Susana Distancia: memes and popular culture during the COVID-19 pandemic
Por:
Mraz Bartra, Anna Lee, Caloca-Lafont, Eloy, Ricaurte, Paola, Paz, Eduardo, Elizalde, Nelly Marina, Zasso, Mariel, Loera L.A.E.
Publicada:
8 ago 2023
Ahead of Print:
1 may 2022
Resumen:
Between the end of March and June 2020, COVID-19 quickly spread in
Mexico. As a response, the Mexican government announced its national
prevention campaign, called `Susana Distancia,' a set of measures,
recommendations, conferences, educational resources, and a chatbot. At
the centre of the campaign was Susana Distancia's character, a young
woman designed in a comic-book-style, echoing the Mexican lucha libre
heroes, who recommended keeping 1.5 m (6 feet) of physical distance to
prevent contagion. In the following visual essay, we analyse Susana
Distancia's role, from its institutional origins to its later
transformation as a popular culture meme. Based on the Latin American
theory of the popular, we argue that the Susana Distancia, as a meme,
used various mechanisms to support and challenge the institutional
discourse. In this sense, Susana Distancia can be considered a meme that
embraces the popular: a cultural artefact that travels across different
languages, spaces, and rituals, from cyberspace to the streets, from
governmental intentions to everyday performativity. When we use lo
popular as a category, we refer to the possibility of enacting subaltern
narratives in aesthetic and ethical terms. Multiple readings and
manifestations of Susana Distancia demonstrate popular culture as a
means of travelling through diverse semantic appropriations. Various
forms of popular culture: the politised, the artistic, the erotic, the
authentic, the mainstream, and the political, converge in the
translation of meaning, from the institutional discourse to the lived
experiences of the Mexican population.
Filiaciones:
Mraz Bartra, Anna Lee:
Peninsula 360 Press, United States
Caloca-Lafont, Eloy:
FCPyS, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico
Ricaurte, Paola:
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, United States
Paz, Eduardo:
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Azcapotzalco (UAM-AZC), Mexico
Elizalde, Nelly Marina:
Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico
Zasso, Mariel:
Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico
Loera L.A.E.:
PUEDJS (UNAM), Mexico
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