Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop meme

Part II on Memes and Political (In)action: Satire and Empathy

In November 2011 student protestors at UC Davis were holding a peaceful demonstration on their campus when former Lt. John Pike pepper-sprayed them at close range.  In the days that followed, my Facebook newsfeed became a log of collective outrage. One day, an image of former Lt. John Pike Photoshopped into Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” appeared, and the “Casual Pepper Spray Everything Cop" meme was born.

Image Credit: Knowyourmeme.com

Reactions to the meme were varied. Some, like a friend of mine who is a UC Davis alum, worried the humor would become detached from the message of the protest. After all, in the world of internet memes detachment is somewhat of a governing principle. Even databases like knowyourmeme.com refer to the UC Davis Cop as “Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop” -- emphasizing the disjuncture of his body language with his actions in a nonspecific time and place, over his place in UC Davis’s institutional history, and in the history of the Occupy movement. I would argue that some subjects seem riper for meme-making than others because their engagement with their surroundings already suggests the kind of disconnect between an individual and his or her environment that we usually associate with the chaotic and Photoshopped world of the Internet.

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