The Scholarly Paradox Affecting the Two Evies: Librarianship, ‘Harmful’ Books, and ‘Perfection’ in Memes from The Mummy (1999) Media

Abstract

Meme studies that evaluate specific media characters are growing in popularity, and with the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Mummy (1999) in 2024, the scholarly gap involving memes related to The Mummy narratives became apparent. This article, therefore, focuses on memes depicting the character of Evelyn “Evie” Carnahan, who has been played by Rachel Weisz and Maria Bello. Through the analysis, which takes librarianship and gender perspectives due to Evie’s character, four meme categories emerge: (1) general librarian stereotypes, (2) the ‘dangerous/harmful book’ trope, (3) gender issues, and (4) the choosing of the ’real’ (better) Evie. This study finds that the professional and personal issues experienced by Evie in the films—and in the memes—are the same ones that remain problematic for women, librarians, and female librarians in the contemporary world. Moreover, rather than trying to choose between Evies, it is more useful to interpret Weisz’s and Bello’s renderings as critical parts of a whole—a complete woman, librarian, scholar, and adventurer—especially since both iterations of the character face stereotypes involving gender, maternal status, and career aspects.

1. Introduction

The growing influence of the Internet, social media, and viral images has allowed Internet memes to become an important medium through which users rely on comedy, satire, and their imaginations to comment on trending social events or issues (Wiggins 2019; Shifman 2013). While Richard Dawkins (2016) coined the term meme in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a reference to meaningful “cultural units” (p. 249) that have elements of “mimicry or imitation” (Oxford English Dictionary 2024c), his research did not yet comprise the “media materials such as images, videos, songs, and hashtags that can be replicated and go viral” (Carazo and Welsh 2023, p. 173)1 that the word encompasses today. While memes can portray nonhumans and celebrities and even discuss global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Carazo et al. 2023), some of the most popular media to which memes respond are film and television, from which fans and online users take their favorite or recognizable scenes and replicate them, allowing them to become conduits for commenting on other, and perhaps similar, trajectories in the real world. Due to the popularity of The Mummy media (1999–2008), these films and their characters have become common threads in Internet memes that deserve further scholarly attention.

When The Mummy was released in 1999, Rachel Weisz’s portrayal of Evelyn ‘Evie’ Carnahan (O’Connell) resonated with audiences. Even though the sequel, The Mummy Returns (2001), was not as popular, Weisz’s depiction of Evie remained intriguing to viewers, especially due to revelations about her past in ancient Egypt. Nevertheless, many fans were unhappy when Maria Bello represented Evie in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), which added to the film’s unpopularity. Over time, much of this reception has been reflected in memes about The Mummy media, in particular, the memes depicting Evie or referring to her through quotes and themes (i.e., gender and librarianship). An evaluation of the selected Evie memes shows that Internet users prefer Weisz’s performance to Bello’s.

However, the memes about Weisz are far from unproblematic. Specifically, Evie’s scholarly nature is represented as unsexy and uncool, even though Weisz herself is seen as beautiful. At the same time, books and knowledge are depicted as being both dangerous and foremost to the resolution of adventures in the heroes’ favor. Yet, despite the critiques of librarianship and book access that these memes exhibit, the other Evie (Bello), who is more motherly and less bound to her studies, does not receive positive attention in memes. In fact, the memes with Bello in them tend to be nostalgic about Weisz’s portrayal.

As a result, the digital response to Evie’s character and profession remains conflicted: even as her heroic intelligence helps save the day, the resources that allow her agency are critiqued. And even once a focus on these resources diminishes in Bello’s version of Evie, the character’s popularity does not increase, indicating not only the problematic way in which female librarians are often depicted in media, but also revealing how many of these issues remain unresolved today. Therefore, using the general history of stereotypes and biases toward librarians as theoretical support, this chapter reviews six Evie memes that demonstrate these complexities, finding that there are four main groups of Evie memes—(1) general librarian stereotypes, (2) the ‘dangerous/harmful book’ trope, (3) gender issues, and (4) the choosing of the ‘real’ (better) Evie. While these categories provide important insights into Evie’s digital presence since the 1999 film’s release, the Internet realm is far from being able ‘to get’ Evie’s whole persona, much as Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) was when he first met her. Hence, even though some memes rely on stereotypes to generate humor, memes still have the capacity to inspire change in public perception about certain issues (Mina 2019; Milner 2016). Yet, based on this research, it is evident that memes representing Evie in The Mummy narratives have still not achieved this latter function, for both iterations of the character face stereotypes involving gender, maternal status, and career aspects.

2. The Two Evies

Mummy films are not new (Glynn 2020) and include The Mummy (Freund 1932), The Mummy’s Hand (Cabanne 1940), and The Mummy’s Tomb (Young 1942). Moreover, a character named Imhotep appears in the 1932 film and searches for his “long-lost princess” (The Mummy n.d.), indicating that the 1999 film both reuses and builds upon this tradition. Nevertheless, of the many female characters in Mummy films, Evelyn ‘Evie’ Carnahan (O’Connell) stands out for her spunk, intelligence, perseverance, beauty, and humor in recent The Mummy media (1999–2008). Yet, Evie is played by two different actors—Rachel Weisz and Maria Bello—who each bring important aspects to Evie’s character, ultimately making her one Evie despite fans’ individual preferences.

Briefly, Weisz’s Evie is young, brilliant, and still searching for ways to find fulfillment through her work and personal life. In The Mummy (1999), she helps her brother, Jonathan (John Hannah), Rick O’Connell (her future husband), and the Medjai defeat Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) by thwarting Imhotep’s plan to bring his lover, Anck Su Namun (Patricia Velazquez), back from the dead, as well as preventing Imhotep from sustaining the dangerous powers given to him from his ancient curse. Then, in The Mummy Returns (2001), Evie has a son, Alex (Freddie Boath), whom she strives to protect from the curse of the Scorpion King as well as from the machinations of Imhotep and ‘Meela’ (a reincarnation of Anck Su Namun), who have returned for the Scorpion King’s bracelet, army, and power. During this film, Evie also learns that she has an ancient Egyptian past, for she was Seti I’s daughter, Nefertiri, and thus witness to Imhotep’s plotting during his lifetime. Hence, Weisz continues Evie’s intellectual and adventurous trajectory while adding motherhood, marriage, and a growing sense of maturity and selflessness to her experiences.

Many years pass before viewers meet Bello’s Evie. She has been writing books about her adventures, but it is evident that she misses living them, admitting, “I wish my life were that exciting now” (Cohen 2008). Rick has lost his enthusiasm as well, and when he offers to “inspire” Evie with his love (Cohen 2008), she decides to work on her book instead. In effect, then, their marriage has lost its spark. Moreover, she and Rick do not communicate often with Alex, now played by Luke Ford, who later reveals his frustration: “No offense Mom, but we haven’t been a family in a long time” (Cohen 2008). Hence, when the chance to see Alex in China and bring the Eye of Shangri-La to safety appears, they take it. Yet, the Eye falls into the villains’ hands, and the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) is awakened, leading them once more on a mummy adventure. By the film’s end, Evie and Rick’s marriage has its former passion, their relationship with Alex improves, and it appears that Alex and Lin (Isabella Leong), a Chinese protector of the Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and daughter of Zi Yuan (Michelle Yeoh)—the guardian of Shangri-La—will form their own lasting relationship.

3. Librarian Stereotypes

Since Evie begins her Mummy narrative as a librarian, evaluating her relationship to this career is a necessary part of understanding her appearance in Internet memes. Librarians have often been seen as intellectuals separated from the main currents of daily life (Steffy 2015), which has made them seem ‘scary’ or inaccessible to people using the services that they and their organizations provide. Hence, having strong interpersonal skills, professionalism, perception, and image can counteract this assumption in academic settings (Michael and Olayemi 2023). Even with the linking of librarianship to contemporary technologies, such as digital reference services, online cataloging, and online databases, many people do not understand what librarians do (Steffy 2015). Due to this reality, the general librarian profession has faced numerous biases and stereotypes. While there are multiple categorizations of these stereotypes, such as Seale’s (2008) “five major categories that librarian stereotypes fall into—old maid, policeman, librarian as parody, inept librarian, and hero/heroine librarian” (Steffy 2015, Location p. 335), it is also possible to sort general librarian biases into three main groups—job-related, intellectual, and physical presumptions—while gender biases against librarians comprise a specific, albeit large part of these bigger trends and should be considered separately, especially in this meme study.

In terms of job-related presumptions, librarians are often connected so closely to books—Evie first appears with a book—that the public has difficulty imagining that librarians are not only technology savvy, but also program coordinators for children and adults, managers, (grant) writers and researchers, and social advocates, among numerous other roles (Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor n.d.). Instead, many people simply assume librarians “only work with books” (Steffy 2015, Location 88–97). Or in other cases, the daily tasks of librarians seem so mysterious to outsiders, such as Rick O’Connell, that “the general public doesn’t view librarians as professionals and really has no firm understanding of what librarians do and the education that is required for this position” (Steffy 2015, Location 1256). As a result, one bias exists that being a librarian requires no or little formal training, and that anyone could fill the role.

