![]() It was meant to be an act of solidarity and support, but instead managed to drown out information and resources shared by organizers and activists. And then there were the millions of people who posted black squares on social media to show their outrage at killings like Taylor’s. She wasn’t the only one whose protest was perceived to be in poor taste: There was the unfortunately titled BreonnaCon, organized by Black activists with the support of Taylor’s family, that included a panel on beauty and empowerment called “TaylorMade,” as well as a “Bre-B-Que,” held in Taylor’s hometown, Louisville. Demand justice.” I’m sure Reinhart thought she was cleverly drawing attention to Taylor’s death, but it felt crude - the effect was more Dana Schutz than Atticus Finch. That’s one way to rationalize why the actor Lili Reinhart posted a nude photo of herself on Instagram, along with the caption: “Now that my sideboob has gotten your attention, Breonna Taylor’s murderers have not been arrested. Even when we’re making or sharing memes in the name of solidarity, we are operating within a framework that “centers the self in an expression of support for others,” as Jia Tolentino deftly observed in her book “Trick Mirror.” They tend to reflect the perspective and behaviors of their creators or their spreaders, who riff on a meme as they pass it along. Memes are also elastic, though, and difficult to control. Taylor’s image projected onto a statue of Gen. The efforts to honor Taylor online were a prime example of this. They are also a way of redirecting collective attention toward an idea or an issue that deserves it. ![]() Memes have become a part of how we express grief and joy, how we make sense of our information-dense time and how we process otherwise-incomprehensible news. In our culture these days, an image can be repeated only so many times before it becomes a meme. “A haunting is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known,” Gordon writes in “Ghostly Matters.” “Especially when they are supposedly over and done with.” Taylor’s face haunted me this year, and although the social currency of sharing her image faded, her presence remains, still demanding its due. Resharing her image was one way of reminding ourselves, and one another, that although deaths like hers are devastatingly normal in America, they do not have to be normalized. Were we in 2020 or 1820? The distortion was bewildering, with many of us asking ourselves: How can this keep happening? Taylor’s death seemed to fold time onto itself, a gory wormhole. Ghosts interfere with our sense of time, confusing the delineation between now and then. And in this country, that unfinished business can almost always be traced back to slavery, and the way the terrors of the past resurface in the present. Business left unfinished, as they say in the movies. I like the way the sociologist Avery Gordon considers a ghost to be something that lingers, rather than something that disappeared. One name for this phenomenon is a haunting. Open, each featuring the name of an unjustly killed Black person, but she wore Taylor’s first, she told reporters, “because she was most important.” Naomi Osaka had seven embroidered masks custom-made for the U.S. ![]() LeBron James repurposed a MAGA hat in her honor, which he wore to news conferences. She appeared at the Emmys, on the shirts of the actors Regina King and Uzo Aduba as they accepted their awards, and she was there on the W.N.B.A.’s court, thanks to the player Angel McCoughtry, who inspired all 12 teams to wear Taylor’s name on their jerseys for the playoffs. Oprah Winfrey devoted the cover of O Magazine to Taylor - the first time that someone other than Winfrey herself was featured. The Grammy Award-winning keyboardist PJ Morton and his daughter sang a dirge for Taylor on Instagram, where you barely needed a full finger-pull to see countless tributes in her honor. I encountered her in Philadelphia, right in the middle of Baltimore Avenue, flanked by several gentle sentinels, who moved aside respectfully when I approached to pay my respects. I visited her regularly, at the beach, in an underpass that connects the parking lot to the boardwalk. Her image - smiling, dimples dug deep, edges laid - was everywhere. Breonna Taylor became so recognizable this year that she felt like a friend, a relative. Recently, while biking through Brooklyn, I glimpsed a freshly painted mural of a face that looked so familiar that I felt I knew it. People shared her name and image in grief and solidarity, but why didn’t it feel like enough?
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