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Outcome

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Intention

It has become clear in the last couple of months that Donald Trump has literally become a living, breathing meme.  Throughout his campaign for president, he has mastered the ability to create conversation and controversy around himself, a result of his extensive experience in the entertainment industry.  On the internet, Trump is often cited not just as a person, but as a meme - his popular soundbites like "Build a Wall" and "Make America Great Again" reflect similar jokes and echoes found in more lighthearted memes.  In the spirit of tonight's presidential debate, we decided to theme our Meme Tennis around Trump and study how we can extract humor out of the presidential affair.

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Layer #1

Adrian Biagioli

In the spirit of tonight's debate, I decided to start with something surreal.  Here I have incorporated a couple of popular internet memes: (1) I replaced Trump's eyes with copies of his mouth (2) I made his right hand smaller, in reference to the common joke (3) I duplicated his hands behind his head, in a peacock-like fashion.  The goal of the image is to represent the doublespeak (er, triplespeak in this case) and handwaving in common political discourse.

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Layer #2

Olayemi Adebayo

When I first saw the previous image it reminded me of he following portrayal of Ben Stiller in Family Guy: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciECecFygtI

So I decided to use that as a base and remix the final line in the cutaway to reflect something about Trump. Using the head of the previous photo, I placed it on the body image of trump and then replaced Ben Stiller with a flying trump. I used lines to simulate the image of flapping.

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Layer #3

Chonghui Chen

Trump reminds me of another meme, Downfall, which depicts Hitler in an amusing sense. Hitler and Trump are both political leaders, and they share some similarities. However, as far as memes are considered, both the Hitler from Downfall and Trump are good materials. Therefore, I decided to combine a face full of surprise of Hitler and Trump from the previous image, standing on top of the other character, to create a humorous scene where Hitler is shocked by Trump's policies. 

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Layer #4

Adrian Biagioli

This meme attempts to give off a chaotic vibe, using harsh red tones.  It contains a number of different ridiculous and hyperbolic metaphors to highlight similar hyperbolic insults and comparisons.  The aim here is to satirize comparisons between Trump and "Literally Hitler" - a sentiment that you see often on internet discussion boards.

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Layer #5

Olayemi Adebayo

This one was a bit tough for me but I saw that the shape in the previous image looked kind of like a head piece. There is a decent amount of talk on whether Trump's hair is a toupee, so in the spirit of joining in on this debate I replaced this Trump's hair with the shape.

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Layer #6

Chonghui Chen

The whole political campaign of Trump and the presidential debate remind me of propaganda, and to combine the idea of propaganda in politics with media, I relate once again back to Downfall, and made a picture of Trump that simulates the poster of Downfall. I took the face and the hair from the previous layer and combined it with some other political images. I also put the words from some of the previous layers to add to the feeling of propaganda. 

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Approach/Process

We began by deciding on a starting image that was based on a topic we could all relate to in some way. We agreed that an image of Trump in light of the presidential debate was a good theme. After choosing the starting image we worked independently on each of our own layers. Although we worked independently we did comment on each of the other teams iterations when they were presented to the team giving our thoughts.

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Reflection

Before we started, we decided to focus on Trump and politics. We didn't really have a clear plan for the final product, so we followed our own thoughts when adding to the previous layer. Therefore, the results are quite diverse and each layer shows a different perspective. Even the two layers from the same person might show a vast difference in the approach. We also tried to incorporate other memes to add on to Trump's meme, namely Family Guy and Downfall. 

After finishing the project, we have seen how memes are changed when being spread. Each change reflects the author's own understanding, but it is soon taken into the collective perspective and the change itself dissolves into the constantly changing meme. We have come to understand that part of the reason memes are so easy to spread is that not only are they funny, but they also allow for a collective sense of humor. 

If we could do it again, we would probably spend more time discussing before starting to have a clearer goal about what to achieve.

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