
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
We know that there have been meme wars in America, and that Donald Trump has been called the “first president meme’d into office.” But in Kenya—a country where one of the only feasible forms of political expression is memes, and meme creators are being jailed for criticizing the government, it is a very different story. Western media told countless stories about the viral music video character known as “Makmende.” They called Makmende “The Kenyan Chuck Norris,” or a sound-alike of the famous Norris line, “Make my day.” But, according to the artists who brought Makmende into being, none of these characterizations are accurate. We explore American myopia, the peril of memes and artistic expression in Kenya, and how we should think of memes as a powerful form of communication.
4.1
25872,587 ratings
We know that there have been meme wars in America, and that Donald Trump has been called the “first president meme’d into office.” But in Kenya—a country where one of the only feasible forms of political expression is memes, and meme creators are being jailed for criticizing the government, it is a very different story. Western media told countless stories about the viral music video character known as “Makmende.” They called Makmende “The Kenyan Chuck Norris,” or a sound-alike of the famous Norris line, “Make my day.” But, according to the artists who brought Makmende into being, none of these characterizations are accurate. We explore American myopia, the peril of memes and artistic expression in Kenya, and how we should think of memes as a powerful form of communication.
3,885 Listeners
43,925 Listeners
90,630 Listeners
26,157 Listeners
37,304 Listeners
27,374 Listeners
5,637 Listeners
21,676 Listeners
3,014 Listeners
16,923 Listeners
3,916 Listeners
15,135 Listeners
9,329 Listeners
2,089 Listeners
3,539 Listeners
1,397 Listeners
2,177 Listeners
4,285 Listeners
217 Listeners
81 Listeners
3,132 Listeners
564 Listeners
255 Listeners