When the public takes such a perspective, one result is that any hint of uncertainty or clumsiness in a librarian is a sign of the “incompetent” or “doddering librarian” trope (Steffy 2015, Location 239). Therefore, when Evie knocks down the shelves and books in the Cairo Library, her depiction aligns with this theme, even though it is quickly evident how intelligent she is. Yet, this trope is complex since the ‘incompetent librarian’ could also refer to someone with social anxiety or an obsession with ‘policing’ the library, i.e., ensuring that rules are followed and that fines are paid (Steffy 2015), and thus ruining the library’s atmosphere, about which patrons also tend to have prefixed notions (Six 2019). From this aspect of the job-related category comes the belief that librarians are ‘shushers’ (Johnson 2010). Furthermore, the public might also have unrealistic “hero/heroine” expectations of a librarian who “saves the day either through outrageous adventures or while performing seemingly mundane tasks that are in fact patron advocacy” (Steffy 2015, Location 356–63)—which Evie also does in The Mummy, albeit outside of the library setting. Thus, when these expectations are not met, even an adept librarian can become an inept one from a patron’s perspective.

Concerning intellectual biases, these conceptions stem from the proximity that librarians have to ‘knowledge’ in its different forms, as well as the personal intelligence that librarians have/need for their profession in addition to what they learn over time. Since librarians are around books, in the eyes of many patrons, they fit into the ‘know-it-all’ stereotype. While it is not necessarily negative to have a great deal of knowledge, in this sense, it has a negative connotation because people assume that a ‘know-it-all’ librarian will likely be unfriendly and not “want to interact with people” (Steffy 2015, Location 155). Evie’s intelligence aligns with this trope in The Mummy because she does mention her skills to prove herself to others, even though these efforts are also performed to combat biases held against her. For instance, she declares, “I can read and write Ancient Egyptian, and I can… I can decipher hieroglyphics and hieratic, and, well, I am the only person within 1000 miles who knows how to properly code and—and catalog this library” (Sommers 1999), and asserts, “[t]ake that Bembridge scholars” (Sommers 1999) when she proves their translation wrong. Moreover, she is socially awkward with men, like O’Connell, to whom she is attracted, which adds a new layer to the notion of the ‘know-it-all’ who is doomed to remain single, as will be further discussed in the section about gender biases against librarians. Yet, the biggest aspect of these intellectual biases appears to be the notion of being separate from “the average person” (Steffy 2015, Location 209). Just like the Library of Alexandria was (and still is) perceived as an important scholarly site (Mark 2023), many people in the contemporary world still view libraries as locations where only certain scholarly activities occur for others who are wiser or more bookish than them, which makes the library, and its intelligent workers, feel like a threatening place.

In terms of physical stereotypes, it is common for people to judge librarians based on their appearances. For example, two contemporary librarian tropes are “the hipster librarian and the tattooed librarian” (Steffy 2015, Location 394), whose presence in the library is used to show that, rather than being outdated and boring, libraries and their workers are fun and modern. Nevertheless, these tropes are attempting to break traditional expectations that librarians of all genders will be clad in boring, colorless clothes and more than likely be wearing glasses. Evie’s appearance at the beginning of The Mummy fits this idea, and even though her character lived during the early twentieth century when clothes were more modest, the stereotype that librarians dress in a boring manner still endures, as the novelty of hipster and tattooed librarians indicates. This focus on appearance, therefore, demonstrates how an “interaction with a librarian becomes a symbol for interaction with librarianship, and everything about that interaction, including the visual cues, is part of that symbol” (Steffy 2015, Location 169–76). Thus, when the librarian is cool and engaging, so too are the library, its contents, and its services.

4. Gender Stereotypes of Librarians

While the previous librarian stereotypes can apply to any librarian, there are also specific biases that concentrate on women in librarianship. The biggest one concerns a female librarian’s sexuality and marital life. Early librarians of the modern era were either seen as (1) beauties who were simply working at a library until marriage or (2) career women without marriage prospects who decided to remain librarians because they were spinsters (Kiladitis 2011). The latter group became the focus of the strongest stereotypes because library managers would have wanted to employ ‘spinster’ women as “ideal” (Steffy 2015) workers for the long term; thus, the public began to assume that career female librarians whom they met were likely not married or marriageable. Evie’s single-minded dedication to her library career in Cairo fits this trope, for after she meets O’Connell and they marry, she no longer works at a library. For sure, she is financially able to explore her interests without working due to the treasure that they gain from Hamunaptra, but she is not required to quit her job. Thus, until marriage and while working in a library, people expect that female librarians will be like Evie, “a bit prudish and/or repressed [since] all they [allegedly] do is work with books” (Steffy 2015, Location 689). And while contemporary practices that allow women to have careers and families today negate some of the basis for this stereotype, there is nevertheless an enduring assumption that female librarians, in general, will be comely and likely not value dating/sexuality.

Related to these considerations is the stereotype of ‘the sexy librarian’ (Johnson 2010), which has endured since the start of the modern profession (The Stereotype 2015) but which seems to have become more emphasized in recent pop cultural representations as the Saturday Night Live (2016) spoof by Margot Robbie indicates (Fitz-Gerald 2016). In effect, even though the spinster librarian is the most popular, there is, of course, the reality that many ‘spinster’ librarians were (secretly) attractive and had just not found their self-confidence so that they could marry. Thus, a spinster could be a sexy librarian who was just waiting to be discovered. In terms of The Mummy, Evie also fits this trope. She is attractive even though she is clumsy, but as her narrative progresses, and after she finds love with Rick, she ‘blossoms’ into ‘sexy Evie.’ Yet, what is most relevant in this case is that Evie was a sexy librarian hidden under her spinster exterior, and her adventures with Rick reveal this other side of her. The moment in The Mummy Returns when Evie jumps from the ladder by her own bookshelf and forces Rick to catch her exhibits how even Evie is using the sexy librarian trope to get what she wants from her husband. Nevertheless, in contemporary society, sexy librarians no longer have to be ‘hidden’ like Evie is. There can be “a young, stylish, librarian who exemplifies culture’s ideals of ‘sexy’” (Steffy 2015, Location 689), to whom the public will respond to as a sexy librarian. As a result, sexy librarians and spinster librarians have existed side by side—and sometimes in the same person—since the growth of modern librarianship. Furthermore, these stereotypes are not biases that men in librarianship tend to experience—even though men did initially face biases, such as being “eccentric” and “grouchy” (Newmyer 1976), they now endure stereotypes of “much less frequency and, perhaps, with less vehemence” (Dickinson 2003, p. 98)—making them unique to women in the field.

Third, like women in academia, female librarians have not always been taken seriously in terms of career power and expertise. Women in librarianship have long tended to work for male management, which prevented the “profession [from being…] truly […] seen as ‘professional’” (Steffy 2015, Location 78) due to the prevalence of women in visible positions. For many in library history, the situation aligned with the idea expressed in the 2007 documentary The Hollywood Librarian: A Look at Librarians Through Film: “Putting a woman in charge of a library was for some like putting Eve in charge of handing out apples” (Seidl 2007)—and it is difficult not to see the coincidence here of Eve and Evelyn (Evie) having similar names. Moreover, even when female librarians are liked by individual patrons, their interactions can be seen as the customer service side of a field in which male leaders, who are subject to commanding and respected ‘gatekeeper’ stereotypes (Steffy 2015), are making decisions behind the scenes. Such a situation also reflects Evie’s experiences at the start of The Mummy. She performs the daily tasks of reshelving and searching for books while Dr. Terrence Bey (Erick Avari), her boss, only appears when there is an issue. Otherwise, he would have remained behind the scenes and continued invisibly making decisions. Hence, as Steffy (2015) explains, “The power of the [female] librarian is the power of the woman: it is recognized as present but is afforded little respect” (Location 782). One can also see this power differential in Evie’s name in the film. Her given name is Evelyn, but fans and her companions call her Evie. Yet, no one calls Rick ‘Ricky’ or Jonathan ‘Johnny,’ a “diminutive fashion” that even occurs in contemporary politics—Hillary Clinton is referred to by her first rather than last name, the latter of which is the custom with men, while Condoleezza Rice was called Condi (Steffy 2015, Location 2066–73). Therefore, even though Evie is a fictional character, her gender experiences reflect real-life issues for both women in general and women in librarianship.

