Just the other week a friend of mine sent a meme into a group message, It was titled “Nicolas Ribcage” and displayed Nicolas Cage’sface photoshopped onto a man’s stomach. Yes, it was silly and unsolicited, but I still thought it was funny. However, would Nicholas Cage think it’s funny? Not surprisingly, no he doesn’t think it’s funny. In fact, Nicholas Cage believes memes are ruining his career.
Nicolas Cage memes have been around for a while. They have been a favorite on Twitter and other media exchanging websites. They are commonly still shots of Cage in the many movies he has starred, some have text overlayed, some are photoshopped, this list can go on forever. I doubt most people even think about Cage’s feelings towards the memes. Creating a silly often abstract picture that pokes fun at the actor does not seem to be damaging in its essence. However, thinking about the basic qualities of memes sheds a different light on the conversation.
As I described in the last post, memes are an especially potent form of spreadable media. It is not uncommon for a meme to take over an entire social network in a single day. Now let’s say this meme has to do with Nicolas Cage. Because of the infectious nature of a meme, the often-silly theme of Nicolas Cage memes will be encoded into one’s brain alongside Cage himself. Now, this meme infected person associates Nicolas Cage as a matter to laugh or poke fun, not as an actor who should be taken seriously. Whether or not you like Cage as an actor, the viral quality of the meme causes one to associate Cage the actor with Cage the meme.
Nicolas Cage memes also exemplify “stickiness”, the whole purpose of creating a meme is to engage people. Defining “stickiness” under the terms Jenkins gives in Spreadable Media, stickiness refers to media that keeps one actively engaged. Nic Cage memes do exactly that, once someone sees one they understand it, spread it, and will search for more.
This perspective highlights why memes can be truly damaging. Memes are exceptionally sticky and exceptionally spreadable because their basic features stimulate the human mind. Furthermore, the internet allows one to easily spread said memes because of the copy and paste features anyone with some form of a computer/device has access too.
While it is evident that these memes can be harmful to Cage, what can really be done to help him. Let’s say Cage feels he has can litigation grounds of defamation. Who does he sue? The Internet!? Sadly, I think Cage is left without options unless society magically reforms to a structure where poking fun of others does not exist, Cage, will just have to deal with it. I’ll leave this post with two excerpts from an interview with Cage on his new movie Mandy and memes,
“The issue is, with the advent of the internet, doing these mashups, where they pull these choice moments without the context of the whole film around it to support it, has created this meme-ification, if you will. It’s been branded “Cage Rage,” and it’s frustrating. I’m sure it’s frustrating for Panos, who has made what I consider a very lyrical, internal, and poetic work of art, to have this “Cage Rage” thing slammed all over his movie. It’s one thing for me, because I’d like to think I could continue to work with Panos, but the internet has kind of done the movie a disservice.”
“I think that the movie hasn’t been given perhaps a fair viewing by virtue of the fact that the internet has mashed them up with these moments that have been cherry-picked, that aren’t really in the context of the character or how the character got there.”
Jenkins_intro.Pdf.
Kohn, Eric, and Eric Kohn. “Nicolas Cage Knows That Most People Watch His Movies on VOD, and He’s OK With That.” IndieWire, 15 Sept. 2018, https://www.indiewire.com/2018/09/nicolas-cage-interview-mandy-vod-internet-memes-1202003848/.
Nicolas Cage Fears That Memes Will Run His Latest Movie. https://www.nme.com/news/music/nicolas-cage-fears-that-memes-will-run-his-latest-movie-2380632.Accessed 27 Sept. 2018.
Memes are funny, right? 