Abstract
This commentary piece offers some preliminary thoughts concerning the Greek memes produced since COVID-19 disease arrived at Greece at the end of February 2020, through identifying an analogy between the sociopolitical conditions in Greece-under-lockdown and Orwell’s Oceania in his 1984 novel. It is specifically argued that such texts constitute political humour commenting on the abrupt, yet pervasive changes attested due to state measures against the spread of COVID-19 disease. To this end, memes collected from the social media are discussed and interpreted in comparison with extracts from Orwell’s novel to point to striking similarities between the 1984 sociopolitical context and the Greek one. It is, however, suggested that there is a significant difference between the two contexts: in Orwell’s dystopia, humour seems to have no place at all; on the contrary, humour thrived in Greece-under-lockdown, especially among participants in the social media, in the form of rapidly created and disseminated memes. Memory (a central notion in Orwell’s novel) emerges as a crucial factor for the production of such humour in contemporary Greece and for its absence from Orwell’s Oceania.
References
Adams, C. (2020). ‘2020 or 1984? Thoughts reading Orwell’s 1984 for the first time’. Medium, September 30. Retrieved December 6, 2020 from https://medium.com/@christa.adams/2020-or-1984-thoughts-reading-orwells-1984-for-the-first-time-ec2716260923.
Attardo, S. (2001). Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Attardo, S. (2020). The Linguistics of Humour: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Billig, M. (2005). Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour. London: Sage.
Cambridge Dictionary (2020). ‘Orwellian’. Retrieved December 6, 2020 from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/orwellian.
Chanda, N. (2020). ‘George Orwell lives: In the heroic recounting of China’s fight against “devil” coronavirus, facts are obliterated’. The Times of India, April 4. Retrieved July 18, 2020 from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/george-orwell-lives-in-the-heroic-recounting-of-chinas-fight-against-devil-coronavirus-facts-are-obliterated.
Cochran, R. (1989). ‘“What courage!”: Romanian “our leader” jokes’. The Journal of American Folklore 102 (405), pp. 259-274.
Davies, C. (1998). Jokes and Their Relation to Society. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Davies, C. (2011). Jokes and Targets. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Erll, A. (2020). ‘Will COVID-19 become part of collective memory?’, in Rittgerodt, R. (ed.), 13 Perspectives on the Pandemic: Thinking in a State of Exception, Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 45–50. Retrieved August 4, 2020 from https://www.degruyter.com/staticfiles/craft/media/doc/DG_13perspectives_humanities.pdf.
Holmes, M. (2020). ‘Coronavirus is making society like George Orwell’s 1984’. Stroud News and Journal, April 8. Retrieved July 18, 2020 from https://www.stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk/news/18365965.coronavirus-making-society-like-george-orwells-1984.
Iakovou, C. (2020). ‘Why Orwell’s 1984 remains timely (and sold like crazy during the lockdown]’. Lifo, July 25. Retrieved August 4, 2020 from https://mikropragmata.lifo.gr/guest_posts/giati-to-1984-tou-tzortz-orgouel-paramenei-epikairo-kai-giati-afksithike-to-endiaferon-tou-kosmou-stin-pandimia.
Kaye, K. (2020). ‘“This could get Orwellian really fast”: COVID-19 could end privacy as we know it’. Fast Company, March 26. Retrieved July 18, 2020 from https://www.fastcompany.com/90482264/this-could-get-orwellian-really-fast-covid-19-could-end-privacy-as-we-know-it.
Kishtainy, K. (2009). ‘Humour and resistance in the Arab World and Greater Middle East’, in Stephan, M. J. (ed.), Civilian Jihad: Nonviolent Struggle, Democratisation, and Governance in the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 53-63.
Krikmann, A. & Laineste, L. (eds.) (2009). Permitted Laughter: Socialist, Post-socialist and Never-socialist Humour. Tartu: ELM Scholarly Press.
Lewis, J. (2020). ‘MP compares “shocking” introduction of lockdown measures to Orwell’s 1984’. Daily Echo, April 22. Retrieved July 18, 2020 from https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/18395023.mp-compares-shocking-introduction-lockdown-measures-orwells-1984.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2020). ‘Orwellian, Orwellianism’. Retrieved December 6, 2020 from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Orwellian.
Newsbeast (2020). ‘Orwell’s prophetic “1984” today looks more real than ever’. April 25. Retrieved July 18, 2020 from https://www.newsbeast.gr/weekend/arthro/6178510/to-profitiko-1984-toy-orgoyel-moiazei-simera-pio-alithino-apo-pote.
Nicholls, C. (2020). ‘Online humour, cartoons, videos, memes, jokes and laughter in the epoch of the coronavirus’. Text Matters 10, pp. 274-318.
Orwell, G. (2004 [1949]). ‘George Orwell’s defence of his novel’, in Bloom, H. (ed.), George Orwell’s 1984, New York: Chelsea House Publishers, p. 44.
Orwell, G. (2018 [1949]). 1984. Australia: Planet eBook. Retrieved July 18, 2020 from https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/1984.pdf.
Sen, S. (2020). ‘Big Brother is watching! Stark similarities between George Orwell’s “1984” & Modi’s 2020 India: George Orwell’s fictional depiction of the future world is eerily coming true’. The Logical Indian, February 7. Retrieved December 6, 2020 from https://thelogicalindian.com/exclusive/living-in-1984-orwell-modi-19910.
Sheftel, A. (2011). ‘“Monument to the international community, from the grateful citizens of Serajevo”: Dark humour as counter-memory in post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina’. Memory Studies 5 (2), pp. 145-164.
Speier, H. (1998). ‘Wit and politics: An essay on power and laughter’. American Journal of Sociology 103 (5), pp. 1352-1401.
Tsakona, V. (2015). ‘“The doctor said I suffer from vitamin € deficiency”: Investigating the multiple social functions of Greek crisis jokes’. Pragmatics 25 (2), pp. 287-313.
Tsakona, V. (2020). Recontextualising Humour: Rethinking the Analysis and Teaching of Humour. Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.
Tsakona, V. & Popa, D. E. (2011). ‘Humour in politics and the politics of humour: An introduction’, in Tsakona, V. & Popa, D. E. (eds.), Studies in Political Humour: In between Political Critique and Public Entertainment, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 1-30.
Utilitarian Dictionary of Modern Greek [Χρηστικό λεξικό της νεοελληνικής γλώσσας] (2014). ‘Οργουελικός/ή/ό’ [Orwellian]. Athens: Academy of Athens, p. 1176.
Waterlow, J. (2018). It’s Only a Joke, Comrade! Humour, Trust and Everyday Life under Stalin. Oxford.
Wiktionary [Βικιλεξικό. Το ελεύθερο λεξικό] (2020). ‘Οργουελικός’ [Orwellian]. Retrieved December 6, 2020 from https://el.wiktionary.org/wiki/οργουελικός.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2021 The European Journal of Humour Research