Sleeping Beauty: Verbal Images as Visual Memes

The character whom I call Duncey Putin said of Ukraine four days before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022: ‘Like it or not, take it, my beauty.’ The “vulgar Russian rhyme” Putin was referencing has obvious Disinfolklore connotations — Sleeping Beauty is one of the primary archetypal characters in Indo-European culture and folklore. The exact song lyric is: “Sleeping Beauty in a coffin, I crept up and f**ked her. Like it, or dislike it, sleep my beauty.”

Source: Sleeping Beauty in a Coffin

Not all visual memes are images. Putin’s verbal reference to “Sleeping Beauty in a coffin” creates a visual image in the listener’s mind — a necrophiliac assault on a corpse. International lawyers correctly interpreted this as genocidal intent. The words generate the visual archetype; the visual archetype does the damage in the Inner Realm.

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