Pinterest is a commonly known online corkboard that allows people to create their own boards and pin anything that they find interesting. Because it is online, anything and everything is fair game which of course includes memes. I have chosen to study Religious Christian memes on Pinterest to analyze how they are portrayed to connect the community of Christian lived religion.
The focus of my meme study will be on how lived religion memes depict different aspects of the Christian lifestyle to create humor and analyze what kinds of humor that Christian memes portray. Because there are very specific rituals, scenarios and beliefs that only Christians understand, it appears that these memes have been used to unite believers thus strengthening their faith and sense of humor. Another aspect I would like to address is the target audience. Pinterest is notoriously a predominantly female website so it will be interesting to see if the boards and pins found regarding Christian memes reflect that label or not.
The focus of my meme study will be on how lived religion memes depict different aspects of the Christian lifestyle to create humor and analyze what kinds of humor that Christian memes portray. Because there are very specific rituals, scenarios and beliefs that only Christians understand, it appears that these memes have been used to unite believers thus strengthening their faith and sense of humor. Another aspect I would like to address is the target audience. Pinterest is notoriously a predominantly female website so it will be interesting to see if the boards and pins found regarding Christian memes reflect that label or not.
For my first meme analysis, I chose a meme from Pirates of the Caribbean depicting the scene where Jack Sparrow is running away from a mob of native tribes who are trying to capture him. The caption reads "Be a VBS leader they said. It will be fun they said".
This meme incorporates lived religion into it by describing an aspect of Christianity that most actively involved Christians would have knowledge about. VBS, commonly known as Vacation Bible School, is a popular activity churches hold during the summer where children of all ages come and have interactive learning about different Bible stories. Because it involves caring, watching and teaching kids for an extended period of time, it can be seen as a daunting task which is often undertaken by women. Church members in charge of such events recruit volunteers to help teach classes which is where this memes humor originates. When someone volunteers and doesnt realize the extent of what they are doing, they can feel overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to carry out the activities and keep up with the needs and questions that the kids come up with, thus depicted in the analogy of the meme. This meme serves to connect those who have been involved with a VBS (especially women) who can understand the extent of the tasks and provide a comedic outlet to how they sometimes feel.
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