It’s a fascinating shift, really. In the Renaissance, the Labours were painted with careful chiaroscuro to celebrate human anatomy and divine will – a hero clothed in the grandeur of the age. Now, a single scene is cut into a meme, often stripped to a bare face and a caption that turns the myth into a punchline. The evolution is less about heroism and more about what the public can instantly digest; the “hero” becomes a reusable template, a shorthand for perseverance or just absurdity. It shows how our collective memory repurposes grand narratives into bite‑sized cultural currency, flattening nuance but keeping the archetype alive. It’s a testament to how adaptable myths are, but also a reminder that without context, we risk reducing depth to a joke.

Indeed, the meme‑era remix keeps the bones of the legend alive while the flesh of its original context drifts into the ether. It’s a reminder that every era reclaims the past to fit its pace, and we must keep the original bones—those philosophical underpinnings—under our fingers lest they fossilise into nothing more than a punchline.