5. Methodology and Meme Analysis

Internet memes—“media materials such as images, videos, songs, and hashtags that can be replicated and go viral” (Carazo and Welsh 2023, p. 173)—serve numerous functions. The general perception of memes is that they are meant to be humorous, no matter the kind of message(s) that they impart (Brown 2022; Mina 2019). Memes can also use parody, irony, and satire to convey criticism toward social beliefs and practices (Mina 2019; Milner 2016), which reflects Morreall’s (1983) call to ‘take laughter seriously’ in his research that emphasizes the scholarly and social importance of humor. Public figures can be assessed and/or censured through memes (Milner 2016), and in terms of cinematic themes, memes can present fictional characters and worlds with added commentary that allow meme creators and Internet users to reflect upon trending social issues (Zheng and Li 2023). As “a language in themselves”, memes, therefore, have “a capacity to transcend cultures and construct collective identities between people” (Brown 2022, para. 5) that are worth evaluating in specific cases and over the long term to better understand moments in time and across space that were impossible before the advent of digital technology and culture.

The main categories of highly circulated Evie memes can be broken down into four groups: (1) general librarian stereotypes, (2) the ‘dangerous/harmful book’ trope, (3) gender issues, and (4) the choosing of the ‘real’ (better) Evie.2 Moreover, having more than one grouping helps to reflect not only the variable nature of librarian stereotypes, but also the fact that in other studies of librarians in film and literature, “librarian depictions, just like real-life librarians, do not fit exclusively into one stereotype category” (Steffy 2015, Location 518). The fact that Evie is one character does not detract from this trend, for her multifaceted aspects allow for diverse insights into women in librarianship and intellectual pursuits.

Using a meme analysis to explore intersections between a film librarian and librarianship remains a valuable approach since, as another study concerning YouTube videos made about librarian stereotypes demonstrates, public-created media materials “give insight into what the public thinks about the profession as opposed to what traditional media tell the public to think about the profession” (Steffy 2015, Location 370). Consequently, even though this study could examine Evie in regard to librarian stereotypes without the presence of the memes, the images balance the formal scholarly elements of the research by including media that are often seen as an equalizing, democratic force that can be made by anyone with Internet access and something to say about a particular issue.

6. General Librarian Stereotypes

This first category of Evie memes connects strongly with her character as well as her sense of self, for no matter how else other characters see Evie or what roles she eventually fills in the films, she is, first and foremost, a librarian. Even though she is inebriated when she makes this statement, it nevertheless provides a simple truth about how she sees herself when she lets down her guard. When Rick admits that he has trouble ‘getting’ her, she replies, “Look, I… I may not be an explorer or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker or a gunfighter, Mr. O’Connell, but I am proud of what I am” (Sommers 1999). Rick remains confused, but he asks, “And what is that?” to which Evie answers, “I… am a librarian” (Sommers 1999). Hence, Evie is arguably undervaluing herself by encapsulating her identity through one role, but because, in truth, librarians have to be capable of doing many things and helping many kinds of people with different needs (Braun 2002), one could also argue that her explanation is quite accurate. Rick’s comment in The Mummy Returns, “Are all librarians this much trouble?” (Sommers 2001), further supports this interpretation: Evie is now a mother, a respected scholar, and married, but her husband still summarizes her character as that of ‘a librarian.’ Based on this self-representation, it is evident why memes connecting Evie to issues of librarianship are among the most popular themes in online portrayals of her character.

In Figure 1, there are four main sections. First, there is a white square with black letters that reads, “Librarians we get”. Second, and in response to this initial text, is an image of Evie from The Mummy. This image captures her stunned reaction to the mess she accidentally makes in the Cairo Library after knocking down the shelves in a domino effect because she tried to reach across shelves from her ladder rather than climbing down, moving the ladder, and climbing back up again. She wears a white-collared shirt, a dark, loose neckcloth, and glasses, which she is taking off her face as if this will allow her to see the mess better. Her hair is up and disheveled. The third square of the meme shows a ‘hip’ librarian in multicolored clothes. He has wild white hair—presumably bleached—and he is dancing as he walks between two library shelves. He is the figure in “The Dewey Decimal Rap” who intends to teach audiences about the Dewey Decimal System through contemporary music (YouTube 2009). The fourth square of the meme then offers the explanation: “Librarians we want”.

The meme, therefore, brings forward four main stereotypes about librarians. First, there is the gender bias in which even though women have predominated in modern librarianship, especially in positions visible to the public, men are seen as more prestigious or ideal librarians due to their tendency to hold management positions and serve as “gatekeepers […] respected for their power, knowledge, and masculinity” (Steffy 2015, Location 378). This trope has transformed from early library stereotypes, which held that men were most likely to be socially inept and lonely bibliophiles (Dickinson 2003), but leadership trends in contemporary librarianship indicate that men were and are more likely to be library managers (Newman 2018) even though attention to the issue is fostering change. As this scene depicted in The Mummy continues, the modern trend becomes evident. Once the shelves fall, Evie’s boss—and, as is later revealed, someone helping the Medjai, the guardians of Hamunaptra—Dr. Terrence Bey enters the room and panics about the mess.

DR. BEY: Oh, look at this! Sons of the pharaohs! Give me frogs! Flies! Locusts! Anything but you! Compared to you, the other plagues were a joy!

EVELYN: I am so very sorry. It was an accident.

DR. BEY: My girl, when Rameses destroyed Syria, that was an accident. You are a catastrophe!

(Sommers 1999)

From this dialogue, it becomes evident that Dr. Bey does not hold Evie in high esteem based on her gender. He not only compares her to plagues, but he also refers to her as “my girl” (Sommers 1999) before proceeding to give her a revised history lesson in which she, the ‘girl’, was worse than an act of war. Thus, from this episode, it is evident that Dr. Bey, as the library’s leader, has the ability to comment on Evie’s gender in derogatory ways. In terms of the meme, this power can be perceived in the meme creator’s preference for the ‘ideal’ male, rapping librarian rather than for Evie, the female ‘librarian we get’, who is, in reality, the more prestigious scholar of the two meme characters.

Second, the librarian stereotype involving attire appears in this meme, which emphasizes issues of attraction in terms of approachability and relatability3 as well as romantic feelings4 toward librarians. A common assumption made by people who do not work in the library field is that female librarians tend to dress conservatively, with their hair up, and often in a way that reminds people that they are not sexual objects (Steffy 2015), for no matter one’s sexual preferences, contemporary societies often debate about how women should represent themselves and how they should be perceived by others (i.e., not being objectified or subjects of the ‘male gaze (Goldin 2022)). Moreover, these women are often depicted wearing glasses, further covering their faces and thus masking their potential beauty. Even in cases where female librarians with glasses are sexualized, the focus on their underlying beauty—and not on their library skills—demonstrates a bias about librarians’ appearances. Yet, overall, librarians who wear glasses daily in their profession will likely not be sexualized; instead, the glasses would situate them within the boring and/or spinster librarian tropes.

Evie, while an attractive woman, nonetheless fits this stereotype. In support of this assessment are her future husband’s actions toward her. While Rick does grab her and kiss her because he is incarcerated and set to be hanged, begging her, “Lady, get me the hell out of here!” (Sommers 1999), this ‘attraction’ is based only on her proximity and his ability to persuade her to help him by appealing to her emotions. Later, when Evie asks, “Why did you kiss me?” Rick replies, “I was about to be hanged. It seemed like a good idea at the time” (Sommers 1999). However, when Evie changes her clothes—to more traditional Arab attire with ornaments dangling near her eyes to emphasize their beauty (Figure 2), Rick suddenly is “awfully” (Sommers 1999) attracted to her as an individual and not as ‘the last woman he might kiss before dying.’ While it is easy to argue that Rick exoticizes her, there is more to the moment than this fact, for it is not the cultural association of her clothes that matters most; instead, it is her actual beauty, which he was not as aware of when she wore a more professional outfit, that makes the difference. As a result, Evie, who wears conservative attire as a librarian, is seen as leading a loveless life—another librarian trope (Steffy 2015)—until she gets kissed by Rick and changes her clothes.

However, there are no prevailing stereotypes about male librarians that assume they have a loveless or boring life, as is the case with the male librarian in the meme. Furthermore, while the stereotype toward female librarians’ appearance derives from a male, heterosexual perspective, male librarians are allowed more sexual freedom and can appeal to multiple sexual preferences. Since this rapping librarian’s clothes are bright and ‘fun’, the meme creator assumes that he is more engaging and approachable—and hence, likely more effective as a librarian. His unique and enlivening clothes would attract romantic interest as well. Plus, because he is male, he is not constrained by the stereotype that librarians should have their romantic lives commented upon at all. Whereas a female librarian’s clothes are often expected to tone down their sensuality, there is no need for this male librarian to tone down anything. He can be attractive and fun-loving at the same time, and few people would judge him negatively for it. Yet, if Evie were to show up at the library in Cairo dressed in a comparable way, it would not be deemed appropriate for her sex.

