Genre Awareness

Genre Awareness
Kerry Dirk defines genres as,“tools to help people…get things done” (252). Genre awareness means that we are aware of how these various tools are used (or not used) in different modes of writing. Without being aware of how genre is used, we won’t be able to successfully convey our points in our writing. Being aware of genre is like having a map for your writing: You’re able to get from Point A to Point B because almost everything is already laid out for you. All you have to do is follow it. (It being the conventions of the genre.) 

Memes

Let’s start off with memes. For this assignment in blog 4, I created three different memes that all incorporated retail humor. As someone who’s been working at the same grocery store for almost two years now, I’ve developed my own dreary sense of retail humor, and being able to convey that through memes was a refreshing way of expressing myself. (Usually I only get to share these jokes with coworkers. Anyone who hasn’t worked retail doesn’t really “get it” as much as my coworkers do.)

But before I get into the memes I made, let’s take a look at Limor Shifman’s definition of memes. Shifman defines memes as,

socially recognized types of communicative actions (99).

Meaning that, through the creation and sharing of memes, we’re able to communicate what our feelings are on any given topic, whether that’s retail humor, political frustration, and so on. Shifman also reminds us that meme genres are a key component in the creation of group identity. i.e, my coworkers and I feel a sense of belonging and mutual understanding when we crack jokes about customers’ over-the-top behavior. 

With other types of memes, like “Woman Yelling at Cat” or “The Most Interesting Man in the World”, we have to possess some prior knowledge of the memes in order to make a successful “Woman Yelling at Cat” meme or a “The Most Interesting Man in the World” meme. For example, if you haven’t seen the “TMIMITW” commercials nor the meme format for it, you might have a difficult time creating your own “TMIMITW” meme. 

When I first wrote about the “Woman Yelling at Cat” meme, I said that it fell within the genre of “Reaction Photoshops.” However, upon doing a closer reading of Shifman’s “Meme Genres”, I’ve changed my mind about that. Now I would say that it falls within the subgenre of “rage comics.” Shifman defines this as “a set of expressive characters, each associated with a typical behavior” (113). The woman in the meme represents an irrational character who overreacts at everything, while the cat in the meme represents a character who is fed up or confused with the situation. This is the meme format I used for my first meme in Blog 4.

My social purpose of this meme was to convey the daily frustration that every retail worker experiences with customers who take out their irrational anger and irritation on us low-level employees. It was very easy to make this meme because I was already aware of the genre conventions for this meme. (This particular meme’s popularity helped increase my understanding of said genre conventions for it.)

GIFS

When it came to GIFs, I also explored their genre and social purpose. GIFs, once defined as a “data format”, are presently defined as “an animated GIF file or an otherwise short…untitled moving image” according to Eppink’s “A Brief History of the GIF.” When I made my three GIFs, I wanted to demonstrate how various feelings could all be conveyed in GIF format. The one I most enjoyed was making the “crazy” meme, a reaction GIF that involved an old-timey cartoon of Mickey Mouse making the “cuckoo” gesture next to his head and saying “crazy.” 

In conclusion, GIFs and memes require genre awareness to adequately convey their message. The writer has to be aware of the genre expectations in order to make a successful meme or GIF.