What’s in a meme?

Etymology: derived from the Greek mimëma, ‘something imitated,’ by Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1976.

I first heard of the word “meme” (pronounced as meem) after I started blogging in August 2009 and subsequently enrolling in two memes—Tuesday’s overlooked films, audio and video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom and Friday’s forgotten books at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.

While I haven't always been a regular participant, I have connected with lots of interesting people (and intrepid bloggers) who are. Their knowledge of films and books across genres has enriched my own. For me, this has been the biggest reward of a meme, not just the ones I'm a part of but even those where I’m not. Sometimes it does well to sit back and read what others are talking about. Another benefit is that it makes you disciplined, both as a reader and a reviewer.

What exactly is a meme? The internet is flush with definitions that say more or less the same thing. I selected five sources that gave five slightly different meanings.

Common definition: A meme is an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. It acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena.

Richard Dawkins: Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leading from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.

Urban Dictionary: An idea, belief or belief system, or pattern of behaviour that spreads throughout a culture either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers, information media, and entertainment media).

The online dictionary also describes meme, in blogspeak, as an idea that is spread from blog to blog.

InternetSlang: An idea that spreads like a virus by word of mouth, email, blogs etc.

The above two definitions are the ones I'm most comfortable with as I can tell others easily.

The Free Dictionary: A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

Then there is another thing called “internet meme” which, according to Wikipedia, is “an idea, style or action which spreads, often as mimicry, from person to person via the Internet, as with imitating the concept. Some notable examples include posting a photo of people in public places or uploading a short video of people dancing to the Harlem Shake.”

I see little difference between a meme and an internet meme.

My basic understanding of a meme is that it refers to the collective imitation or replication of a specific idea, a theme or a concept in which players or participants are free to choose their topic or subject provided it corresponds with the idea, theme or concept as specified.

For example, under Friday’s Forgotten Books, a meme now in its sixth year I think, you are free to review any book so long as it is, indeed, forgotten, as in a rare or vintage mystery that you seldom hear or read about. Here “forgotten book” is the idea, theme or concept.

A meme, also known as a challenge on some blogs, takes a different turn when, say, a particular book or author is specified. Patti Abbott recently hosted Patricia Highsmith for FFB where you had to review only books by the American author. Ross Macdonald is up next, on November 8.

There is a slight twist in the meme, however. Even when the idea and the topic are specified, you can still broaden their scope to suit your taste. For instance, if you couldn't read and review a novel by Patricia Highsmith, you could still write about her in other ways, say, an essay, a short story review or a compilation of quotes. I did something like that for the Georges Simenon FFB on July 20, 2012. I couldn't find a single book by the iconic writer, so I did the next best thing: I wrote about my futile search for Georges Simenon. In this sense memes afford leniency but that would depend on the promoter of the meme. Patti and Todd have been extra generous.

I'd also like to think of a meme as a domino effect, in the positive sense of the term. Now after all that I hope I haven't got my meme wrong. What are your thoughts on this acculturation?

Ants in the Plants, 1940

A classic animated feature film for Overlooked Films, Audio & Video at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

“He's a menace, he's a brute, he will scoop you with his snoot.”

One of the joys of watching an animated film like Walt Disney’s The AristoCats (1970) or The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) in theatres, in the 70s, was the short cartoon clips that were often shown before the start of the film. They were like the appetiser before the main course, the small cup of steamed and salted corn before the large bag of popcorn, samosas, and coke.

Ants in the Plants, a classic animated short film by Max and Dave Fleischer of Disney rival Fleischer Studios, is about a bustling colony of brave and enterprising ants who find strategic ways to fight a pesky anteater hell-bent on devouring the ants with his periscopic snout. The ants work with military precision: they fight, suffer casualties, retreat, regroup, and eventually fall back on their “Sewer Side Squad” to drive away the enemy.

This 35mm Technicolor film has been labelled as a “war allegory” because of its emphasis on tactical preparation for a war.

Ants in the Plants is a cute little animated film. Its appeal lies in its old-style animation and its 7.32-minute length as opposed to its modern cousins like Antz (1998) and The Ant Bully (2006).

Click here to watch the film, again.

Westerns in my library

Every one of the westerns in the picture is crying out to be read. They’re sitting on one shelf of a wall unit sharing space with an army of Chinese-origin Laughing Buddhas, other classics and general fiction, and some curios. 

