A Blurring of Contexts

So, last week I was supposed to discuss two new memes which means this week I will be analyzing four. If you remember from my previous posts, this case study is analyzing memes that critique Republican political beliefs by comparing them to apparently contradicting Christian beliefs that many Republican’s hold. The first image is a sarcastic statement criticizing a bakery in Colorado that refused business to a gay couple looking to purchase a cake for their wedding celebration. It’s pointing out that the bakery’s actions, while done because of a religious belief, in fact are hypocritical from a Christian perspective. The second image shows a fake verse out of the bogus book of “Republiconnians”. It points out inconsistencies between Christian and Republican ideology in regards to the poor, healthcare, and illegal immigration. It’s basically communicating that Democratic beliefs about these issues are more representative of a Christian worldview than the conservative counterparts. The third image portrays a scene of from the New Testament where Jesus miraculously feeds a crowd of four thousand with seven loaves of bread a few small fish. The meme presents a humorous critique of a Republican idea that says people on welfare should be required to take a drug test in order to be covered by the government aid program. The fourth image simply makes a broad, unsupported claim that Republicans are completely missing the point of their faith. In all of these memes, there is a blurring of online/offline context. The images attempt to communicate a message from a liberal context by blending a comparison between Christianity and Republicanism with a Democratic innuendo in an effort to show people why they think Republicans are hypocritical. In the real world, many Republicans follow Christianity because they think that the religion supports their political beliefs or at least has no conflict with them. The creators of these memes beg to differ. They are taking the two ideologies most often associated together in an offline context and using them against themselves to share a new message online.