Meme Queens

Emmys, Marvel, and actual royalty I guess

September 15, 2022

Emmy Queens

The fabulous Jennifer Coolidge and Sheryl Lee Ralph both won Emmys earlier this week, and both delivered wonderfully epic acceptance speeches that have both been given the unique honor of “instant classic gay pre-game playlist videos.” If you haven’t yet, please watch them both and enjoy. 

Platform Updates

Instagram 

The Rest of Meta 

TikTok

Twitter

YouTube

Twitch 

Culture Movers 

Misc Tech

Film & TV

Music 

Creator Economy 

Gaming 

Dead Queen 

Just in case you didn’t notice, Queen Elizabeth II died last week, and the internet went wild. Apologize to any monarchist anglophiles in my readership, but I was loving it. Paddington Bear escorted her to heaven. Princess Diana shut the gates. Canada’s Drag Race was deleting tweets. Trish Paytas was about to give birth to a reincarnated monarch. Irish Twitter was step dancing. The Grim Reaper was looking for Henry Kissinger. 

If you are reading this and don’t fully understand why large sections of the internet were celebrating the death of that nice old lady the Netflix show is based on, I have two factors for you to consider.

  1. Monarchy and Colonialism Are Bad - For many people around the globe, the negative effects of British colonial rule are still very present and visible in their day-to-day lives. Others simply disagree with the existence of any hereditary monarchy on philosophical and ethical grounds. An English monarch will always be a symbol of these forces and the history of harm they have caused. 

  2. COVID Broke Us - Over one million people in the United States alone have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. The CDC reports that an average of 350 people still die each day from the disease in the US. Many people have mourned the passing of family, friends, and coworkers in small ways, but there has been very little collective mourning. The kind of community mourning you see after mass tragedies like 9/11 or the death of a head of state. 

I think a lot of people are craving the closure that comes from collective mourning, but not for a monarch. For the days they spend away from friends and family in lockdown. For the loved ones they watched fall into pandemic conspiracy theories. For the jobs they lost. For the people in their lives who died. Watching powerful institutions like the British government and a royal family ask so many to participate in mourning one woman feels difficult after the past few years. So we make jokes. 

For a good breakdown of how Tumblr’s unique meme culture responded to the Queen's death, I recommend checking out the excellent newsletter Garbage Day. 

Marvel Queen

She-Hulk has been the cure for my MCU fatigue. Last week’s episode introduce Madisynn (with two “n”s and a “y” but not where you think). She’s just a normal non-powered woman enjoying a magic show that gets sent to a demon dimension and then befriends the Sourcer Supreme. Every moment she is on screen is absolutely hilarious. Case Closed.

While I’m a big comics reader and fan of past MCU stuff, I’ve been less impressed with the recent installments in Disney/Marvel’s IP factory. She-Hulk feels like a breath of fresh air with a new comedic tone and frequent focus on the lives of ordinary people living alongside all the superhero shenanigans. If you’ve enjoyed superhero stories in the past but feel overloaded by the recent glut of them, this is one worth checking out. 

 

This is a Madisynn stan newsletter now. I need a full season of Madisynn.