Third, there is the paradox of professionalism in the meme. Evie is an intelligent, industrious scholar, and she is well-versed in her field even though the Bembridge scholars have apparently dismissed her and her work (Bembridge Scholars n.d.). In fact, the Bembridge scholars have even mistranslated the locations of The Book of the Dead and The Book of Amun-Ra, which Evie rectifies through her own apt translation of a text, which culminates in her defiantly declaring, “Take that Bembridge scholars!” (Sommers 1999). Yet, neither her proven intelligence nor her experiences appear to matter in the meme: she is still not the preferred librarian. Instead, the librarian who looks unprofessional in his bright clothes and dancing posture is whom the meme creator considers preferred by people who imagine their ideal librarian. Unless the meme viewer is aware that this is the Dewey Decimal rapper, there is no background on his character, as there is with Evie; yet, from his demeanor, which in other contexts would be considered unprofessional, it is not obvious that he speaks several languages or has examined archeological sites and treasures in person as Evie has. As a result, Evie is more professional than the preferred male librarian but less ideal in the eyes of the meme creator because she is ‘warm’ (i.e., friendly, kind, clumsy), fitting with the ideas that (1) “when people are seen as warm (likeable), they may not be seen as competent; when people are seen as cold (not likeable), they may be seen as competent” (Steffy 2015, Location 1342) and that (2) “women who are seen as warm are not seen as competent while men who are seen as warm can be seen as competent” (Steffy 2015, Location 1342). Consequently, the advantage will generally go to male librarians no matter their personality and associated professionalism, as is the case in the meme.

The fourth and related stereotype involves the coolness/hipness of the librarian. Many people might consider having an advanced degree and education about a topic such as Egyptology would be quite ‘cool.’ Hence, if Evie’s field is cool, then it should follow that library users would think she is also a cool librarian. Yet, the meme’s use of Evie from the scene after the books and shelves fall counteracts this assumption. Her clumsiness and lack of coolness under pressure (Figure 3) ruin perceptions of her as being one of the “librarians that we want”. Had the triumphant-looking Evie—who just won the camel race or revised the incorrect translations of the Bembridge scholars—been used, then it would not have been so easy to discount her. However, in the early moments of the film, she is not depicted as being a cool librarian; instead, her fun-loving brother, Jonathan, is presented as her foil. When he hides in a sarcophagus with a mummy, jumps up, and scares her, she is upset (uncool).

EVELYN: Have you no respect for the dead?

JONHATHAN: Of course I do. But sometimes I’d rather like to join them.

EVELYN: Well, I wish you would do it sooner rather than later before you ruin my career the way you’ve ruined yours.

(Sommers 1999)

Evie’s criticism of her brother is, therefore, twofold: she accuses him of being disrespectful to dead people as well as willing to get her into trouble at work, as he did with his own job. Hence, Evie, as a librarian working in a library—as opposed to Evie, the librarian on-site at Hamunaptra—is not hip and not someone with whom potential library patrons would want to interact.

Figure 3. Evie showing her clumsy side right before these actions create a mess in the Cairo Library. The Mummy (1999).

Figure 3. Evie showing her clumsy side right before these actions create a mess in the Cairo Library. The Mummy (1999).

On the other hand, the brightly clothed, dancing, and rapping librarian is cool. His movements are flowing and not clumsy, as are Evie’s, and even if he does not demonstrate any knowledge beyond how to use the Dewey Decimal System, such as Evie’s encyclopedic knowledge of Egyptology, he appears easy for patrons to approach, which, at times, can be just as important to them as what a librarian knows (Michael and Olayemi 2023) and which harkens back to the assessment about cold and warm personalities mentioned in alignment with the previous stereotype (Steffy 2015).

Consequently, from this meme and its basic comparison between The Mummy’s Evie and the Dewey Decimal rapper, some of the most glaring issues facing librarianship today become apparent. The fact that this meme creator prefers the hip, less professional, and more colorfully dressed male figure exhibits the inherent biases toward librarians that still exist. Someone unique and intelligent, albeit clumsy, does not receive as much approbation from the public as the male librarian, who, while not necessarily professional, is nonetheless perceived as being more approachable than Evie. Moreover, the reality that meme viewers will ‘know’ Evie as a character better than this male figure does not seem to matter. He remains the preferred image of a librarian in not only the meme creator’s perspective, but also presumably in the opinion of today’s library users.

7. The Dangerous/Harmful Book Trope

Figure 4 provides two side-by-side screenshots from the film. The left side shows Rick and Evie examining The Book of the Dead, which she has ‘borrowed’ from Dr. Allen Chamberlain (Jonathan Hyde), the British scholar and member of the competing (American) expedition to Hamunaptra guided by Beni Gabor (Kevin J. O’Connor). While Dr. Chamberlain sleeps, Rick and Evie unlock The Book of the Dead with the special key that only Evie has. When Rick, whom she assumed was asleep, sees what she has, he asks, “The Book of the Dead? Are you sure you want to be playing around with this thing?” to which Evie replies, “It’s just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book” (Sommers 1999). Moreover, when she flips the cover open, the wind blows in a strange, supernatural way, which makes the fire flicker. Rick then adds, “That happens a lot around here” (Sommers 1999). Yet, after these warnings, Evie proceeds to read part of the ancient text: “Amun Ra. Amun Dei. It speaks of the night and of the day” (Sommers 1999). Then, she reads aloud in Egyptian. As soon as she finishes the passage, Imhotep’s mummy awakens; Dr. Chamberlain sits up with a start, shouting, “No! You must not read from the book!” (Sommers 1999), and the landscape is swarmed by locusts, causing everyone except Dr. Chamberlain to run. The meme image, therefore, refers to these interlocking moments in this one screenshot, and the meme text comments, “No harm ever came from reading a book”.

Nevertheless, the right side of the meme serves as an ironic and incongruous (Morreall 1983) response to this first screenshot and text. In this scene is an image of Evie, stunned by the mess, as she stands before fallen bookshelves in the Cairo Library. Moreover, there is a red circle drawn around a particular jumble of items coming out of a fallen shelf, drawing attention to the meaning of the meme text in case audiences do not understand. Rather than showing the calm scene by the campfire, the second part of the meme portrays a more chaotic scene that aligns with Morreall’s incongruity theory as a cause of humor: by defying the meme viewer’s expectations established in the left side of the meme, the meme offers a chance for viewers to see how the truth is opposite from what is claimed. In effect, then, there can be quite a lot of damage from reading a book. The patron who used the library book and misplaced it on the shelf, as well as Evie’s attempt to place it in the right location on the opposite shelf, are what begin the debacle and result in a mess. As a result, one could argue that someone’s ‘reading of a book’ did harm to both Evie’s reputation in the eyes of Dr. Bey and to the well-being and order of the books themselves.

Therefore, from this meme, another librarianship trope involving the ‘dangerous/harmful book’, or, in more general parlance, the danger of knowledge and/or a specific kind of knowledge, becomes apparent. Humans tend to fear the unknown (Robson 2021), and part of the contemporary fear of learning (called sophophobia) and of knowledge comes not only from the subject matter, but also from how learners today are often graded and expected to be perfect (Wong 2023). Moreover, learning is “uncomfortable” (Bregman 2019, para. 12): it often asks people to confront truths about themselves and the world that may be difficult to think about, causing the carriers of knowledge (i.e., books, magazines, digital media) to be just as feared as the messages contained in them. In summary, learning, books, and knowledge can be scary. Yet, as a librarian, Evie understands the importance of passing information down from one culture and one generation to the next. It is also evident from Evie’s accident with the bookshelves in a time before digital media that, as physical objects, books can be dangerous in two ways: they can injure people by falling on them or through other means, and they can harm people through the knowledge they offer, which can be used against others.

In terms of modern-day librarianship, the meme aligns with current debates about censorship and banning books. According to the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, “[l]ibraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval” (American Library Association n.d., II), and “[l]ibraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment” (American Library Association n.d., III). For instance, there have been numerous historical books that were banned, with many writers being exiled or killed: Ovid was exiled from Rome in 8 A.D. for his Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), after which the book was burned during the Renaissance and “banned by U.S. Customs in 1928” (Bannings and Burnings in History n.d., para. 60). In 1526, Catholics in England destroyed William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament because they did not want the Bible available in the vernacular (Bannings and Burnings in History n.d.) James I banned Sir Walter Raleigh’s The History of the World (Bannings and Burnings in History n.d.). Moreover, people have sought to ban contemporary literature as well. The ALA released a list of the one hundred most challenged books between 2010 and 2019 (American Library Association n.d.), and these works include Thirteen Reasons Why (2007) by Jay Asher, which deals with (teen) suicide (D’Agati et al. 2021); The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) by Sherman Alexie, which discusses, among other issues, violence and school bullying (Gomez 2018); and Looking for Alaska (2005) by John Green, which addresses death, uses strong language, and has “a scene describing an awkward sexual encounter” (Chisholm and Cook 2021, p. 121).

