I was thinking about this notion of ‘what is media’ after the reading by David Gauntlett, as I was making my way home after Uni classes ended. I was on my way to Sister Bella, a bar just near Melbourne Central, when I looked up and noticed a piece of artwork by the artist ‘Lush Sux’. ‘That’s media, in a number of ways’ I thought to myself.
The way Lushsux is able to produce and share a piece of artwork that communicates so many things really gets me thinking- what is media limited to expressing? For example, this piece, and many other’s of Lushsux, plays on the meme culture of the internet; taking an image and sharing it in a number of ways to perpetuate a number of different meanings. This Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski selfie was originally taken to show the importance of body acceptance and the unfair laws of Instagram’s female vs. male nipple policy. That being said, put in the context of a) the mural and b) the artist, it takes a more mocking tone to the absurdity of people being famous for being famous, but at the same time welcomes the liberation of the female body. This, coupled with the slut-shaming that follows many of his posts promotes this feminist-meme mural.