Laughing or Smiling Buddhas are supposed to bring good luck to those who keep them at home, but they've to be gifted by someone. They have been lucky for me, I guess, for I bought each of the secondhand (and tattered) western novels in the picture for Rs.10-20 (less than 25 cents). 

Click and enlarge for a better view. 

Some of these notable westerns are authored by Matt Chisholm, Jack Schaefer, Jory Sherman, Luke Short, George G. Gilman, Wayne D. Overholser, Loren D. Estleman, Dirk Fletcher, Jonas Ward, Giles A. Lutz, Peter Field, Louis L’Amour, Frank C. Robertson, Max Brand, Romer Zane Grey, and Robert J. Randisi. I haven’t read these particular books but I've read others by these fine authors. I have a few more stored elsewhere.

My prized collection of westerns is the Sudden series by the late British author Oliver Strange who wrote about the Wild West and his hero James Green alias Sudden, the Texas outlaw, without ever once crossing the Atlantic.

‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton

A few days ago, I was watching an episode of Friends in which Monica proposes to Chandler and then Chandler proposes to Monica and then the two lovebirds hold each other and gently rock in the candlelit room as only the music of Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight plays in the background. That’s when I rediscovered this beautiful song, actually a ballad, though I wouldn't know the difference between the two. It forms part of Clapton’s 1977 album Slowhand.

According to an article at Wikipedia, Clapton wrote the song about Pattie Boyd, a model, photographer, and author, while waiting for her to get ready to attend a party hosted by Paul and Linda McCartney.

“For years it tore at me. To have inspired Eric, and George before him, to write such music was so flattering. Wonderful Tonight was the most poignant reminder of all that was good in our relationship, and when things went wrong it was torture to hear it,” said Boyd, who was first married to George Harrison and then to Eric Clapton.


For previous Music & Lyrics, see under 'Labels'

Hell Is Too Crowded by Jack Higgins, 1962

Patti Abbot has all the links to Friday's Forgotten Books at her blog Pattinase.

“I’d have followed you to Hell if necessary,” Brady said.

“But Hell is too crowded, my friend,” Davos smiled gently. “There was never anything of a personal nature in this affair, Brady.”

Hell Is Too Crowded is a murder mystery which is interesting because Jack Higgins, the best-known pseudonym of British writer Harry Patterson, doesn’t write many of them. He usually writes spy and war thrillers in which the main characters are kind mercenaries, tough and battle-scarred, idealists with a fatalistic view of life, loners with little hope of any kind of redemption.

Matthew Brady has none of those characteristics but the structural engineer from Boston, Massachusetts, isn’t the kind of hero you'd normally find in a Jack Higgins novel. He is, in fact, a normal person who has been drinking to forget the woman who dumped him and ran off with his money. Standing alone on the embankment of the Thames in England, cut off from all human beings, Brady tries to make sense out of his life, when an attractive woman called Marie Duclos runs into him in the thick fog, apparently trying to get away from a stalker.

As gracious as all of Higgins’ heroes are, Brady is instinctively protective of her and accepts her invitation to spend the night at her place. He kisses her, has a drink, and passes out. When he opens his eyes, he finds himself in someone else’s nightmare—framed for the grisly murder of the French woman, a known prostitute.

“Her clothes had been ripped and shredded from her body. She sprawled there wantonly, her thighs spattered with blood, but it was the face which was the ultimate horror, a sticky, glutinous mess of pulped flesh.”

Inspector Mallory and Detective Gower of Scotland Yard take the half-dazed and half-drugged Matthew Brady into custody and it’s not long before he finds himself condemned to spend the rest of his innocent life in Manningham Gaol, a maximum-security prison.

Now Brady may not be anything like Sean Dillon or Paul Chavasse, the ex-IRA turned British agents and two of the author’s most famous heroes, but what he has in common with them is plenty of guts, a fighting spirit, a penchant for stupid risks, a brazen attitude, and the knowledge that he could be going down a one-way street.

Unbelievably, Brady escapes from Manningham and begins his hunt for the man (or men) who framed him. I found it slightly reminiscent of Andy Dufresne's escape from the Shawshank State Penitentiary in The Shawshank Redemption.

There hasn't been a Jack Higgins novel that doesn’t have a lovely girl in it. Anne Dunning, the daughter of Harry Dunning who worked with Brady on a dam project in Brazil, crops up out of nowhere and joins him in his quest. Their love is unspoken. Together, they unearth the truth behind the frame-up and discover why Brady was made scapegoat. The book is less than 120 pages, so I have given away very little.

