Commentary

The Winona Ryder Effect

I was in the U.S. last week. It was my first visit in the Trump era.

 

It was weird. I was in California, so the full effect was muted, but I watched my tongue when meeting strangers. And that’s speaking as a Canadian, where watching your tongue is a national pastime.

(As an aside, my U.S. host, Lance, told me about a recent post on a satire site: “Concerned, But Not Wanting To Offend, Canada Quietly Plants Privacy Hedge Along Entire U.S. Border.” That’s so us.) 

There was a feeling that I had not felt before. As someone who has spent a lot of time in the U.S. over the past decade or two, I felt a little less comfortable. There was a disconnect that was new to me.

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Little did I know (because I’ve turned off my mobile CNN alerts since Jan. 20 because I was slipping into depression) but just after I whisked through Sea-Tac airport with all the privilege that being a white male affords you, Washington Governor Jay Inslee would hold a press conference denouncing the new Trump Muslim ban in no uncertain terms. On the other side of the TSA security gates, there were a thousand protesters gathering.  I didn’t learn about this until I got home.

As I said, it was weird.

And then there were the SAG awards on Sunday night.  What the hell was the deal with Winona Ryder?

When the "Stranger Things" cast got on stage to accept their ensemble acting award, David Harbour, acting as spokesperson, unleashed a fiery anti-Trump speech. But despite his passion and volume, it was Winona Ryder, standing beside him, that lit up the share button. And she didn’t say a word.  Instead, her face contorted through a series of 20-some different expressions in under 2 minutes. She became, as one Twitter post said, a “human gif machine.”

Now, by her own admission, Ryder is fragile. She has battled depression and anxiety for much of her professional life. Maybe she was having a minor breakdown in front of the world. Or maybe this was a premeditated and choreographed social media master stroke. Either way, it says something about us.

The "Stranger Thing"s cast hadn’t even left the stage before the Twitterverse started spreading the Ryder meme. If you look at Google Trends, there was a huge spike in searches for Winona Ryder starting right around 6:15 pm (PST) Sunday night. It peaked at 6:48 pm, with a volume about 20 times that of queries for Ryder before the broadcast began.

It was David Harbour that delivered the speech Ryder was reacting to.  The words were his, and while there was also a spike in searches for him coinciding with the speech, he didn’t come close to matching the viral popularity of the Ryder meme.  At its peak, there were 5 searches for “Winona Ryder” for every search for “David Harbour.”

Ryder’s mugging was -- premeditated or not -- extremely meme-worthy. It was visual, it was over the top and, most importantly, it was a blank canvas we could project our own views on to. Winona didn’t give us any words, so we could fill in our own. We could use it to provide a somewhat bizarre exclamation point to our own views, expressed through social media.

As I was watching this happen, I knew this was going to go viral. Maybe it’s because it takes something pretty surreal to make a dent in an increasingly surreal world that leaves us numb. When the noise that surrounds us seems increasingly unfathomable, we need something like this to prick our consciousness and make us sit up and take notice. Then we hunker down again before we’re pummelled with the next bit of reality.

Let me give you one example.

As I was watching the SAG awards, I was unaware that gunmen had opened fire on Muslim worshippers praying in a mosque in Quebec City.  I only found out after I flicked through the channels after the broadcast ended. Today, as I write this, I now know that six are dead because someone hated Muslims that much. Canada also has extreme racism.

I find it hard to think about that. It’s easier to think about Winona Ryder’s funny faces. That’s not very noble, I know, but sometimes you have to go with what you’re actually able to wrap your mind around.
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