Contagious Faces: Coping Digitally with the Pandemic by Means of Memes

The chapter discusses the pathemic (i.e., passional, emotional) state of frustration due to the December 2019 outbreak of the new coronavirus/COVID–19 pandemic. The facepalm, a classic Internet meme in which Star Trek Captain Picard covers his own face with his left hand as a sign of frustration, is considered as an exemplary cultural sign. The essay outlines a semiotic view of the pandemic as discourse (including the so-called infodemic), of online virality and Internet memes, and of two body parts normally considered “natural” whose roles have been radically reshaped by the pandemic: face and hands. The chapter introduces the notion of “parafaciality” (i.e., paratextual faciality) to discuss our ability as humans to transform a biological part such as the face into a cultural interface through a series of accessories. Thanks to the reinforcing role of hands, the naturalness of the face is questioned to transform it into a semiotic mask capable of synthesizing the Zeitgeist visually and haptically (i.e., through the sense of touch). In the ‘time of virus’, to avoid contagion, humans cannot touch their face and have to renounce, among other things, the iconic facepalm. They end up frustrated to the square because they cannot even be as frustrated as they would like to be.