As soon as the elections were called in Quebec, as soon as the Facebook page “Analyses complexes et nuancées” (9,400 subscribers and a whole program…) offered the results of a bogus poll on the party leader who would make the best prime minister.
The PQ was rewarded with 3% of the vote, and the Conservative three times as many votes. A self-promotional sticker on the page hid the scores of the solidarity leader and the liberal boss. François Legault obtained 45% of the votes, and Antonio Barrette, 120%…
The humorous pike may be subtly amused by the fact that Mr. Barrette (1899-1968) was Premier of Quebec for six months in 1960, after the death of Maurice Duplessis, the “boss” to whom François Legault is sometimes spitefully compared.
The photo of Antonio Barrette then ended up on a fake QS election sign held by the solidarity deputy Manon Massé in a montage relayed, as always, on social networks.
Such is the life of memes at election time. And the campaign is only 10 days old.
“We should see plenty of them in the next month,” predicts Jean-Michel Berthiaume-Sigouin, doctoral student in semiology and lecturer at UQAM’s School of Media. “In campaigning, the political meme is used to speak to young voters where they are, on the web. »
The learned memologist is preparing a book to be published next year on the roots and development of Quebec memes. On April 14, 2023, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the massive distribution of the video tape known as the “ Star Wars Kid”, which is for Mr. Berthiaume-Sigouin the first meme from here to the planetary impact.
Memes and genes
The term same (without grave accent) was proposed by the British biologist Richard Dawkins in the 1970s to designate a kind of cultural duplicator (a recipe, for example) comparable to the genes regulating living organisms. The word is now most often used to designate intertextual productions broadcast online, either on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok. We then speak of an Internet meme.
“I am more and more convinced that the meme is an emotional language,” says Mr. Berthiaume-Sigouin. “The meme combines text and image and manages to say something more than all of its parts. This rather elusive something is the emotion which is inserted and which makes it possible to create irony. »
The researcher cites a photo of François Legault covering his eyes rather than his mouth during the pandemic. The image has been hijacked by supporters of sanitary measures as well as by opponents: it has made it possible to ironize on both sides.
The survival of the message depends on its transmission. The reception and decoding of its meaning require more or less complex, kneaded and transformed cultural referents. Caricature, an old ancestor of graphic satire, is also based on complicity and common codes.
The meme actually comes in more or less complex forms, “ dank ” Where ” normie “, in the jargon of the middle of the memoirs.
the normie, the normative meme (we also mean “local” or “banal”), uses simple referents, clichés. “Anything that uses Minions falls into the category normie “, explains Mr. Berthiaume-Sigouin. We have seen the appearance in the last few days of rapprochements between the party leaders and characters from The Simpsons: it is normie.
the dank constantly flees the consensus and requires a lot of knowledge to be decoded. A cryptosolidarity sign relayed on the Web displays the slogan “Feminism is good; religion is better”. To understand the formula, it is necessary to know the position of the diverse secularists of Québec solidaire, who at the same time defend equality between men and women and the wearing of the Islamic veil by teachers or elected members of the National Assembly: c ‘is dank.
Entertain and let off steam
The host of the “L’actualité en memes” Facebook page began his production in 2005 and amplified it by getting involved during the 2012 student strike.
“I was studying communication and interactive media,” explains Maxime, who asks that only his first name be used. “The medium immediately appealed to me. I realized, after several years, that it is during times of social upheaval that memes are most used, useful or disseminated. They came back strong with the pandemic. People then need common references, to be entertained and, sometimes, to let off steam. »
He does not hide it: his favorite Turkish face is Éric Duhaime, leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec. “He’s a clown himself,” he said. Anything he says can become a meme. This critical passion is displayed even in the logo of the page, which reproduces the face of the conservative leader à la Che Guevara decked out in a clown’s nose. “I shoot from left to right, it’s totally assumed. »
After the phone interview, Maxime added that “the overwhelming majority of meme pages are on the left” and that “the few pages on the right are pretty bad, aggressive, below the waistline, and lacking in subtlety.”
That said, “ Meme News” is taking a break despite the election campaign because its host has just started a time-consuming new job. In addition, he is sorry for an unacceptable moderation of his Facebook page, which caused him to lose a lot of subscribers.
The censorship began after a creation based on the characters of the series District 31. A police officer presented two photos to Commander Chiasson: one was a photo of actress Anne Casabonne, a new candidate for the Conservatives; the other, a jug. The commander replied: “It’s the same person. »
What’s the point ?
The meme serves both as a tool of criticism (to the point of cynicism) and as a means of propaganda.
“The meme serves to consolidate communities,” says Mégan Bédard, who co-edited the recent book For you to meme again (All in all), which dissects the protean socio-cultural phenomenon. “By following memes, you can take the pulse of a group or population by understanding what interests them. »
But are they effective, especially during an election campaign? Memes had a “quite considerable” influence in the election of Donald Trump in 2016, says the researcher, also a doctoral student in semiotic studies. The content first created for the sulphurous 4chan platform then circulated particularly, for example that representing the businessman as Pepe the Frog, a meme hijacked as a symbol of ” alt right and, frankly, neo-fascism. “We elected a meme as president,” said a member of the network the evening of the Republican candidate’s triumph.
“Will they have a decisive influence in the present campaign? resumes Mme Bedard. It’s still a younger generation that relays memes. Slightly older generations, who have not been introduced to the phenomenon, will be less likely to relay them. »