Introduction Post - Nelson Nunez

    I am Nelson Nunez. I migrated from the Dominican Republic at the age of 9. This is my Junior year of college, and I am majoring in accounting. I wouldn't call myself an ambitious person, but one goal I want to accomplish is to visit the 7 wonders of the World. My two biggest hobbies are video games and basketball, which I play almost every chance I get.

1) Understating Patriarchy by Bell Hooks

Quote #1: "Yet many female-headed households endorse and promote patriarchal thinking with far greater passion than two-parent households. Because they do not have an experiential reality to challenge false fantasies of gender roles, women in such households are far more likely to idealize the patriarchal male role and patriarchal men than are women who live with patriarchal men every day."

Quote #2: "By the age of thirty, he began to assume a more macho persona, embracing the dominator model that he had once critiqued. Donning the mantle of patriarch, he gained greater respect and visibility. More women were drawn to him. He was noticed more in public spheres. His criticism of male domination ceased."

Patriarchy Definition: "Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence." 

Short Response:

     As discussed in the essay "Understanding Patriarchy" by Bell Hooks, patriarchy as a political system demands and raises men to feel superior to their female counterparts. This system is ingrained in both men and women from an early stage of their lives, regardless of whether a male figure was present in their household. As a matter of fact, households that do not have a male figure present are more likely to promote and endorse patriarchal thinking because they do not have to face an experimental reality in which they can challenge the fantasies that the patriarchal system offers them. But even when the harshest realities of patriarchy are experienced, as in the case of Bell Hooks's ex-partner, who spent a majority of his formative years around his father, whom Bell Hooks describes as a "violent, alcoholic dad," individuals may still decide to embrace and endorse patriarchy due to what they perceive as "benefits." In this case, Hooks's ex-partner gained more respect, visibility, and attention once he embraced the patriarchal system and embraced a more "macho" persona and abandoned his opposing stances on the system.

2)What memes owe to art History

Quote#1: '“Memes aren’t an innocent process—they carry serious political weight, and not always of the activist variety,” Wershler said, citing the website 4chan’s politics board and other alt-right cyber-communes where hate speech has festered in the form of memes."

Quote#2: "It isn’t so much about visuals, but instead digs deep into the cultural architecture of memes and their political power as a networked critical resistance, where their abilities to incite and inspire, to problematize and be problematic in equal turn, offer a mirror image of our volatile present as much as their avant-garde heritage."

Short Response:
    Although memes are often used to incite positive emotions like laughter, they are also easily weaponized to spread hate speech and political ideologies. They are not powerful just because they are easy to understand with their visuals, but rather because they are deeply embedded in the culture and political networks. Memes act as tools for both resistance and problematic content; they reflect the instability and contradictions around us. This duability makes memes similar to avant-garde art, which also sought to change the norms through disruption and critique. 

3)Memes are our generation's protest art

Quote #1: "The pure-hearted 11-year-old who Trump appears to be yelling at stands in for everyone who is living through his lies and verbal attacks. Explaining that in words took a long time, but one glance at this meme and you get it."

Quote#2: "Others have at least tried out the same techniques: Hillary Clinton (or at least her social media team) burned Trump with the popular 'delete your account' meme during the 2016 campaign. Not that it led to her winning, but still."

Short response:

    Today, memes have become a powerful form of political expression; they can condense emotions and critiques into simple images that are easily understandable by anyone. It might be hard for a person to explain how they feel, for example, how many felt and still feel about the presidential term. Describing what makes them feel uneasy will take time and careful wording, but by using the image of a little boy mowing the lawn while being yelled at by the president, the feeling of powerlessness is instantly transmitted. Politicians themselves have begun to understand the power of memes as political tools, with cases like Hilary Clinton attempting to burn their political opponents through memes.