The arguments that people have used when banning and/or challenging books, such as indicating how the books present threats to “morality and ideology” (100 Mile House Free Press 2024, para. 2), often stem from “moral panics” (para. 8) in which regular people alongside people with agendas become swept up by these perceived dangers. As a result, book challenges and bans exhibit a “relationship between knowledge and power” (Knox 2015, p. viii) with different perspectives based on the social background and experiences of challengers, writers, readers, and the public. Therefore, for many people in this process, there is the underlying idea that books can be dangerous or harmful because of what they depict, especially when physical violence, death, and trauma are involved.

Yet, these numerous intersections of individual and group perspectives indicate that there are no ‘right’ ways to view a book, making the ALA’s practice of avoiding censorship a general response to these specific ones. Thus, it is evident that Evie does not subscribe to the idea that The Book of the Dead, with its distinct perspective, would immediately cause danger and thus should be banned from use by the group. While in the context of the film, the book is part of the mayhem, it is not the only cause: just like the person who misshelved the book in the Cairo Library, it is Imhotep’s usage of The Book of the Dead that is the underlying problem, not the book itself. Therefore, there is merit to Evie’s perspective that the harm does not come from reading the book: the harm comes from what people do with the information in the book.

Figure 4 also refers to how certain groups have been marginalized in terms of access to libraries, books, and learning. For example, even as Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), “an American industrialist [and …] philanthropist” (Carnegie 2021, para. 1), was building his famous Carnegie Libraries—2509 of them—mostly in the United States (A History of US Public Libraries: Carnegie Libraries n.d.), men like W. E. B. DuBois were protesting the segregation of libraries (A History of US Public Libraries: Segregated Libraries n.d.). Access did begin to change. For instance, “[i]n 1905, Louisville, Kentucky, would open the first free public library for African American readers staffed and operated entirely by African Americans” (A History of US Public Libraries: Segregated Libraries n.d., para. 2), and during the Civil Rights Movement, many libraries in the southern United States were foci for sit-ins (Eberhart 2018). Yet, the history and memory of this marginalization, as well as the restricted access to resources that resulted from it, remains a strong reason why contemporary librarians support universal access, with the ALA expressing that “[b]ooks and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation” (Library n.d., I) and that “[a] person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views” (Library n.d., V).

Consequently, in a heroic way—and despite the dangers unleashed by reading The Book of the Dead—Evie’s defiant act of reading from a ‘dangerous’ and ‘restricted’ book, thus refusing to censor it, can be interpreted as supporting universal access to books and learning, no matter the subject. In this perspective, the nature of The Book of the Dead and its link to Ancient Egypt should not exclude it from being used. This universal access, in fact, occurs later in the film when she encourages Johnathan to read from it to control Imohtep’s guards (Figure 5). Hence, Evie supports the book’s use by anyone who needs it. Furthermore, in The Mummy Returns, Jonathan returns the favor to Evie by helping Alex read from The Book of the Dead to bring Evie back to life (Figure 6). Alex knows a great deal about Ancient Egyptian because his “mum taught” him (Sommers 2001); then, what knowledge from the book that Evie helped pass on to Jonathan, he, in turn, teaches to Alex. The Book of the Dead, therefore, saves Evie’s life because she reads from it and encourages others to do so.

In addition, as a self-described librarian in both personality and career, Evie has a responsibility to provide materials of all kinds to the people around her, despite their ‘side’, as based on the Beni/Chamberlain group and her group. This notion is why, when she takes The Book of the Dead from Dr. Chamberlain, and Rick tells her, “That’s called stealing, you know,” she quips, “According to you and my brother, it’s called borrowing” (Sommers 1999). While Rick is thinking of the text in terms of its physical nature, Evie approaches The Book of the Dead for its intellectual character, which intends to “provide information and enlightenment” (Library n.d., III) according to modern standards, such as those of the ALA.

Knowing something does not guarantee that a person will act negatively or dangerously with this information, a notion that will be further explored in Figure 7 below. As a result, Evie can justifiably read from The Book of the Dead because she is a good-hearted person who understands the ethical uses of knowledge. Moreover, even after Evie has experienced firsthand the dangerously falling books and shelves as well as the cursed Mummy that she frees after reading from The Book of the Dead, she still values knowledge and books. One could even argue that her encounters with books and their contents are what build her character, making her the beloved librarian (1) whose actions promote scholarship and universal access and (2) whom the world has known for over twenty years.

This meme shows Imhotep reading from The Book of the Dead in order to bring his lover and former mistress of Pharaoh Seti I, Anck Su Namun, back to life after she committed suicide. Seti discovered her relationship with Imhotep after Imhotep touched her and smeared her body paint; Imhotep and Anck Su Namun then killed the pharaoh before she killed herself so Imhotep could flee. Imhotep steals Anck Su Namun’s body and takes it to Hamunaptra to perform the ritual, where he uses The Book of the Dead. The ritual works, for Anck Su Namun’s spirit rises from the underworld and reaches her body, but the pharaoh’s guards intervene, capturing Imhotep and consigning Anck Su Namun’s spirit back to the underworld. With this series of events in mind, the meme text then reads, “No harm ever came from reading a book”.

In effect, then, Figure 7 presents two levels of incongruity (Morreall 1983). First, the meme’s text calls for meme viewers to see that Imhotep’s reading from a book, in this case, The Book of the Dead, conflicts with the idea that books are harmless (Evie’s view). The meme creator, therefore, argues that books can be harmful or dangerous, as is the case with this narrative. Nevertheless, the second level of incongruity is that books alone are not necessarily dangerous. The events that the meme calls to mind are not caused by the book. Imhotep and Anck Su Namun choose to become lovers even though it is against the social and religious law of the land. Moreover, they opt to kill the pharaoh once they have been caught. The Book of the Dead only becomes a factor after these crimes are committed.

If one considers that the meme also links to Evie’s reading from The Book of the Dead, as occurs in Figure 4, then the incongruity of the claim that books are dangerous becomes more complex. After Evie reads from the book and awakens Imhotep, he unleashes plagues and kills Dr. Chamberlain and the Americans who opened the cursed chest holding his canopic jars. Imhotep also causes a sandstorm that leads to the crash of Captain Winston Havelock’s plane as well as Havelock’s death. Therefore, harm befalls many people after Evie reads from The Book of the Dead. However, the incongruity and irony that The Book of the Dead itself is not necessarily the reason for this evil behavior is again apparent. Even the Mummy’s curse—the “Hom-Dai, the worst of all ancient curses. One so horrible, it had never before been bestowed”, which causes Imhotep to “arise a walking disease, a plague upon mankind, an unholy flesh eater with a strength of ages, power over the sand, and the glory of invincibility”—was given to him by humans who used the nature of their religion to make him “the Creature” (Sommers 1999). Without being cursed in this way, Imhotep’s death would have likely been the end of the affair, at least in this world; thus, how people used their knowledge created the Mummy that hurt others just as much as Imhotep hurt others. To only blame The Book of the Dead—or any book—in either case, overlooks the role of human agency in dangerous and harmful deeds.

Yet, it is exactly this conflict between the power of knowledge and the power of human agency that book banning and challenging books comprise. People over the centuries have argued that certain books and/or knowledge are bad because people can do terrible things with the information found in these works. Consequently, when presented with someone who acts as Imhotep does and creates a dangerous social situation with the use of a book, a common social response is to blame the existence of the book rather than the person using it, their background, or their individual traits that might make it more likely that they would act harmfully.

The meme’s multiple levels of incongruity (Morreall 1983) and irony also point to the reality that this debate has still not been resolved. Contemporary government organizations tasked with security can and do request individuals’ access to the written word, whether in paper or digital formats. This perspective could be construed as the ‘Imhotep view’, for it assumes that written works can and do affect human actions. However, in an effort to check the power of these forces, which many see as invading freedoms protected by the Constitution and a betrayal of libraries’ core values, libraries today protect users’ checkout history or even offer users the option of keeping no history in the computer system in an effort to “defen[d] our right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures” (Johnson 2010, pp. 864–71). This perspective would, therefore, be the ‘Evie view’, which seeks to protect texts as objects insulated from the character of users.

Furthermore, the holistic nature that The Book of the Dead and The Book of Amun-Ra generate in the film symbolizes how all knowledge comes together. Studies calling for interdisciplinarity (Wang et al. 2021; Linn 2005), in fact, demonstrate how this integration is becoming more important in the modern (academic) world. Therefore, to consider The Book of the Dead by itself to be an evil, harmful book is a bias that overlooks human agency and the multivalent nature of knowledge and general human experience with it. For instance, many modern technologies and machines can be dangerous or used as weapons, but they are not banned from the public because people need them and are expected to follow related laws and safe usage practices. Similarly, a book that imparts a specific experience (i.e., cultural, individual, interactional, processual) is merely one iteration of human knowledge and/or experience, whatever the ethical implications given to it by society and its current moral outlook. Moreover, as the Mummy films, these memes, and the real-life debate about the nature of books reveal, the truth of the matter is likely ‘in the middle’ with the nature of knowledge in all its forms being subject to the agency of individuals like Evie and Imhotep. How these aspects interact with one another cannot be predicted or planned, but the right of people to have knowledge and use it remains a fundamental feature of human freedom.

