The term meme is very abstract and hard to
comprehend when we don’t have an actual example of it. Since nearly everything,
a jingle, a word, a picture, and idea is a meme it’s hard to wrap your head
around such a broad concept. I understood what a gene was, or at least that’s
what I thought, and if the meme was the cultural equivalent of the gene, then I
would just have to apply the same characteristics of a gene into an idea. Dawkins
explains that perfectly in page 194, but only one sentence brought a tangible
example to my mind of what a meme is, more precisely two.
“At first sight, it looks as if memes are not
high fidelity replicators at all.” Pg.194
The first things that came to my mind where a jingle
and a song that have obstinately fixed themselves in my mind for the last
thirteen years or so. The first was the jingle for Colombian margarine “La Fina”,
and the later the song “Quando m’Innamoro” made famous in Colombia by The
Sandpipers. I thought that if these two had prevailed in the meme pool for such
a long time (mid seventies to now), considering faster communication often shortens the lifespan of memes, they must be good memes. There’s only one
explanation to that, and it has to do with them no being high fidelity
replicators. Both the jingle and the song have not survived in my, my mother’s,
father’s, family’s and friends’ mind in their original shapes. The two memes
have consistently mutated over the years, but these mutations have assured
their survival.
As a child of four I felt sneaky and funny
when singing,
“La Fina, la más cochina,
la que se orina en la mesa y cocina.
La Fina a todos nos gusta más,
Sobre todo al perro Nicolás.”
The last part varies between that and “el
perro de Tomás”. Evidently this would not be the original jingle, as no sane
(or competent for that matter) publicist would advertise their product as being
filthy and urinating on the table and the kitchen, much less that this was of
the liking of a dog. But the change in the lyrics made the jingle more appealing,
funnier. It caused endless laughter in my mother’s kindergarten peers as it did
with mine. If it weren’t for this mutation, the meme wouldn’t have prevailed as
easily. Ask any Colombian (or Bogotano at least) five year old, and they’ll
know the children’s version (ironically more obscene than the adult version)
and not the original one.
The exact same situation applies to “Quando m’Innamoro”.
The survival of this meme in its original form was very improbable, for it is a
song in Italian, making it hard to learn for the Spanish speaking audience. Nevertheless,
the melody being apt for any pair of ears stuck on the mind of every adult,
teen, and child of the early seventies in Bogota. An ingenious mind decided to
adapt the lyrics to ones more attractive, per se.
The original chorus goes:
Quando m'innamoro
Io do tutto il bene
A chi è innamorato di me,
E non c'è nessuno
Che mi può cambiare,
Che mi può staccare da lui.
Io do tutto il bene
A chi è innamorato di me,
E non c'è nessuno
Che mi può cambiare,
Che mi può staccare da lui.
The meme nevertheless survived
in Colombian minds as:
Cuando me enamoro
Voy al inodoro
Y hago lo que tengo
que hacer.
Se abren las
compuertas
Sale un submarino
Y se oye una gran explosión.
As we tend to stick with what we
have learned in our childhood, and because the majority of Colombians do not
speak Italian, the later is the meme that has survived in our minds.
These kinds of mutations occur all
over the world and in every kind of existing meme. The former are examples of
how the replication process is not exact, but that the survival of an idea is
the sole justification of its existence. If it weren’t for that change, or that
bit, the idea simply would not be present.
