We Don’t Trust the Government and They Did Surgery on a Grape
This meme probably found its way into your algorithm and maybe you scrolled past thinking, “Okay, and?”. In doing this you unwittingly participated in a major online phenomenon where a sentiment held, unbeknownst, by most of its activists, and maybe even you, cries out vividly.
“They Did Surgery on a Grape” (TDSOAG) is an example of a digital phenomenon known as copypasta which uses repetition in the pursuit of absurdity. In this format, the original image of a dissected grape is simply captured and reuploaded with the caption “They did surgery on a grape”. This systematic procedure is hysterical in its simplicity and impact, needless to say, its main source of resonance among the chronically online (positive connotation). This stimulating process of capture, mutate, release is where this paradox gains strength. This hysteria, in both meanings, along with a contextual x-ray under the skin of the grape, if you will, paints a surreal portrait of The People, a portrait of harrowing truths and un-faith(when something may be true but cannot be trusted).
The content of TDSOAG came from a video published in 2010 by Edward Hospital in Naperville, Illinois. In this video, doctors demonstrated the amazing precision and life saving potential of the remote surgery machine known as The Da Vinci Surgical System. They did so by using the four armed automaton to peel the skin off of a grape. A few years later, a tech and business site, Cheddar, made a video about the 2010 Da Vinci test and from that, an incessant spawning of derivatively recursive content was unleashed into the world. A spread of content within content, context within context, meaning within nonsense, a veritable Droste effect–a hall of mirrors reflecting and amplifying my generation's shared sentiment of distrust in the things that govern us. A statement of our anti-relationship with government, science, religion, verity all within the subtext of this anomalous image system made even more dynamic by its absurd, inconspicuous vessel.
The Phrase
They Did Surgery on a Grape. This was the original caption of the video Cheddar posted to Twitter and the inception of virality. This is a blatant statement of what was accomplished and summation of what is seen in the video but, as I’ve theorized, the phrase was adapted to mean something far from the literal interpretation. In the original contexts, this post was made in a spirit of wonderment at technological advancement. This is the first technology of its kind to be approved by the FDA, will be used to save countless lives and is the start of the future modality of medical practices. Everyone would agree that this is a net positive contribution to society, for the sake of most. With this in mind we return to our aggressive reinterpretation of the message, a message of overwhelming melancholy. As silly as it sounds, We are jealous of the grape. I once had this described to me as a collective addiction to trauma-porn. We have a deranged demand for trauma, and in our age, it is more apparent than ever. When They said, “We did surgery on a grape” we construed it to mean that the powers above us, those whose job it is to serve our collective interest, would much rather do surgery on a grape than worry about any of us. We looked at the world around us (our phones) and saw destruction, war, hunger, death, insanity and that they did surgery on a grape–it fueled our inner masochist. Amongst all our problems they gave us the grape, amongst our devastating outlook on the world and government, they gave us the grape.
We took this phrase, this incredulous backstabbing, and remade it for our own purposes. We seized it from its origin, rebranded it as our own by saying, “They did surgery on a grape” and posted it in defiance. Every time it was copied, it increasingly became its own message, a topic of simulacra to be discussed later. We as contributors repossessed this phrase to communicate a shared feeling of dis-trust in those working above our purview, even if for our betterment. We removed the scientific and medical accomplishment from the accomplished in every repetition. An infinite mirror, each previous reflection fading more and more into the background, the point of origin eventually dulled to a whisper under our nihilistic shrill of defiance.
The Facsimile
The physical phenomenon and use of copypasta is just a digital rebranding of a much older tool, mise en abyme. This tool has been used in literature, art, film, and music dating back to the 1800’s but its impacts remain unaltered to this day. The literal French translation of mise en abyme is “placed into the abyss” but more broadly relates to an image within an image, a story within a story, intrinsically creating an infinite regression known as the Droste Effect. There are many examples of this effect including the play within the play in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the original Quaker Oats package depicted on itself, or Pink Floyd’s album cover for UmmaGumma. Often, mise en abyme is used to mirror elements of the larger plot within the smaller, adding a depth to the story otherwise missed. When this effect is used in art, it can create an endless repetition, a purgatory of continuity implying infinity. ”Further, mise en abyme can be probable, improbable or paradoxical. It can contribute to the understanding of a work, or lay bare its artificiality”. In this way, copypasta can help to make an original point more clear or infinitely less clear. By recursively repeating TDSOAG, we created a story inside of a story, a meaning within a meaning, a depth under the guise of dumb internet culture. When a frame is put within a larger frame, it gives those in the larger frame a dilated perspective on what they are seeing. If the smaller frame depicts them, they gain a perspective on themselves.
In the original context, the Da Vinci procedure didn’t spark a viral instance, but upon its repetition, it became culturally (still not scientifically or medically) impactful to us. In 2010 we didn’t care about them having done surgery on a grape because we as individuals weren’t thinking of the good of humanity over our self interest. It’s not that we didn’t care about the good that the Da Vinci machine could do, it’s because it didn’t apply to us at that moment. But as soon as it became a way of communicating trauma and hopelessness, it finally meant something to us as a community, we paid attention. We love that shit.