8. Gender Issues

The fact that Evie is a woman in academia, which was dominated by men, remains relevant in The Mummy media as well as in memes created about the films. Moreover, Egyptologists have a rich academic path that indicates the breadth and depth of their knowledge. Similar to contemporary Egyptologists, who learn about history, culture, art, architecture, linguistics, and religion (Yale Egyptology 2024), Egyptologists during the early twentieth century would have also studied multiple subjects. Added to this curriculum is Evie’s role as a librarian, which further expands the kinds of knowledge that she needs to be successful in her field. From these academic trajectories, it is evident that Evie went through a similar process, and because she is an effective scholar who is not only able to “decipher hieroglyphics and hieratic,” but also “the only person within 1000 miles who knows how to properly code and catalog [her] library” (Sommers 1999), she is portrayed as an intelligent and clever woman despite her clumsiness. Nevertheless, Evie still faces gender biases from others in the film and in memes, both of which will be explored here.

Figure 8 depicts Dr. Chamberlain under an umbrella as he leads his team at Hamunaptra. They are looking for “treasure” (Sommers 1999), but because Dr. Chamberlain is more scholarly than the Americans on his team, he understands Egyptian treasure to comprise multiple objects, such as The Book of the Dead and the container of canopic jars, while the Americans only want the canopic jars. Thus, his overall character is that of an intellectual, albeit a flawed one, as will be discussed further, and his role as an overseer, which is emphasized in the meme, is evident as he gazes upon the people working for him. A hat for the Kansas City Chiefs football team has been added to his head, bringing an added layer to the meme with its reference to sports. The meme text at the top of the image reads, “When the Kansas City Chiefs coach learns the 49ers have a female coach…” The text at the bottom of the meme reads, “They’re led by a woman. What does a woman know?”, which is what Dr. Chamberlain says about Evie in the film.

The first layer of meaning in the meme that refers to gender and gender bias concerns the film itself. Because intellectuals in the early twentieth century, particularly those in Egyptology, were men, Evie faced numerous instances of gender bias. Early in the film, Dr. Bey qualifies her presence in the Cairo Library in a stereotypical way. Even though he arguably has a right to be upset that the library has become such a mess, shouting, “Look at my library!”, he then follows up this exclamation with a more personal question. He asks Evie, “Why do I put up with you?” Evie, who sees her worth in her intellectual capacities, replies, “W-Well you put up with me because I can… I can read and write Ancient Egyptian, and I can… I can decipher hieroglyphics and hieratic, and, well, I am the only person within 1000 miles who knows how to properly code and—and catalog this library, that’s why” (Sommers 1999). In other words, even though Evie is clumsy and socially awkward at times, she is confident in her abilities as an Egyptian scholar and a librarian.

Nevertheless, Dr. Bey corrects this line of reasoning: “I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons. That’s why! Allah rest their souls” (Sommers 1999). In effect, then, even though Dr. Bey is nominally her boss, it is evident that he does not see Evie as his intellectual equal. Despite Evie’s impressive qualifications, Dr. Bey instead refers to Evie’s family relations, with her father being mentioned first on the list. Consequently, no matter what Evie can do, he keeps her at the library because of her family name. His next demand, stating, “Now I don’t care how you do it, I don’t care how long it takes, straighten up this meshiver!” (Sommers 1999), then further demeans her. While one could argue that Evie did indeed make the mess, so she should clean it up, the way in which Dr. Bey focuses on the unspecified ‘hows’ of the task makes Evie look more like a housekeeper than a coworker. Evie’s gender, therefore, appears to be one of the reasons for this behavior.

Similarly, Dr. Chamberlain acts superior to Evie’s group at Hamunaptra (Figure 9). His attitude is evident on the riverboat when he finds out, through Jonathan’s lack of discretion, that there is another team heading toward Hamunaptra. Dr. Chamberlian then asks Rick, “What makes you so confident, sir?” (Sommers 1999), encouraging Rick to repeat the question to him. In response, Henderson (Stephen Dunham), one of the Americans, states, “We’ve got us a man [Beni] who’s actually been there” (Sommers 1999). The use of ‘man’ rather than ‘person’ or ‘someone’ indicates how Dr. Chamberlain’s team is male-centered; surely, Beni is male, but it is probable that had the potential guide been female, Dr. Chamberlain would not have had such confidence in reaching Hamunaptra.

Moreover, Dr. Chamberlain’s biases against Evie’s team and Evie herself become most apparent when members of his team notice Evie offering advice to Rick, Jonathan, and Warden Gad Hassan (Omid Djalili)—who accompanied them from the prison as part of the deal for releasing Rick from the noose—about how to position large mirrors according to “an ancient Egyptian trick” so that they will be able “catch the light” (Sommers 1999) to see once they enter the underground chambers. As they work, Henderson asks Dr. Chamberlain, “Do they know something we don’t?” (Sommers 1999). Henderson may not be an intellectual—or ordering the Arab workers around in Arabic (and in an orientalist manner) as Dr. Chamberlain does—but he has other ways of perceiving the work, and by instinct, he recognizes that Evie may be doing something effective. Yet, Dr. Chamberlain, who feels that his ways are superior, responds, “They are led by a woman. What does a woman know?” (Sommers 1999). The irony of this comment is that Evie clearly knows a lot, and likely even more than he. This fact appears from the film’s editing: right after Dr. Chamberlian makes this statement, Evie is shown telling her companions, “That’s a statue of Anubis. Its legs go deep underground. According to Bembridge scholars, that’s where we’ll find a secret compartment containing the golden Book of Amun-Ra” (Sommers 1999). However, Dr. Chamberlain cannot recognize this reality because he only sees her gender, thus judging someone’s mind by their body type.

The second layer of the meme then factors into this notion of gender bias by adding sports to the evaluation. Just like intellectual fields have been dominated by men (Sá et al. 2023), so too has sports been coded as masculine (McKay et al. 2000), with contemporary viewership showing favoritism to male athletes and male-coded sports—even by female viewers (Angelini 2023)—despite calls for more equality. Furthermore, the academic field of sports management combines the scholarly realm with sports, further deepening the meme’s message. In terms of sports leadership and coaching, men also predominate (Aydin and Eratli-Şïrïn 2022). Belkoff (2020) reveals that even though Title IX has increased opportunities for intercollegiate female athletes, “as female intercollegiate athletics has increased in competitiveness, more coaching positions are allocated to men, thereby decreasing representation of women in coaching and athletic administration” (p. 45). Similarly, in professional sports, in particular with male teams, women have been left out until recently, which is why in 2020, Alyssa Nakken’s hiring by the San Francisco Giants and Katie Sowers’ work for the San Francisco 49ers during the Super Bowl “made headlines” and “history” (Beaton 2020, para. 1).

Particularly, American football has been a sport that has a history of seeing female participants, either on the field or as leaders, as unique and perhaps even ‘questionable’ even though, as Taylor (2023) reports, “Women have been coaching the sport for over a century on high school, college, and community teams despite the widespread lack of public knowledge” (p. 1008). Girls have also been involved in football since the 1930s, but girls who play football have often been seen as or feel like outcasts (Luther 2017), endure gender and sexual biases (de la Cretaz 2023), or are assumed to face a higher danger of injury. Nevertheless, girls and women still play because they have a passion for the game, just like Evie has a passion for Egyptology.

Just like Evie faces biases in the library and in Hamunaptra, skilled female football players and coaches face gender biases on and off the field, with many news reports “emphasising domestic roles, their heterosexuality, and desirable femininity, and that some women were employed only because of an absence of men” (Taylor 2023, pp. 1008–1009). Yet, one way in which professional female football coaches in both men’s and women’s leagues have fought against the masculinized nature of the sport is through strategic self-representation (Knoppers et al. 2022). Just like Evie, who presents herself as being intelligent both in the library and on-site to prove herself, they strive to be the best at what they like no matter—and perhaps even despite—their gender.

Figure 8, therefore, encapsulates all these notions through its application of gender issues affecting Evie in academia to women with leadership positions in sports. The meme was created in 2020 for the Super Bowl played between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, with the Chiefs winning. At that time, Katie Sowers was an offensive assistant coach for the 49ers (from 2017 to 2021), but she subsequently coached for Kansas City (in 2021) before moving to Ottawa University (Katie Sowers n.d.). It is, therefore, relevant to note how Figure 8 captures a specific moment in sports, for at the time of this writing, neither the Chiefs (Coaches 2023b) nor the 49ers have a female working for them on the coaching staff (Coaches 2023a). Thus, the inclusion of the 49ers hat in the meme could have four potential meanings.

