The Meme Game

Outer Life is a meme-free zone. I've completely missed out on this whole meme thing, my words apparently protected from memetic attacks and creeping memeification by some sort of ingenious but unconscious meme-resistance shield.  Until today, that is, for I am belatedly accepting OGIC's challenge to list the first five movie lines that pop into my head:

"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are." – Repo Man (1984).

"Relax, I'm a professional." "Professional what?" – Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986).

"Cornuts!" "BQ or plain?" "BQ!" – Heathers (1989).

"I love my dead gay son." – Heathers (1989).

"Strange things are afoot at the Circle K." – Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989).

I clearly made no effort to boost my status by showcasing only the cleverest lines from the classiest films.  These must be the first five lines that popped into my head, otherwise why would I have listed them?

Looking more closely at the list, I detect a pattern:  All these lines are from sophomoric mid- to late-1980s movies depicting high school kids in a somewhat humorous light.  And it just so happens that I first watched each of these movies in the company of a group of friends that coalesced in – you guessed it – high school.  And I think that's significant, for each of these movie lines continues to have meaning for me only because of the role it played within the group.  Once planted in the group's collective consciousness, these lines took on lives of their own, replicating endlessly through repeated tellings and the retellings in different contexts until each came to mean something very different from its original movie context, something unique within our group.

For instance, "BQ or plain?" turned into a reprimand for undue fussiness, so when we'd catch one of the group, say, instructing a waitress precisely how he wanted his dish prepared, we'd greet him with a derisive chorus of "BQ or plains?" spoken in faux Valley girl accents.  "BQ or plain?" also signified excessive curiousity, so if someone at the restaurant, after hearing that chorus of "BQ or plains?" spoken in faux Valley girl accents, asked what we meant by it, we'd have to unleash another barrage of "BQ or plains?" in faux Valley girl accents.  I guess you had to be there.

The movie lines were shibboleths, the sort of thing you'd never understand unless you were one of us.  If you were new to the group, interpreting the highly devolved movie lines that peppered our conversations became a hazing ritual of sorts, an especially daunting task when you consider that the five lines listed above are but a drop in the ocean of one-liners we accumulated over the years.  At one point we even ascribed numbers to the most popular lines so, for instance, "BQ or plain?" became "#7."  This only made it harder for the newbies which, I suppose, was the point. 

By 1989, the year of the last two movies, our high school days were distant memories and our increasingly disparate lives were weakening our common bonds, as jobs, marriages and kids started to separate us. I've seen many movies since 1989, but none in the company of the group. Some of those movies were great, many were better than the movies listed above, but none of their lines popped into my head just now. Just those we saw together and whose lines we made our own.

Come to think of it, these movie lines are memes of a sort, at least in the genetic replication sense, as each line was transmitted back and forth within our group, tested and retested in different contexts, until each evolved a new meaning as it winnowed its way into our lives.  So I'm just responding to a meme with more memes.  Somehow that seems appropriate.

Then there's my personal favorite movie line, one that did not pop into my head until after I'd thought of the five listed above.  Years ago a girl I knew liked to say "We have so much time and so little to do – wait, stop, reverse that," Gene Wilder's immortal line from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  I thought that was a nifty line, even better than the original, which I believe ended with "strike that, reverse it," so I began to quote it as well.  Frequently.  To the point where it elicits knowing groans from everyone who knows me even slightly, for they've all heard it before and none have ever thought it nearly as funny as I do.  Even when I add the hand gestures. The group refused to add it to the rotation.  My wife banished it from her presence.  Even my kids roll their eyes.  Yet I continue to use it, mostly because I like it, but partly out of a petulant desire to annoy people and partly because I hope one day to discover someone else who shares my love for this line and is willing to join me in spinning it back and forth in endless and senseless memetic replication into something completely different from its original meaning, something only we will understand, to our perpetual mirth and your perpetual befuddlement.

After all, what else are memes for?

Comments

"Look at 'em. Ordinary people. Don't yer fuckin' hate 'em?"" (Repo Man...again)

[stephenesque]

"Ugh. Nasty, dirty, filthy memes. I would hire an exterminator."

(from Vampyros Blogus)

[DarkoV]

I'll take the bait. I'm hooked. Here's my meager contributions; all are used at least once per week. Why percolate the cranium when someone out there is wittier.

“You people . . . if there isn't a movie about it, it's not worth knowing, is it?” – Metatron “Dogma”

“You will not like me, but the more you hate me, the more you will learn.”– Sgt Hartman “Full Metal Jacket”

“Run away! “– King Arthur “Holy Grail”

“Mongo only pawn in game of life.”-Mongo “Blazing Saddles”

“He wazz my boyfriend!”– Inga “Young Frankenstein”

“Love is something every man needs, not with a vegetable, but with something alive! Something that moves, that's warm, that looks you in the eyes. Something with a soul. Anyway, there was a . . . a sheep. A beautiful little sheep! She was nice, kind, pretty. I called her Lola. Not an ugly old sheep like the others, but a little sheep. So delicate, refined!” Roberto Benigni “Night on Earth” (shortened to “she was a delicate sheep”)

[Searchie]

“I'm walkin’ heah! I'm walkin’ heah!” (Spoken while banging on the hood of a taxi that has screeched to a halt mere inches from one’s thigh.)
~Ratso Rizzo, "Midnight Cowboy"

[joshua]

Often repeated lines from CLUE

"Monkey's brains, though commonly found in Cantonese cuisine is hard to find in Washington D.C.!"

"But look what happened to the cook!"

"Flames! Flames! On the side of my face! Heaving... heaving breasts..."

"2+1+1+1"

and my favorite...

"I'm going home to sleep with my wife"

[Julia]

I love that Willy Wonka line! I'm with ya, OL. And nice analysis of how movie quotes turn into memes that glue a group together. I will spare you my high school (or afterwards) movie lines, although many of them came from Mel Brooks or John Hughes movies, or Star Wars/Raiders of the Lost Ark movies. I know, weird combo...