Catholic doctrine. He was quoted when asked where he stood on homosexuality as saying "Who am I to judge". This was also a surprising meeting because Kim Davis is very protestant and in the course of history protestants and catholics have never really gotten along, to put it lightly.

The meme below refers to Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith when Anakin betrays Obi-Wan, joins the dark side and becomes Darth Vader. The line that was written above this meme was "How I felt when Pope Francis met with Kim Davis".



In the Shifman reading, Shifman writes about what makes a video memorable and why certain videos receive a lot of views. We can also relate this to memes. Shifman writes that humor, simplicity and repetitiveness play a large role in what makes something popular. This can also be applied to memes such as this one. This meme has a very laughable aspect about it, it's relatively simple (assuming the audience knows where the meme originates) and it is repetitive because this meme has been used countless times to refer to different events. It also has a deeper meaning regarding how some people felt about the meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis.