Pre-Internet memes, Part II

vladimirk800i (46)in #memes • 7 years ago (edited)

People quite enjoyed the FIRST PART, so I decided to introduce second, and last, part, since the amount of pre-internet memes is innumerable- each epoch had its own that survived up to date- if you dig well, you’ll find a lot ;)

1. Smile

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In one of his interviews, Vladimir Nabokov (author of “Lolita”) said, that “…I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile–some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket…”. Although the graphical expression of emotions existed a long before (see Greek theatre masks), a mainstream emoticon of yellow smile as we know it today was created by Harvey Ross Ball, an American graphic artist for insurance company to raise a morale of company’s employees. Today there’s thousands of emojis for every situation, people express themselves with emoticons, no need for words (hieroglyphs of 21st century).

2. Wilhelm’s scream

If in movie/cartoon/videogame/tv show there is killing/violent action scene, you can be 99.99% sure there would be used a Wilhelm’s shout. It originates in a movie “An arrow to the leg”, where cowboy Wilhelm, during Indians charge gets…an arrow to the leg…and screams. That’s all :D Somehow this pain expression become very popular among movie and other media content creators.

3. Finger horns

Enjoy heavy metal? Even if you don’t, most likely you've seen this hand gesture. Although a raised hand in this manner was invented way before rock-movement as a “evil-eye repellent” and a bad luck ward-off, today it’s used as a sign of enjoyment or appreciation of metal song that’s being played. It’s hard to tell who first introduced “horns” in rock movement, but recently, Gean Simmons, the KISS guitarist, wanted to register it as his trademark.

4. Bloomsday

Although it’s solely an Irish meme, nevertheless, it’s worldwide popular.
Have you read James Joyce’s “Ulysses”? Apart from being both controversial and uniquely structured 800+ pages story about one (“excuse me?” yes, ONE single) day of a Leopold Bloom, this novel created a whole international tradition- every year, on 16th of June (events of the book happen on this day) the Joycean enthusiasts gather in Dublin, read favorite excerpts from book, and walk the very path, that protagonist, Leopold Bloom walked in the book.

5. Santa Clause

Type Santa Clause in Google and you will see red-clothed grandpa. The image of red-suited Santa Clause was popularized by Coca-Cola as its advertising mascot in commercials. Agree, it’s very unlikely, that, when you say Santa Clause, you imagine the an old icon of St.Nicholas, do you? :D

6. Toohbrush stache

Be honest, the first thing that comes to mind when seeing this moustache is one certain person. And it's not actor. There are several different types of stache, much less of those that bear names (Salvador or Budenny stache), but they are hard to grow and maintain, hence, not so “popular” as association. In our case, all one needs to do is just to shave an upper lip (we all did this at some point of our lives :D) and salute (quite optional).