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more lethal memetics
Thinking about yesterday's discussion a bit more, I came up with a few other fictional examples of lethal / severely incapacitating memes:
Monty Python's "Funniest Joke In The World" the film Infinite Jest [V], from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest the coma-inducing bitmap from Snow Crash the "seven days later you die" videotape from The Ring / Ringu
To my mind, none of these are as effective as the Freddy Krueger meme seen in Freddy vs. Jason, because none of them (with the possible exception of the Ringu video) are truly viral: they don't use their hosts as a vehicle for making more copies of themselves. Mostly (again the Ringu video bucks the trend here) they incapacitate or kill their victims immediately, which functions as a sort of negative feedback mechanism and inhibits the spread of the meme.
The Ringu video is unique (spoilers follow) because of the clause whereby the tape becomes non-lethal if you expose someone else to it before your seven days are up. (This is true in the Japanese version of the film; I haven't seen the American version so I'm not certain if this detail survived translation.) This has the intriguing evolutionary advantage of compelling the "host" to continue spreading the virus (which we also see in They Came From Within) although the fact that the host is cured after infecting another individual operates as another negative feedback mechanism, ultimately preventing the meme from enjoying the exponential proliferation that the Freddy meme begins to attain.
Next up on the viral horror list will probably be Cabin Fever, which I missed in the theatres but which is now out on video. Cabin Fever isn't about memetic viruses, but we'll see if its biological version of virus horror stacks up well against Cronenberg's. |
Friday, March 12, 2004
11:12 AM
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