Meme Girls Versus Trump: Digitally Recycled Screen Dialogue as Political Discourse

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article is concerned with the afterlives of scripted screen dialogue in the form of subtitled GIFs and screenshots. I focus on what responses by female screen characters from The Simpsons, Clueless, and Sex and the City reveal about contemporary US politics and culture, considering how feminist-oriented dialogue developed in tandem with the "online culture wars" in the period surrounding the 2016 US presidential campaign. I argue that tapping into the cultural capital of familiar voices allows women's political voices to be amplified, while such memes can also absorb reverberation in President Trump's own social media "echo chamber."