This document discusses how Morrissey memes can be analyzed through a semiotic lens to understand how his public perception has evolved. It introduces different approaches to studying memes, from their ability to produce and circulate meaning to how they function as a language. The document then analyzes several Morrissey memes that establish binary comparisons, invert expectations, and combine "lexical units" to comment on debates around his politics and queerness. Later memes show how his persona has been portrayed differently over time. The conclusion is that memes both disrupt binary logic and can provide insights into a celebrity's reputation, though attribution is difficult given memes' anonymous nature.

1. ALESHA SERADA
GOOD TIMES FOR A CHANGE:
UN-QUEERING MORRISSEY MEMES

2. WILL NATURE MAKE A MAN OF ME YET?
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Queering Morrissey
Andersson, J. (2011). Vauxhall’s Post-industrial Pleasure
Gardens: ‘Death Wish’ and Hedonism in 21st-century
London. Urban Studies, 48(1), 85–100.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098009360238
Dillane, A., Power, M. J., & Devereux, E. (2014). ‘I Can
Have Both’: A queer reading of Morrissey. Journal of
European Popular Culture, 5(2), 149–163.
https://doi.org/10.1386/jepc.5.2.149_1
Rukes, F. (2017). The Disruption of Normativity:
Queer Desire and Negativity in Morrissey and The
Smiths. Gender Forum, 64.

3. A VERY IMPORTANT RESEARCH QUESTION
THAT HAS LINGERED FOR FOUR DECADES
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Is Morrissey racist?
Baker, J. H. (2012). In the Spirit of ’69? Morrissey and the
Skinhead Cult. In Morrissey: Fandom, Representations and
Identities (pp. 53–72). Intellect Books.
Power, M. J., Dillane, A., & Devereux, E. (2012). A push and a
shove and the land is ours: Morrissey’s counter-hegemonic
stance(s) on social class. Critical Discourse Studies, 9(4), 375–
392. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2012.713207
Devereux, E., & Hidalgo, M. (2015). ‘You’re gonna need
someone on your side’: Morrissey’s Latino/a and Chicano/a
fans. Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 12(2), 21.
Dillane, A., Power, M. J., & Devereux, E. (2017). “Shame Makes
the World Go Around”: Performed and Embodied (Gendered)
Class Disgust in Morrissey’s “Slum Mums.” In Music as
Multimodal Discourse Semiotics, Power and Protest (pp. 47–
70). Bloomsbury Academic.

4. How is Morrissey
perceived today?
T H E A N S W E R C A N B E F O U N D I N M E M E S

5. Exploratory/philosophical meme studies
▸ Why are memes?
▸ Do memes have politics?
Functional meme studies
▸ How and why memes circulate?
▸ Practical application: how to make a viral
meme?
Semiotic meme studies
▸ How memes produce meaning?
▸ Practical application: how to say things with memes?
Memes are a language
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Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in Digital Culture. MIT Press.
Seiffert-Brockmann, J., Diehl, T., & Dobusch, L. (2018). Memes as
games: The evolution of a digital discourse online. New Media &
Society, 20(8), 2862–2879.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817735334
Wiggins, B. E. (2019). The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital
Culture: Ideology, Semiotics, and Intertextuality. Routledge.
Bown, A., & Bristow, D. (Eds.). (2019). Post Memes: Seizing the
Memes of Production. Punctum Books.

6. PROBABLY THE STRAIGHTEST MEME
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Enter Chad

7. Internet explains itself
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8. AS SOON AS THE LOGIC OF THE SIGH IS ESTABLISHED, SECOND AND THIR D
GENERATION MEMES ARE PRODUCED
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Exploring semiotic binaries

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10. LET THE CULTURE WAR COMMENCE!
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Chad Morrissey vs. Virgin Robert Smith

11. Looking for meaning
beyond memes
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12. SEMIOTICS OF BINARIES ARE TESTED IN THEIR NEXT ITERATIONS
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The simplest logical operation:
inversion

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Memes are
continuous
conversations

14. NOT THE GREATEST MEME, BUT A GREAT EXAMPLE OF MEME SYNTAX
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Recombining ‘lexical units’

15. SEMIOTICS OF BINARIES ARE TESTED IN THEIR NEXT ITERATIONS
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Third order ‘lexical’ operation +
second order ‘syntactic’ operation

16. IS IT HOW HIS REMAINING FAN BASE SEES HIM?
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Morrissey’s evolution in one meme

17. JUST LIKE MORRISSEY DOES
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Conclusion:
Memes deny binary logic
▸ Memes are a language which can be used to discuss important matters
▸ Memes are inherently queer (they establish a binary and then disrupt it)
▸ Memes can tell a lot about public perception of a celebrity persona
▸ Very difficult to attribute to particular authors or audiences (same as folklore)
▸ But, if we look at memes as language units, maybe we don’t need attribution?
▸ Popular memes assume that Morrissey is racist, actually, although this
assumption is based on how media depicts him
▸ Memes also reflect on his queerness, but typically in a positive way

18. ASERADA@UWASA.FI
T H A N K Y O U !