Remixing Willy Wonka

Analysis and Reflection: I am a big fan of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I created this meme from Meme Generator provided by Dr. Dail. The original image is Gene Wilder in his Willy Wonka outfit in character for the movie. In my remediation, he looking a little sly about date night. A person looking at this meme would need to know who Willy Wonka is and have seen the movie to understand the literal meaning of the meme, which is he has plenty of chocolate for dessert. But it could also be taken another way from the look on his face and the language of the meme. Dessert could be something other than chocolate. I’ll leave it at that, and let your imagination take flight!

I personally love memes. They convey so much with so little; they can remediate an image or not. I looked at a number of images before the Gene Wilder/Willy Wonka image spoke to me. I can envison using memes in a classroom to pair with texts. I think they are fun and an appropriate and fun activity for students to create and expand their understanding of texts in a variety of ways. I chose to be humorous, but images can also convey any of the rhetorical appeals students find in texts. The Meme Generator is an easy way to create a meme; it does the work for you once you find an image and think of a text. My advice to teachers who want to use memes in their classrooms:

Be aware of copyright laws and choose safe websites that allow public used of their images.
The meme I created can be viewed as provacative or suggestive. Make sure the memes chosen are age appropriate with an image and text that the student could share with parents without upset.
Think of texts that pair well with memes. Not all texts will be appropriate for a meme.
Memes don’t always have to be a remix as I did above. They can be on point, or used to expand the understanding of the text.

Questions I have for teachers: Do you think it is a valuable activity to pair texts with images? How would you go about assessing a meme as part of a student’s grade?