By Bel Kelly
Elm Staff Writer
In her recent essay published on Tumblr, musician Ethel Cain answers questions about authorial intent, emphasizing how humor can pollute public discourse on any given cultural object.
With the advent of the internet, memes have become the most prevalent form of public response to big releases across all entertainment media.
Cain’s essay is a lamentation on how this light-hearted approach has ushered in a new era of anti-intellectualism and insincerity in media consumption.
“Don’t let the joke about it overtake the source material,” she said.
While the sentiment has the potential for wider application, it comes from Cain’s personal experience as an artist.
Her debut album, “Preacher’s Daughter,” is a concept piece that, across 13 tracks, follows a girl who escapes her family home only to die at the hands of a cannibalistic lover.
This album explores dark and difficult themes such as abuse, sexual violence, and family trauma, yet it has not been exempt from the usual onslaught of jokes.
Cain validly expresses her frustration with unserious fan response in her essay.
“The number of times I’ve had to read the same stupid joke like ‘yes, you ate that like Isaiah ate Ethel’… It makes me SO mad,” Cain said.
Here, the devastating and violent end of her album’s story is rehashed as no more than a pithy quip.
Modern fan discourse reeks of disrespect toward artists who put their heart into their work.
Moreover, in turning well-written tragedies into comedy, this behavior speaks to a lack of sincerity within contemporary culture and an unwillingness to engage with difficult topics.
Cain is not the only female musician to have found her art stripped of meaning for the sake of online jokes.
Billie Eilish’s hit single “What Was I Made For?” has been memeified: an AI version of the song, in which the words are replaced by cat meows, has recently gone viral.
Videos online of Eilish’s ongoing “Hit Me Hard And Soft Tour” feature concert attendees meowing along as she performs the song.
Fan reactions to the song are ironic considering it focuses on Eilish’s struggle to find meaning in life but has had its meaning ignored and bastardized beyond sense.
Artists seem to constantly be exposing their innermost selves and sharing their greatest vulnerabilities with the world through their art — only for these efforts to be ridiculed.
As Cain’s essay points out, it seems an unfair trade.
Society’s complacent and amused approach to processing media has also leaked into how the internet manages more serious topics outside entertainment news.
For example, public responses to Liam Payne’s death after falling from a balcony in Argentina on Oct. 16 have been widely flippant, even among his die-hard fans. Social media apps were flooded with memes and one-liners making fun of Payne, his career, and his death.
“Our constant need to joke and meme everything has robbed us of the ability to think critically and feel empathy,” Halima Jibril wrote regarding the public treatment of Payne’s death.
Social media has become an anonymous safe haven for disconnection from intellectual and empathetic thought despite its original purpose as a means of connection between people over space and time.
The irony epidemic is hurting our ability to connect with art, real life, and each other.
Humor is a coping mechanism for uncomfortable feelings: in making a meme of them, we dilute their meaning and make them more palatable — but not everything in life and art should be palatable.
Sitting in discomfort, rather than racing to make a joke, will result in a more earnest engagement with one’s own deeper feelings.
In the song “Strangers,” Cain asks, “Am I making you feel sick?”
Cain’s tantalizing discussion of trauma, gendered violence, and oppression is indeed repulsive, confrontative, and frightening: it would be natural to feel sick. So, feel sick.
Cain offers no solution in her essay beyond urging us to rediscover passion and sincerity in response to art.
“It feels good to love intensely,” Cain said.
The time has come to confront art with an open mind and heart. Many contemporary artists are creating vulnerable work; it is time audiences join them in wearing their hearts on their sleeves.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Photo Caption: Ethel Cain recently posted an essay about inappropriate fan reactions to music on her social media pages.