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Start Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
In keeping with the theme “Reinvention” of this year’s Console-ing Passions conference, I propose a paper that examines the potentials for what I argue is an underlying feminist praxis in worldbuilding, remix cultures on TikTok. Part of a larger project on world-building through sonic memes on TikTok, I offer here a case study of the recent (as of this writing in early October 2021) “Berries and Cream” sound-meme, in which users cut audio clips from a 2008 Starburst commercial advertising the berries and cream flavor into popular songs and sounds on TikTok. While it is fair to say the user intent for this practice of world-building through sonic reinvention is likely no more than classic internet jokes “for the lulz,” within this practice I argue that there is evidence for a deeper feminist engagement with media and media cultures as such, and with the TikTok platform. In particular, I draw connections between this user practice of memetic remix to the technologies of semiotics, meta-ideologizing, deconstructions, democratics, and differential movement that Chela Sandoval argues comprise the methodology of the oppressed -- her term for the praxis of oppositional consciousness undergirding US third world feminism. By framing this trend through Sandoval’s theories of feminist praxis, I argue that “Berries and Cream Tok” -- and similar practices of sound-based memetic “worldbuilding” on TikTok -- articulate a more critical, feminist, oppositional praxis undergirding these easily and popularly dismissed user performances.
What Does it Mean? Berries and Cream!: Towards a Feminist Praxis in TikTok’s Memetic Cultures
In keeping with the theme “Reinvention” of this year’s Console-ing Passions conference, I propose a paper that examines the potentials for what I argue is an underlying feminist praxis in worldbuilding, remix cultures on TikTok. Part of a larger project on world-building through sonic memes on TikTok, I offer here a case study of the recent (as of this writing in early October 2021) “Berries and Cream” sound-meme, in which users cut audio clips from a 2008 Starburst commercial advertising the berries and cream flavor into popular songs and sounds on TikTok. While it is fair to say the user intent for this practice of world-building through sonic reinvention is likely no more than classic internet jokes “for the lulz,” within this practice I argue that there is evidence for a deeper feminist engagement with media and media cultures as such, and with the TikTok platform. In particular, I draw connections between this user practice of memetic remix to the technologies of semiotics, meta-ideologizing, deconstructions, democratics, and differential movement that Chela Sandoval argues comprise the methodology of the oppressed -- her term for the praxis of oppositional consciousness undergirding US third world feminism. By framing this trend through Sandoval’s theories of feminist praxis, I argue that “Berries and Cream Tok” -- and similar practices of sound-based memetic “worldbuilding” on TikTok -- articulate a more critical, feminist, oppositional praxis undergirding these easily and popularly dismissed user performances.
Bio
Sarah Whitcomb Laiola is an assistant professor of Digital Culture and Design at Coastal Carolina University, where she also serves as coordinator for the Digital Culture and Design program. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Riverside, and specializes in teaching new media poetics, visual culture, and contemporary digital technoculture with a focus on feminism and anti-racism in these spaces. Her most recent peer-reviewed publications appear in Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, Hyperrhiz, and Criticism, and she is one of the founding editors of Filter, an Instagram-based venue for electronic literature and textual art.