As the prophet Ariana Debose once said: Jamie Lee Curtis, you are all of us.
After an awards season that foreshadowed Everything Everywhere All At Once's inevitable Oscar sweep at every turn, the film took home seven of its 11 nominations, including three acting ones for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis – and The Big One, Best Picture. And as the hours-long ceremony came to a close with that award, Curtis took one final chance to complete her personal clean sweep of the 2023 season: as our resident meme queen.
As the cast and crew bounded to the stage for their big moment, Curtis, fists clenched, literally jumped for joy, levitating off the floor as a fateful pic was snapped. Naturally, the internet has done what the internet is wont to do: run with it. Cue memes of Curtis photoshopped onto a trampoline, strapped into a jetpack and shooting hoops. There were also a fair few “it's the Activia” jokes, a reference to her long-memed (and fancam-ed) ambassadorship for the probiotic.
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It's just the latest in a run of viral moments for the star, who's inadvertently become one the most contextually applicable icons of modern times since a 2018 Halloween press run about trauma that could easily beat Lady Gaga's “there could be a hundred people in the room” in a fight. Since then, she's been prime fodder, especially through the 2023 awards run when we've been at maximum Curtis.
Some of these joyously snappable moments include passionately defending Ariana Debose's instant camp classic BAFTA rap, her go-to red carpet pose of a hand on her hip being captioned as “OKAAYYY” and banded around as an instant classic and her screaming reaction to co-star Yeoh winning a Golden Globe (that she then made into a shirt, because the best internet moments are the ones you can wear).
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But when it comes to memes, just doing things that are funny with and without context does not a legend make. Many a superstar has been caught up in the internet's no-context reaction trends by accident; few have managed to solidify themselves as a mainstay of the genre. Fewer still have maintained such a status without drinking their own kool-aid and falling prey to trying to make themselves a meme on purpose, which the internet hates, because the internet can sniff out people trying too hard a mile away. Instead, Curtis has preserved her memeability simply by rolling with it and never caring to understand why it happens.
The actor's viral interview on the Oscars red carpet has divided the internet
She's a woman whose seen the trauma meme and only seems mildly befuddled about it, who wore a t-shirt out of a 0.5-second cut of herself cheering her co-star as a statement of female empowerment, and who, at every turn, doubles down on her passionate feelings on (seemingly) everything without a thought on its non-contextual viability. She exists almost parallel to her memeability, constantly feeding the masses without getting high on her own supply. A true beacon of the Gen X, Millennial and Gen Z online ecosystem.
With awards season over, it might now be all quiet on the Jamie Lee Curtis meme front as we all take a well-earned break from red carpets and discourse. However, with the inevitable bump from her Oscars 2023 win, it's only a matter of time before she's back and lovingly worming her way into everything everywhere all at once.