Final word
Hell Is Too Crowded sounds like the title of a hardboiled noir paperback. It isn't. It’s a simple and uncomplicated story of a man who is at the wrong place at the wrong time. It has been done before. There is plenty of action thanks mainly to Brady’s knack for getting into trouble. The end is predictable though it's not always so in some other novels of Jack Higgins, who has written this one in his characteristic mild-to-moderate style. A decent read.


My previous reviews of Jack Higgins novels:

1. The Keys of Hell, 1965
2. The Iron Tiger, 1966
3. A Fine Night for Dying, 1969
4. A Prayer for the Dying, 1973
5. Storm Warning, 1976

Stand-up comedy by Jim Carrey and Ray Romano

A little something different for this Tuesday's Overlooked Films, Audio & Video over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom.

I'm a sucker for stand-up comedy. I enjoy watching stand-up comedians deliver clean, witty, satirical, and intelligent lines on stage. I wonder how they do it. Do they speak impromptu or do they rehearse? I assume it's a little of both: they practice first and then speak extempore. I also wonder if stand-up comedy is an in-built thing, a gift you were born with, a talent you inherited through your genes.

It takes a lot of courage and confidence to stand up before a live audience, babble non-stop, and make them laugh. What happens if you know your jokes are beginning to fall flat and you're losing your audience? Do you reach for the flask of whisky in your pocket?

Everyone has a good joke to tell but not everyone can tell a good joke. Most of us have at one time or another told a joke to family and friends and met with embarrassing silence. Now imagine that on a much bigger scale.

One of the reasons I also like watching awards ceremonies like the Academy and Golden Globe are the speeches by the presenters and winners, particularly those who have a proclivity for humour, like Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine, Meryl Streep, Jim Carrey, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Sacha Baron Cohen, Hugh Laurie, Ray Romano, Jennifer Lawrence, and Adrien Brody. Their speeches are a form of stand-up comedy too.

Surfing the internet for some good stand-up comedy, I came across two short nineties clips on YouTube. The first is Jim Carrey’s tribute to Clint Eastwood at the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1996 and the other is Ray Romano’s jokes at a talk show appearance long before Everybody Loves Raymond.

Both are very funny, especially Carrey with his imitation of the man with no name. Romano excels with his parental humour. Take a look below.

Library Anxiety

This is the first time I have come across the term Library Anxiety. I discovered it quite by accident on the website of the Luria Library of Santa Barbara City College, California, which hosted a national library week. I was intrigued by its theme which read as follows:

“Have you ever been intimidated by the thought of asking a librarian a question? If so, you’re not alone. Thousands of people around the world have Library Anxiety, avoiding libraries for a variety of reasons: time constraints, uncertainty about a librarian’s ability to meet their information need, fear of looking unintelligent for not being able to find information themselves, and more. Some people may simply be overwhelmed by the vast amount of information libraries provide through electronic databases and the library’s collection itself, not knowing where to start in the information search.”

The Luria Library assured students that the National Library Week would be “the perfect time to leap over the hurdle of Library Anxiety and learn more about what your library can do for you.” 

Students at the Library of Congress.
Photo source: www.loc.gov

I thought it was a very innovative reaching-out programme for students. It showed that the college cared for their well-being.

In the past I have been a member of private libraries as well as the British Council Library and the American Library in Mumbai, but I have never experienced Library Anxiety. I recall going up to the librarian(s) often and inquiring about the availability of specific books or reserving those I wanted to borrow. Librarians are by and large friendly people. I suppose that is because they spend the entire day among tons and tons of lovely books, which is not to say that their jobs are less stressful.

Apparently, Library Anxiety is an issue and is linked to other forms of anxiety and stress. The Washington State University, which offers counselling services, describes Library Anxiety as “a real and prevalent problem for many college students. Very basically, Library Anxiety is a fear of both the library space, which can be seen as overwhelming and confusing, and of the process of using the library to find materials.”

The American Library in Mumbai.
Photo source: www.photos.state.gov

In fact, the WSU Libraries – Guides has listed four common signs and symptoms of Library Anxiety: fear and uneasiness with the physical space of the library, often related to how big the library is; fear of approaching a librarian or library worker to ask for help; fear that you are alone in not knowing how to use the library; and feeling paralysed when trying to start library research.

I haven’t been to a library in nearly two decades and I haven't met anybody who felt anxiety in one, so there’s not much I can say. Do you have anything to share on this relatively unknown phobia?