Sexual assault and rape are two topics that are extremly fragile to many people. Some argue that these topics are not appropriate table talk, and some just prefer not to talk about them at all. The silence and the debate is what makes these topics extremely worthwhile to me. As a young woman in America there is a lot of shame for being a woman with a body, and with that comes a lot of fear to be out in public alone. Thankfully, there are some people who are not afraid to speak out against these things and I am one of them.
I choose the Bernie Sanders meme as inspiration for my memes about these serious issues within our society. The Sanders meme was a perfect fit for the topic of sexual assult and womens bodies because Bernie Sanders believes that abortion is a constitiutional right for all. In this moment that Bernie Sanders was caught off guard, patiently seated, has become a popular and memorable moment in our history. Many people on the internet have used his photo for funny forms of expressions, as well as pretty serious ones. I believe that these memes are an icebreaker for the very serious and rather uncomfortable topics that many people don't really like to talk about.
As I was working on the memes, I thought about the following quote from Susan Sontag's On Photography, “Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.” The quote resonates with the photos because Bernie Sanders has now become a stamp for society, and each make of his photo has its own story that might not be the same from Sanders reality. Sanders' photo of him, just his photo of him seated went viral, in a few short hours. In John Berger's Ways of Seeing he writes, “Publicity exerts an enormous influence and is a political phenomenon of great influence.” This is evidently true with this photo of Bernie, just as every not funny version of it has been made and remade to share a message with society.
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