Gondry and Sweding

Following on from my post about narrative archetypes, I was interested to see Michel Gondry declare himself averse to such influences in a recent interview:

"I don't like films that use codes. I don't like vampire movies or zombie movies. I went to see I Am Legend with an ex-girlfriend the other day, and I immediately realised it was a zombie movie! You know what I mean? There are certain rules, and those rules are things that you've seen many times. I have a hard time with fantasy movies too."

We can think of the 'codes' (vampire, zombie, fantasy) that Gondry refers to as narrative memeplexes. And we can think of his 'rules' as related narrative memes which together comprise those memeplexes.

Given his stand against archetype memes, it seems more than a little ironic that Gondry's latest film, Be Kind Rewind, should make imitation it's subject. In the film, Jack Black and Mos Def play a pair of hapless video store workers required to swede classic films after accidentally wiping their tape stock. This so-called 'sweding' involves the creation of a lo-fi copy which loosely resembles the original.

The notion of sweding is interesting to memeticists for several reasons.

Firstly, because it is itself a highly infectious meme, if my experience is any guide to that of the wider film-loving population. I have delighted in explaining the concept to several friends and colleagues - partly due to its prescience in the YouTube age, but also because the word 'sweding' is rather amusing. (As Wikipedia notes, 'The tapes are described as having come from Sweden as an excuse for higher rental fees and longer wait times'. This etymology is pretty funny, but the very sound of the word is enough to make me grin. Sometimes pleasing or unusual phonetics are all that's required for a word to replicate and become an established part of a language).

More important than its meme status, though, is the lo-fi copying that sweding denotes. One of the cornerstones of evolutionary theory is that hi-fidelity copies are produced. With genes, this condition is comfortably met. But as Susan Blackwell points out in The Meme Machine, memes are often copied at lower fidelity, as memetic replicators are less resistant to mutation than genetic replictors. In the case of sweding, we might ask whether the copying fidelity is so low that it cannot meaningfully count as an instance of replication or memetic inheritance. I would argue that it can count, as the meme sweders are really interested in is a narrative meme, not a stylistic meme, and the fidelity of the narrative is sufficiently preserved post-swede, despite severe mutation of the style.

Phew! So much to say about one Director, one film, one concept, one word. But great to touch upon some key issues within memetics in the process.

Narrative archetypes as memes

I've been wondering where the so-called 'semi-reality' meme - a regular feature in recent situation-comedy, drama, and soap-opera - might have started.

Writing in The Guide - an authority on matters of narrative playfulness, David Stubbs posits Curb Your Enthusiasm as the ultimate model for successful semi-reality shows on both sides of the Atlantic. From the UK-centric perspective, without CYE there would be no Extras and no Moving Wallpaper / Echo Beach, ITV's current experiment in scheduling symbiosis. Both follow CYE's semi-real formula by introducing story components (but not entire stories, as in the case of factual drama) from either the real world or the worlds of other stories to splendidly surreal effect.

Stubbs' article also highlights the host of character, plot and plot-device archetypes which crop up time and again in these 'Curb-lite' shows. This stirred my own slowly-fermenting fascination with narrative archetypes.

Why the fascination with narrative archetypes? Because all narrative archetypes are memes. The classic character, the age-old plotline, the cliched plot device - each has been passed from writer to writer by imitation.

By their nature, archetypes (narrative-related and otherwise) are super-successful memes - to become archetypal requires that a meme establish itself within a culture to the point that it be recognised by a sizeable proportion of the population.

But how and why do archetypes become archetypes?

Well, in the case of narrative archetypes, our (memetic) fondness for hit films and books guarantees that the components - character, plot - of such hits find an audience of millions, whether by chance or by substantive contribution to that hit status. Some of these components - not necessarily the substantive contributors - then go on to become archetypes, embedding themselves in the minds of a population through endless replication with myriad mutations.

Note that a positive feedback loop kicks in here: writers are more likely to replicate narrative archetypes which audiences replicate enthusiastically. Why? Because audience replication tends to correlate positively with size of audience over time, as the replicated archetypes become familiar and salient to ever more people, who are in turn disposed to choose stories containing those archetypes in the future.

I would conjecture that there are two groups of narrative-archetype memes likely to be replicated in the minds and behaviour of writers and their audiences. The first group includes memes which hold a mirror up to everyday experience. The second includes those which express unlived fantasies. In each case, the meme contains potentially useful information that - if coded and stored correctly in a brain - could deliver improved fitness to the organism embodying that brain. This simple evolutionary advantage, combined with the advanced human cognition (theory of mind, imaginative foresight) required for said coding and storage to occur, would explain the replicatory success of narrative-archetype memes.

Admittedly, this is idle speculation. Which is fine, if labelled as such. Like evolutionary biologists, memeticists just need to be careful to distinguish between evidence-based conclusions and plausible but unverified accounts of casually observed phenomena. For the purposes of this blog I'm happy to play around with memetic explanation as a means to greater understanding.

My meme dream

I first heard Susan Blackmore talk about memetics early last year at an art vs science discussion forum organised by the Royal Society. Unlike many in the audience I found the notion of cultural evolution, the genetic analogy and her conclusions about human creativity to be fascinating and utterly intuitive.

Since then, I've been frantically reading up on memetic theory, from Dawkins to Dennett to... well actually I haven't got much further than that. (I can recommend the typically chaotic Wikipedia entry and Susan's book The Meme Machine to anyone seeking an intro to memetics).

In this blog I'll be documenting and discussing some of the memes that I observe as my eye - and my mind's eye - become ever more accustomed to the memetic lense. I'm also going to report on the progress of my ongoing slog through the past and present literature on memes.

My aim is to combine observation and education to achieve some practical end in my day job as an advertising planner, with the ultimate goal being to define a clear and actionable theory of memetic marketing.

Of course, the dreamy kid in me would one day like to seed and monitor a keenly replicated meme of my own, hence the blog's title.

I hope you enjoy reading about my journey. Please feel free to point things out or proffer direction if I stray off course.