Putin on a bear -- a Russian Meme

Putin on a bear -- a Russian Meme

This is one of your author’s favorite Russia memes, because of the amount of meaning embedded into the image. The text implies that while Americans fight over their gun rights (“right to bear arms”), Russians are living in a parallel universe where gun rights are the least exciting part. They live in Meme Russia, where based on dashcam videos, every ride in a car is like in a video game, where the president goes hunting while shirtless and finds treasure while scuba-diving, and where giant meteors hit random towns. In short, Russians have the right to “whole bear.” This statement also really gets to the heart of the Internet’s relation with Russia – while memes certainly make fun of Russia, one can’t but notice that the nerdy young males propagating these memes are at least a little envious of a land where adventure is not just confined to video games. This meme also hits on other parts of Meme Russia, prominently displaying “Badass Putin” and through its textual humor also alluding to the Russian reversal, thus displaying the recontextualization of Soviet Russia from “advanced, feared adversary status” into a land of humorous barbarism.

http://i.imgur.com/cgUR9F1.jpg

(anonymous creator)

May 5 2014