Paper short abstract:

The paper seeks to reveal the parodic nature of an extensive collection of humorous memes complied in Israel from February-June 2020 and address the whole range of tensions that parody preserves in this context. Particularly, its ambivalence towards prevailing cultural rationales in social media.

Paper long abstract:

The paper seeks to reveal and discuss the parodic nature of an extensive collection of humorous memes complied in Israel from February-June 2020, and ask what can it teach us about the (Israeli) public response to COVID-19 and about the digital medium as a rich source of contemporary folklore.

While the wide scope of parodies in this context is not surprising, considering the collage-oriented nature of the meme and its reliance on memetic templates (Nissenbaum and Shifman 2018), the cultural index or database they reference and their roles are not self-evident. This repertoire includes hundreds of parodies about movies, TV shows, famous paintings, games and even reports, graphs and instructions, time indicators and myths. Some were common on social media even before the epidemic, and some reflect a unique local reaction to its challenges. According to Hutcheon (1985), parody is not a matter of nostalgic imitation of past models but rather a stylistic confrontation, or a modern recoding which establishes difference at the heart of similarity. Hence, the parodic quote (whether that of a genre, literary work, character, or object) is simultaneously a gesture and a mockery, idealization and resistance. It reflects the desire to regain control of the disease side by side with its futility. The paper will address the whole range of tensions that parody preserves, and in particular, its ambivalence towards prevailing cultural rationales in social media.