Blog Post #3: 95 Theses and "Woman Yelling at a Cat" Meme-Annabelle Spina

 I will be reflecting on how the third articulation is demonstrated in two examples of media texts going viral that came from different media ecologies of print and social media. I will first analyze Martin Luther’s 95 Theses and then delve into the famous meme of “Women Yelling at a Cat.” Despite some apparent differences, these two media texts exemplify the creation of culture and connect to the third articulation, even though they are from entirely different eras. 

 

In 1517, Martin Luther condemned the Roman Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences (Mohn, 2016) by nailing his 95 theses to the doors of churches in Germany. He wanted to inform the European masses about his concerns within the Roman Catholic Church. During his time, he utilized new media that was at his disposal, such as liturgical vestments, illuminated manuscripts, and satirical woodcuts (Mohn, 2016), to create a “viral” uproar in his local community. The third articulation concerns how media artifacts and messages are brought into being and spread through culture, community, or society. It is manifested in the Spatio-temporal dynamics of relations of creativity and production, distribution and circulation, and concerns of consumption and reception (Herman, 2021). Simply put, media assemblage is present through the distribution and circulation of copies. It questions how a particular medium spreads throughout society. Before integrating technology in our world, a medium would need to be physically purchased by a consumer and shared by said individual. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses is a perfect example of a medium successfully shared in the non-digital age. He produced pamphlets, available in both Latin and German, that he would sell to the masses. The pamphlets were very detail-oriented and had beautifully decorated title pages, eventually making it a recognized brand. Consumers would then redistribute these pamphlets to other citizens, causing the “viral” effect. Standage (2013) confirmed that it was because of this that the 95 Theses spread at an astonishing speed throughout the German-speaking lands. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses went viral and proved the tremendous societal impact a medium can have when heavily circulated. Luther’s work demonstrated the power of a decentralized, person-to-person media system whose participants took care of distribution (Standage, 2013). Luther successfully created a media storm through the distribution and heavy circulation of his work, and the third articulation is present through Luther’s ability to create a viral message through the creation and distribution of his pamphlets. 

 

In today’s day and age, we live in a world controlled by social media and internet culture. Social media indeed dominates and influences the way that we communicate. We have all seen the “Woman Yelling at a Cat” meme, which depicts a woman from “Real Housewives” hysterically crying and pointing at a hilarious cat sitting at the dinner table. This meme became viral because of social media, as social media platforms have become the ideal place for media texts to be distributed and circulated instantaneously. This meme has been recreated repeatedly with different texts, but the two images of the woman and the cat remain the same. The third articulation is prevalent in this example as it shows how a media text can be distributed and copied throughout society through the click of a button.  The millions of people who have viewed, edited, and shared the meme are agents in consuming and distributing the media text. The message of this meme would be useless if it were not circulated among millions of people. Internet memes indeed form a sense of online community as they allow like-minded individuals to share funny messages online.

While a hilarious and memorable internet meme of a woman yelling at a cat may not have the same lasting cultural impact and meaningful message as Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, both media texts relied on going viral and creating a media storm to have cultural significance and get their message across regardless of the era. 

 

 

                                                        Works Cited

 Herman, A. (2021). CS371A Social Media and Social Life Fall 2021 [PowerPoint slides]. Communication Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University. Retrieved from MyLearningSpace.

 

Mohn, T. (2016). Long before Twitter, Martin Luther was a media pioneer. Retrieved November 26^th, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/arts/design/long-before-twitter-martin-luther-was-a-media-pioneer.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=wide-thumb&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

 

Standage, T. (2013). Writing on the Wall: Social Media; The First 2,000 Years. Bloomsbury USA