Blog Post #3 - Matthew Spina



What is the Cat Meme? The 'Woman Yells At Cat' Meme, Explained

 For this week's blog assignment, we were asked to analyze and compare Martin Luther's 95 Theses and the famous "Woman Yelling at the Cat" meme in relation to one of the three articulations of media assemblages and ecologies learnt in class. My focus will be centred around the third articulation which focuses on how media, its artifacts and messages are spread throughout culture and society through various spatio-temporal dynamics. 

 Martin Luther's "95 Theses" became a widespread movement against the Roman Catholic Church. Luther's work revolutionized Western society and culture and is argued as "one of the most successful media campaigns in history" (Mohn, 2016). In 1517, he set out to inform the masses in Germany of his concerns within the Church by nailing his 95 Theses to church doors. Luther made excellent utilization of the new media at his disposal such as the printing press, illuminated manuscripts and satirical woodcuts to distribute his messages widely and quickly sparking the Protestant Reformation. These characteristics of Luther's movement closely relate to the creativity/production, relations of distribution/circulation and relation of consumption/reception that the third articulation of media entails. 

The "Woman Yelling at the Cat" meme can be one of the many modern examples that reflect similarly to Luther's movement. The meme features Smudge the Cat and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Taylor Armstrong and went viral on Twitter in May of 2019. Shortly after, the meme went viral on other social media network platforms such as Reddit and Instagram gaining widespread attention causing many individuals to recreate, remix and interpret the photo in different ways. Tom Standage points out that "Luther's equivalent metric for popularity would have been the number of times a pamphlet was reprinted"  (Standage, 54). Therefore, the meme similarly follows Luther's 95 Theses as its redistribution, recreation and edits drew interest amongst individuals within society. 


Works Cited

Mohn, T. (2016, October 28). Long before Twitter, Martin Luther was a media pioneer. The New York Times. Retrieved November 28, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/arts/design/long-before-twitter-martin-luther-was-a-media-pioneer.html. 

Standage, Tom. "How Luther Went Viral: The Role of Social Media In Revolutions." Writing On The Wall, MyLS, 2013, pp. 48-63. 

Comments

  1. Shanna AllimanNovember 30, 2021 at 12:04 PM

    Hi Matthew,

    You made some very good points about these two different viral media texts in relation to the third articulation. The success of Martin Luther's 95 These shows the revolutionized Western society as you mentioned. This is a significant point because it relates to Women Yelling at Cat Meme. Meme culture has definitely had a huge impact on Western society. These two examples are the same just with different technologies at hand. The redistribution and recreation of meme into other memes was a great point.

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  2. Seif AmerDecember 1, 2021 at 10:59 AM

    Hi Matthew,

    Regarding the quote you included at the end, I find it odd that Luther's metric for the popularity of his work was how many times a pamphlet was reprinted, considering that is likely an indistinguishable metric. There is no way, especially in his time, that he would be able to figure that out unless I am understanding it wrong. Nonetheless, the idea of distribution metrics is one of the reasons that we are very fortunate for the technology we are exposed to now as they are tracked and readily available to us regarding any of our distributed media. If you are a digital content creator, it is much easier to record trends and peaks in your work when all the data regarding the content's publishing and distribution (time and date of publishing, age demographic, view count, like count, comments etc.).

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  3. Annabelle SpinaDecember 1, 2021 at 1:57 PM

    Hi Matthew,

    I enjoyed reading your post this week! I chose to analyze the same articulation as you as well as Martin Luther's 95 Theses and the "Woman Yelling at the Cat Meme". In your second paragraph, I liked how you mentioned that Luther's work revolutionized Western society and culture and is argued as one of the most successful media campaigns in history. This was a great point to make as Luther handing out the pamphlets of the 95 Theses was truly one of the first examples of media text going "viral". I also enjoyed how you mentioned that his widely distributed messages sparked the Protestant Reformation as this was an interesting piece of information I did not come across in my research for my response.

    I too, agree that the "Woman Yelling at a Cat Meme" can be attributed as a modern example that reflects the 95 Theses' viral movement. It really comes down to the way society recreates and redistributes a media text that determines whether it goes viral. In the age of Martin Luther, his pamphlets were redistributed across the German-speaking lands, similar to how the famous meme you spoke about was redistributed across the world wide web as it was shared and recreated so many times.

    Overall, great post!
    -Annabelle Spina

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