Memes and our metamodern condition

Or how we've invented a new language

Have you seen the Cerveza Cristal adverts? From the early 2000s? That are all over the internet? Where a beer advert is inserted into Star Wars?

If you have, time for a rewatch. But if not? Cousin, you are very very welcome:

Cerveza Cristal has taken over social media in the past week. It began with the clip above, but people went on to unearth multiple examples of the advert appearing in a broadcast of the Star Wars trilogy.

And you know the weirdest thing? It’s legit. This actually happened. In real life. A group of people thought about this and approved it and worked on it and put it on television. Truly.

There’s evidence, including reports of George Lucas’ objections and even a Guardian article noting how the agency behind the adverts won an award.

Of course, the internet went into overdrive. Cerveza Cristal memes blew up — and they’re predictably excellent.

But that’s not precisely what I want to talk about. Because, to me, the explosion of this trend is fascinating because it functions as a microcosm of our current cultural age.

I’ll start here: ignoring the technical limitations, there’s no way these memes would’ve been successful 30-odd years ago — and, to me, that’s down to metamodernism.

Let’s hop back a smidgen.

The start of the 20th century saw the rise of modernism. In broad strokes, this arrived alongside a deluge of scientific advances, so art in that period was filled with the idea of grand narratives. It’s a sincere, earnest movement that (to some degree) viewed truth as objective.

Hot on the heels of modernism came postmodernism.

This arrived after the Second World War as both a direct reaction to the senselessness of that conflict and as a repute to the prior movement. This meant it eschewed many of modernism’s tenets. Postmodernism preaches there is no universal truth, no grand narrative. It’s pure scepticism.

In the simplest terms, modernism and postmodernism could be seen as the eras of sincerity and irony respectively.

Today, though, we’re in a new era: metamodernism.

Metamodernism can thought of as the ability to seamlessly flip between the two states of modernism and postmodernism.

You can imagine it as a social media feed.

Fifty years ago, humans would’ve struggled to handle the pace we flick from a photo of smiling friends to a warzone in the Middle East to a self-referential meme to a celebrity thirst trap to a sad clip from a childhood TV show to a news story about an attack where someone mowed a crowd down in a car.

Yet us? This is everyday reality. We’re adapted to it. Switching between those mental states feels natural.

In a sense, the metamodern condition is one of constant contradiction — and that’s why the Cerveza Cristal memes strike such a chord.

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When you first see the adverts inserted into Star Wars it’s tough to tell whether this is an edited joke or a legitimate campaign. They slot into this uncanny space between serious and parody with ease. To our eyes, their very existence is metamodern.

But the memes around Cerveza Cristal take it further. They’re an expression of how our relationship with art has changed.

There was a time, not that long ago, that loving a movie or musician or art in general was puritanical. It was incorruptible, beautiful, serious — yet that changed.

Nowadays, movies and TV shows are not only consumed by watching, they’re cut up and repurposed and remodelled and recontextualised in memes. Art lives and breathes beyond its medium.

As a recent example, look at the memes springing up around Dune Part Two or the whole Barbieheimer thing.

We’re no longer simply fans of movies, we’re active participants, but not in the old-fashioned way of starting fan clubs and writing letters.

To show that we love something, we make fun of it.

A meme, in many ways, is the ultimate metamodern communication tool: it mocks and celebrates, trivialises and deepens, lowers and highers a piece of art.

Memes, of course, aren’t specific to Cerveza Cristal, but what I’ve found particularly fascinating about this trend is the joy people have taken in inserting these adverts into older movies.

It’s no surprise that Star Wars was the launchpad for the meme.

This is a well-known property, something that’s an intimate part of many childhoods. The movies are a bedrock of modern pop culture — and Cerveza Cristal is a glorious warping of this.

It kickstarted a trend where people interact with old films they love in an entirely new way. It’s like a ripple of reimagination wobbling through movie history. The memes mocking, yet providing the films with fresh context.

So, the big question: what does this meme culture say about us as a society? That we suck? That this is a travesty? That everything’s awful?

Nah. Not at all. It’s actually really cool.

Cerveza Cristal memes are an example of the complexity of modern thought. They showcase our ability to hold different viewpoints, to observe events through several lenses, to reinterpret — all without losing sight of the worth of art.

We’ve invented a new metamodern language that is both ours alone, yet also open to the entire world. And that, friends, is beautiful.

Although not quite as beautiful as cold, refreshing 𝒞𝐸𝑅𝒱𝐸𝒵𝒜 𝒞𝑅𝐼𝒮𝒯𝒜𝐿.