First, and most obviously, it contends that the 49ers lost the Super Bowl because they had a woman coach (Sowers) on the team. Such a gender bias, sounding similar to The Sandlot’s (baseball’s) “You play ball like a girl” (Fox 2023, para. 7), demonstrates how society feels about women in football (and sports), for the meme, likely made by a fan, expresses this bias to justify a victory. Even more compelling and ironic is the reality that Sowers moved to the Chiefs the next season, yet the Chiefs did not repeat their championship victory this time. While this loss is surely not Sowers’ fault personally or because of her gender, it is evident that the meme creator might have seen it this way. Second, the meme could be understood as a reaction to the general trend of a growing number of female coaches working in the NFL (Sky Sports 2022; Williams 2021) by reflecting the bias that many people feel toward these women. For instance, one person commented on YouTube that “regardless of how qualified these women may seem we’re ultimately being told they were THE BEST candidates out of tens of thousands of men. What a load of horse crap” (YouTube 2022) while another complained, “Oh just wait until they lose every single game this year” (YouTube 2021). While the twelve female coaches were only reported on in 2021, they have been working in sports administration for longer, making their presence in football a topic that would have been relevant for football fans during the 2020 Super Bowl.

Third, the meme could be functioning as a general symbol of biases toward women in sports: just like Dr. Chamberlain appears to be against all female intellectuals, like Evie, men like him—no matter what team they support—are denigrating the influence and skills of women to lead athletic teams, in particular football ones. Fourth, the meme’s 2020 reference still meaningfully resonates in society, specifically concerning the state of the Chiefs’ and the 49ers’ coaching staffs in 2024, which are all male. Thus, audiences who view the meme after the 2020 Super Bowl may perceive a sense of irony and incongruity (Morreall 1983) in it that its creator did not originally intend. By referencing teams with an all-male coaching staff, the meme can be seen as calling out their apparent biases, reminding them that just as Dr. Chamberlain was wrong about Evie, they are mistaken about the capacities of female football leaders. Hence, the meme could now be seen as urging teams like the Chiefs and the 49ers to bring in more women as coaches so that they can be innovative and ‘game-changing’ like Evie is in The Mummy films.

No matter the reading of the meme, though, it becomes evident that gender biases are as relevant today as they were in the film and the historical period that it represents, revealing how memes from The Mummy that depict Evie can connect with social issues from 1999, when the film was made, as well as with those relevant over twenty years later.

A further commentary on gender appears when Evie expresses her passion for Egyptology and finding artifacts. Figure 10 presents two screenshots from The Mummy, one on top of the other. While this composition indicates that Figure 10 is not a meme in the traditional sense, it nevertheless appeared in the search for memes, which allows it to be counted as such, especially since other web users who perform the same search will be presented with similar results and will, in turn, treat these results as memes. Both screenshots in Figure 10 are part of the sequence in which Evie, Rick, and Jonathan find Imhotep’s sarcophagus. The first image shows parts of Rick and Jonathan on the left side as they work to reposition the sarcophagus, as well as an unobstructed view of Evie’s face and upper body. Her excitement over the find is evident, and the meme text reflects what she says in the film: “(getting ready to open a tomb) Oh, I’ve dreamt about this since I was a little girl”. The second part of the meme then shows Rick and Jonathan regarding Evie, with Rick commenting, “You dream about dead guys?” While this comment is, on the surface, a sexual innuendo, the difference between what Evie and Rick reference is significant: Evie is reacting to the whole experience of discovering and learning more about a mummy, which goes beyond the fact that a mummy is a dead person, while Rick is more concerned with the gender and ‘availability’ of the mummy. Thus, the dream of an enthusiastic archeologist/Egyptologist (Evie) sounds odd to Rick, and he seeks to normalize the situation by making a joke and innuendo out of it. A large part of this reaction relates to Evie’s gender.

The first critical layer of the meme is that ‘girls’ do not have professional dreams. Over time, different cultures and societies have tended to limit women to the domestic sphere, keeping their husbands and their families at the center of their supposed life goals. While this trajectory has changed in the contemporary world, it has not disappeared, for women are still often censured for placing their careers or passions over their families and spouses (Parker 2015). Nevertheless, women like Evie are the ones who are pressing for these changes; their dreams go beyond the domestic, comprising discovery, adventure, and gaining knowledge through multiple global pursuits. Men like Dr. Chamberlain, though, push back against these women, while men like Rick exist on a continuum between patriarchy and women’s freedoms. Rick is certainly impressed by Evie’s knowledge, which is why he ‘borrows’ a tool kit from the Americans and gives it to her, but he also assumes that her greatest dreams would not have been about a career or “dead guys” (Sommers 1999). Thus, this comment demonstrates the attitude of patriarchy, which ignores Evie’s true and evident passion for having goals outside of being a wife and a mother.

Even after Evie has Alex, she is not always the most self-assured mother, nervously inquiring about Alex’s experiences with women and telling Rick, “We’ve spent our entire lives searching for priceless artifacts, and the one thing [Alex] that’s most precious to us we’ve lost” (Cohen 2008). Girls’ (women’s) professional dreams, then, are problematized if they go beyond these domestic duties, an idea that still exists through the struggle to get more women involved in STEM careers (Martinez and Christnacht 2021), among other fields, as well as through the reality that many women in academia publish less often because they are wives and mothers who are expected to be scholars only after these obligations are met. A study by the University of Colorado Boulder supports this notion, revealing not only that “women in academia still experience about a 20% drop in productivity after having a child, while their male counterparts generally do not” (Marshall 2021, para. 2), but also that “men in academia are more likely to be parents than their female counterparts, suggesting that some mothers opt out of careers in higher education altogether to focus on their kids” (para. 10).

The second and related, critical layer of the meme is that Evie dreams about “dead guys” (Sommers 1999) rather than living ones. By liking mummies and Egyptian history, Evie would have encountered the lives of many Egyptians and many male pharaohs (compared to the six female pharaohs [Merneith, Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tawosret, and Cleopatra VII] evaluated by Egyptologist Kara Cooney who “were ultimately only placeholders for the next male to take the pharaoh’s throne” (Worrall 2018, para. 2). In effect, by dreaming about being an Egyptologist and digging up artifacts and bodies, Evie was, indeed, dreaming about men on some level. Yet, because the society around her believes that she should be focused on finding a husband and having a family, she is censured for dreaming about the dead rather than the living. And for Rick, who likes Evie, it is reasonable to assume that he wants Evie to dream about a future life with him. The meme, therefore, critiques women’s passion over the ‘dead’ (i.e., past worlds, civilizations, ideas) and supports that women look to the present, especially toward the men who will be a part of their futures.

Consequently, Figure 10 symbolizes aspects of gender bias that affect Evie in The Mummy (1999) as well as in subsequent films, when her character worries if she has been a good parent. Moreover, the fact that these issues still exist over twenty years after Evie encounters them on the big screen indicates that Evie’s experiences as a woman continue to resonate and impact women in the real world.

9. Choosing Between Evies

Due to the social pressure and gender biases that Rachel Weisz’s Evie faces in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, it seems that once she is married and has a son, society will accept her better. Nevertheless, when Maria Bello takes the Evie role in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), a paradox appears. The men in Evie’s life have everything they want from her, and the fans have a mature adventurer with a husband and a son who have become more important to her than her career. This reality, in fact, is evident from the wistful way Evie plays at being an adventurer with swords and martial arts moves in her mansion (i.e., domestic space). Yet, fans do not like Bello’s Evie as much. Fan reactions to Bello’s Evie include “Maria Bello never seems like she’s the same inquisitive, gentle soul that Weisz brought to life” (Jennings 2023, para. 6); “Yuck, where is Rachel!?” (Sciretta 2007, para. 1); and “The new Evie was so blah I felt like the ending was going to be them telling the son that mom and dad were getting a divorce” (Reddit 2023). Furthermore, memes depicting her are sparse. In fact, at the time this research was conducted, the primary meme representing Bello’s Evie was Figure 11.

The meme has two primary columns. On the left are three Evie images, each one above the other. The Evie on top is Maria Bello’s more intellectually dressed Evie, who is reading and presenting her mummy book to fans. This moment in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor broaches the significance of identity, for a fan inquires, “Is the Scarlet O’Keefe character really based on you?” to which Evie replies, “Honestly, I can say she’s a completely different person” (Cohen 2008). The joke is that Evie’s novels are based on Weisz’s Evie, who is a ‘different person’ even though both women portray the same character. Beneath this book-reading Evie is another Bello Evie, this time holding a gun and dressed in her adventure attire. At this point in the film, Evie, her family, Zi Yuan (the witch protecting Shangri-La), and Lin, Zi Yuan’s daughter, are making their last stand against the Dragon Emperor and his mummy army. Thus, Evie’s identity as a fighter, protector, and swashbuckler is emphasized more than her feminine and scholarly nature, as in the book-reading image. Then, below her is Weisz’s Evie from The Mummy Returns. She wears a form-fitting shirt and is the most sexualized of the three images of Evie in Figure 11.

