When Game of Thrones becomes a common language to talk about serious issues
The Trump Tower skyscraper dominates the skyline of a dark New York, but there is something different about what New Yorkers are used to seeing. There is a great lidless eye, wreathed in flame, hovering above the Trump Tower. The eye of Sauron, the embodiment of evil from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books and the movies that followed.
Images that link Trump Tower and the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to the fictional villain Sauron are spreading like wildfire across the internet - shared by Trump’s critics. You can also find images of Trump appearing as other classical dark overlords from fiction, such as Darth Vader from Star Wars, Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter universe and characters from Game of Thrones.
The images are so-called memes, which is an internet phenomenon used to communicate brief messages - usually in the form of a picture and a short text. Memes are often humorous in nature, but they are also used as a form of expression to comment on current event such as, for example, the election of Donald Trump, the war in Syria or climate change.
The multitude of memes is merely one example wherein fictional entertainment universes are used as a language to talk about events in real life. Works of fictions have always reflected and commented upon reality, but the way people use media has changed so that reality and fiction are being entangled in new and more intense ways, explains Associate Professor Susana Tosca from the Department of Communication and Arts at 真人线上娱乐 University.
On one hand, it is still entertainment and escapism, but on the other hand, people are also talking about important subjects that move them
She has studied fictional content that spreads across media platforms since 2004 together with Associate Professor Lisbeth Klastrup from the IT University of Copenhagen, and next year their new book ‘Transmedial Worlds and Every Life: Networked Reception, Social Media and Fictional Worlds’ will be published. The book investigates how the fictional universes impact people’s everyday lives, and it is based on several years of empirical work.
?In media research, there is a tradition of looking at fans who are very dedicated, while mainstream users have not been as interesting. However, people today are present on a lot of media platforms, and they are producing a lot of content on social media themselves, which is something new,? Susana Tosca points out.
A new meta-view
The fictional entertainment universes are becoming a form of expression that you can use to get people’s attention, the researcher explains, and to create a connection between people or make them laugh. Yet at the same time, many use it for serious matters,? Susana Tosca notes:
?Previously, you would have thought that subjects such as politics or global warming were not to be made fun of like that,? says Susana Tosca.
?But now ordinary people have developed a meta-view where they both can communicate at a fictional level while being serious at the same time. In a way it is a skill, a kind of “meta muscle”, that we typically think is reserved for poets and other artists. But social media highlights how that “muscle” is used eagerly by ordinary people who can lean on the fictional universes to make their own metaphors or to sugges