• @[email protected]
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    fedilink
    English
    221 day ago

    The jug represents the simple pleasures of youth. Common to households across America, it would regularly be used to store a variety of sweetened beverages, from lemonade to iced tea to concentrated orange juice. The emptiness of the bottle signals the hollowness of nostalgia as we can only cling to the imagery even as we long for the sweetness within.

    This meme reminds us that memes themselves are a throwback to a bygone day. In analyzing the symbolism, we seek to recreate the moment of blissful innocence. But we are bound by the chains of memory, able only to see but never touch the essence of the thing before us.

    The text mostly just obstructs the image. You can ignore it.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      61 day ago

      The text mostly just obstructs the image. You can ignore it.

      Really? I interpreted the text in this meme as a rich commentary on the nature of textual interpretation.

      • Consider: “is the glass half full or half empty?” In this image the answer is unclear, obscured by the text.
      • In the same way, language interposes itself between us as thinking beings and the objective world.
      • Together, these point to the nature of subjectivity in interpretation: is the jug half empty or half full? We cannot even reach the empty/full dichotomy (which is so necessary for the expression of our subjective interpretations) because of the obscuring nature of language.