The column on the right side presents three images of Michael Fassbender in his role as Erik Magnus Lehnsherr/Magneto in X-Men: First Class (Vaughn 2011). Lehnsherr wears a dark turtleneck and stands in front of a window. The space around him is dim, and it is dark outside. In this scene, Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) tries to seduce him, first in the form of a blonde-haired woman, meaningfully, Rebecca Romijn, who played Mystique in X-Men (2000), X2: X-Men United (2003), and X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). Yet, Lehnsherr tells her, “I prefer the real Raven” (Vaughn 2011). Then, Raven shows her ‘regular’ human form (of Lawrence). Once again, though, Magneto asks to see “the real Raven,” so she returns to her blue-skinned Mystique form, to which Lehnsherr responds, “Perfection” (Vaughn 2011). Thus, the scene deals with self-presentation and social expectations, with Lehnsherr seeking to see whom Raven is at her core. In the same way, Figure 11 seeks to find the “real Evie”: whom Evie is at her core. While the meme decides that Weisz’s Evie from The Mummy Returns is the ‘real Evie’, the multiple layers of the meme lead meme viewers to consider if this decision can stand scrutiny.

First, there are the complexities of identity that do not necessarily preclude one person or character from having numerous roles, beliefs, personas, ethnicities, or cultures. This reality stems from the idea that “individual and group identities develop through the influence of multiple, interacting individual, interpersonal, and social factors” (Clauss-Ehlers et al. 2024, p. 50). Thus, even though the X-Men narratives and films highlight the struggles of mutants to fit into society, with them often having two names depending on what role they are playing, the key aspect is that mutants have more than one identity. For instance, Lehnsherr is a father, a mutant, a leader, and a villain, often at the same time.

Similarly, Evie is a scholar, librarian, mother, wife, adventurer, and skilled fighter. Being one thing does not prevent her from being another. Therefore, to determine if the ‘real Evie’ is one iteration of her character over another misses the reality that Evie serves multiple roles in society for others and especially for herself. To insist that only one of her forms is better or more real is incompatible with the capacities of her character, in general. As a result, even though many people—and meme tradition in particular—prefer Weisz’s Evie, to ignore or demean Bello’s portrayal of Evie is to leave out integral parts of Evie’s life and experiences.

A second complexity is the sexuality of Weisz’s Evie in the meme. Part of Evie’s appeal in the first film is that she is innocent, daring, and clumsy. Thus, even though O’Connell does fall in love with her, finding her physically attractive, he loves her for more than just her appearance. He appreciates her persistence, her spunk, and her mixture of courage and vulnerability. However, the meme’s choice of the sexualized Evie neglects these foundational qualities of her character, which do reappear in Weisz’s depiction of Evie in The Mummy Returns. Hence, Lehnsherr’s idea of “Perfection” when applied to Weisz’s Evie in the meme, situates Evie more as an object of the male gaze—“a fictional, gendered division of the world in which the man is the only true subject, shaped by and shaping the story, while the woman functions as an attractive image that influences without real agency” (Goldin 2022, p. 602)—than the adventurous, energetic, and endearing character that she truly is. Studies of librarians in cinema support this notion as well, for, according to Steffy (2015), “in cinema, librarians in movies aren’t just the object of the metaphorical male gaze of the camera, but they are often the objects of the actual gazes of the male characters. Clearly, something as simple as a camera angle encourages objectifying female librarians” (Location 746). In effect, then, while it is true that many Mummy fans prefer Weisz’s Evie, the nature of this meme’s promotion of Evie’s sexuality problematizes audiences’ reactions. If “Perfection” could be found in a screenshot of ‘Librarian Evie’ or the Evie who reads from The Book of the Dead, the meme’s argument would align better with Evie’s core identity, as it is first established in these narratives.

Furthermore, the meme contradicts itself, which diminishes the power of its argument about whom the ‘Real Evie’ is—and which also mirrors debates about the nature of librarian stereotypes since librarians often “cannot even agree on whether or not a depiction represents a positive or a negative stereotype” (Steffy 2015, Location 518–25). Similarly, in the meme, Lehnsherr recognizes that Raven/Mystique has multiple identities for the distinct roles that she plays, and even if he does not admit it, these roles have positive and negative considerations. Nevertheless, what he really prefers with Raven/Mystique is who she is at her core, and when she is not trying to fit someone else’s view of her. However, with Evie, he is not selecting ‘the Evie’ that Evie herself chooses. He is instead selecting the sexualized Evie, a representation more aligned with social expectations than her own. In this sense, then, the meme presents a paradox that a closer reading can uncover.

Nevertheless, this complexity does have merit in terms of the larger context of memes in the ongoing debate about which Evie is better. Although individual viewers might select Weisz or Bello, the meme cannot deny that both Weisz and Bello are Evie. Thus, just as Lehnsherr/the meme selects one Evie, the details of the meme allow for a counterargument, thus providing avenues for further explorations of Evie’s character as well as the nature of identity in film. And even though Evie herself sums up her personality by the pronouncement, “I am proud of what I am…. I am a librarian” (Sommers 1999), the fact that she is drunk and minimizing her multiple roles should be a sign that Evie’s ‘parts’ all make up her whole self.

Consequently, through one image, Figure 11 provides a rich understanding of Evie as a character as well as the biases against her. The meme tradition has the capacity to comment on a variety of Evie’s aspects without ranking one over another. Yet, the Internet tradition perpetuates the bias that Evie can only be one thing—i.e., a woman, a librarian, a scholar, a sexual object—to the exclusion of her other qualities. Yet, what is evident when Lehnsherr’s “Perfection” misses the point about Evie (and about Mystique/Raven and even identity itself) is that Evie is multifaceted. If she were not clumsy and smart, funny and serious, and courageous and vulnerable, she would not be Evie at all. Therefore, Figure 11, like the other memes in this study, reveals that Evie is a rich character whose librarianship, skills with books and learning, gender, and portrayal by two actors are best understood together.

10. Conclusions

When The Mummy was released in 1999, actor Rachel Weisz made a significant impact on her portrayal of Evelyn ‘Evie’ Carnahan (O’Connell). And even though the sequel, The Mummy Returns (2001), was not as popular with fans, Weisz’s portrayal of Evie remained intriguing to viewers, especially due to revelations about her past character in ancient Egypt. Nevertheless, many fans were unhappy when Maria Bello portrayed Evie in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), which added to the unpopularity of the film. Over time, much of this reception has been reflected in memes about The Mummy media, particularly the memes depicting Evie. Through an evaluation of the Evie memes available during a 2023 Internet search, the general trajectory is to prefer Weisz’s performance to that of Bello’s.

However, the memes about Weisz are far from unproblematic. Evie’s self-definition as a librarian in the 1999 film makes issues of librarianship, academia, and book learning critical elements of her heroic character, especially since “[g]ood librarians are natural intelligence operatives […who] possess all of the skills and characteristics required for that work: curiosity, wide-ranging knowledge, good memories, organizational and analytical aptitude, and discretion” (Johnson 2010, p. 5). Nonetheless, despite her intellectual and professional aptitude, Evie’s scholarly nature is considered unsexy and uncool in memes, even though Weisz herself is seen as beautiful. At the same time, books and knowledge—in both the film and the memes—are depicted as being dangerous as well as foremost to the resolution of adventures in the heroes’ favor, with the latter concept embodying notions of universal access and a refusal to ban books in terms of contemporary librarianship.

Yet, despite the critiques of librarianship and book access that the memes with Weisz’s Evie depict, Bello’s Evie, who is more motherly and less bound to her profession in the third film, does not receive positive attention in memes. In fact, the meme with Bello’s portrayal is nostalgic about Weisz’s performance and appearance. As a result, the digital response to Evie’s character and profession remains conflicted: even as her heroic intelligence helps to save the day, the resources that allow her agency are critiqued and seen as threatening. And even once a focus on these resources diminishes with Bello’s version of Evie, the character’s popularity does not increase, indicating not only the problematic way in which female librarians are often depicted in media, but also revealing how many of these issues remain unresolved in society today. Therefore, one of the best ways to navigate this impasse is to see both Evies as critical parts of a whole—a complete woman, librarian, scholar, and adventurer. By doing so, not only can Evie’s trajectory and growth be complemented and valued for her ‘perfections’, but she can also continue to represent all the potentialities of librarians in the contemporary world. Just like neglecting one side (actor) of Evie ‘wastes’ the full symbolic and narrative significance of an unforgettable character in the cinematic and pop cultural imagination, embracing the different sides of Evie’s profession gives life back to perspectives of librarianship and demonstrates that “a librarian [like Evie] is a terrible thing to waste” (Johnson 2010, p. 8).