THE UN-FAITH
Jean Baudrillard writes extensively on the topic of facsimile in his book titled, Simulacra and Simulation, bringing real world context and order to the concept. He creates a timeline for the process of what he calls the “osmosis of perception” in which an image, repeated over and over, becomes something more than just a copy. There are four phases to his progression: 1. The copy is a reflection of basic reality, 2. The copy masks and perverts basic reality, 3. The copy masks the absence of basic reality, 4. The copy bears no relation to any reality–”it is its own pure simulacrum”. I believe TDSOAG is within the second stage of decomposition. Every subsequent copy + post of the grape adulterates the original “reality” of the post, “perverting” it to a new “reality” and understanding. Originally I was quick to shove TDSOAG into the final category of deterioration, the most extreme, but I see one key difference in step two and five, the copy is still very much grounded in reality. In this instance, each copy of TDSOAG miraculously becomes more rooted in reality than the original instance. This meme has become its own construct, completely separate from its origin but contains more truth.because of it. Baudrillard writes, “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor of reduplication, nor even of parody. It is rather a question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself; that is, an operation to deter every real process by its operational double, a metastable, programmatic, perfect descriptive machine which provides all the signs of the real and short-circuits all its vicissitudes.” Baudrillard uses these steps in identifying instances where simulacra or simulation is destroying us, but in the case of TDSOAG, it is actually revealing rather than obstructing. This is not to say that I believe simulacra is a positive force in our world, but the use of repetition as a platform for the like minded to be open with each other is a unique part of the culture surrounding this particular meme.
In this way, facsimile or repetition itself has extreme implications upon the repeated and the construct it exists in. Baudrillard writes extensively about the effects of repetition in his book, Simulacra and Simulation but also explores real examples where simulacra and simulation is destroying us in the postmodern world, one of his main arguments, the U.S. government. Baudrillard calls the Watergate Scandal to the forefront of the argument. “Watergate is not a scandal, this is what must be said at all costs, because it is what everyone is busy concealing, this dissimulation masking a strengthening of morality, of a moral panic as one approaches the primitive (mise en) scène of capital.” He discusses Watergate as an example of a broader practice of our government, the act of preaching fact and morality while simultaneously their denunciation. The government was proven to use itself against itself in this “scandal”, the CIA vs. the FBI, so how can the immoral ensure morality, how can the unjust provide justice? Baudrillard exposes how our government employs a simulation of morality to conceal the fact that there is no morality rather than weaponizing true justice against the unjust itself. Simulacra becomes clear as something that exists only to counter its own existence. Think of the modern news network, how could truth possibly be so vastly different by just flipping the channel. This is an example of un-faith, we want to believe the powers over us, yes even the news is a power over us, are there for our benefit, fighting for us, but this is a fallacy. Baudrillard says, “Capital, in fact, was never linked by a contract to the society that it dominates. It is a sorcery of social relations, it is a challenge to society, and it must be responded to as such. It is not a scandal to be denounced according to moral or economic rationality, but a challenge to take up according to symbolic law.” We see the powers over us through a lens of paranoia because our government exists only to serve itself on the backs of our morality.
Conclusion
Social media has a unique way of tearing us apart. Each of us see vastly different versions of the truth, of the world, everyday. Our view of the world is determined by what the algorithm decides to show us and most importantly what not to show us. Why do we trust an algorithm more than our government even though it governs us in a similar way? The Algorithm exists for its own interest, to make you more invested, to steal your attention, to prolong its place in our minds and world. I think we trust it because of situations just like this, where we find community in shared interest, shared ideals, without the constraints of an author or authoritarian of those thoughts.
We no longer exist in a place that feels grounded, a place where government and science don't fight to serve us but serve some ideal of advancement, and most importantly the advancement of their image to other governing bodies. The interplay of simulation, derivative recursivity, and our view of the things that govern us, bring into view this shared sentiment voiced by the meme They Did Surgery on a Grape. We ingrained a cultural meaning in a technological discovery, a reading of sadness and hopelessness for the future, Un-faith in the powers over us, but also our reason to effect change. This begs the question: will we ever be the grape? Are we to be prodded not by our fellow companions but a facsimile of them–the idea of them, a doctor once removed from the operation? Should we want to be the grape?
11/10/24, E. Oliver
Sources:
Baudrillard, Jean. "Simulacra and simulation." U of Michigan P (1994).
grapesurgeon98. “They Did Surgery on a Grape.” Know Your Meme, Know Your Meme, 23 Nov. 2018, knowyourmeme.com/memes/they-did-surgery-on-a-grape.
Woodward, Ashley. "Nihilism in Postmodernity: Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo." (2006).
Wolf, Werner (2013). "Mise en abyme" Metzler Lexikon, Literatur und Kulturtheorie. Stuttgart: Metzler. pp. 442–443.