COMM 150: "Pepper spray cop," social media, memes and the interactivity of the Internet

'Pepper Spray Cop' celebrates July 4, 1776
Lt. John Pike of the University of California Davis campus police can thank the Internet for his 15 minutes of fame. But he may not be feeling too grateful. Now immortalized as the "Pepper Spray Cop," Lt. Pike is the latest poster child for unthinking police brutality. And he and his can of pepper spray have been Photoshopped into art works from Michelangeo to an old Peanuts comic strip and the cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road.

And a page that sells pepper spray on Amazon.com has picked up some sarcastic user reviews. C/NET quotes one: "When I reach for my can of Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 Stream, 1.3% Red Band/1.3% Blue Band Pepper Spray, I know that even the mighty First Amendment doesn't stand a chance against its many scovil [sp.] units of civil rights suppression."

Some of the reaction sounds ominous. The hackers' group Anonymous has published Pike's home phone numbers and hinted at retaliation.

But mostly, the Internet action is funny. Tumblr user porcupineschool insists the meme doesn't trivialize the incident:

Internet memes as a form are built on the idea that the audience and the author are the same group of people. Looking, creating, and sharing all blend together into one activity. This isn’t Jonathan Swift writing clever satire for you to read. It’s us creating a satirical and cathartic experience for ourselves.

The old adage, “the pen is mightier than the sword,” is another way of saying that ideas will always spread and mutate and multiply, and they can never be killed. This is what internet meme culture is all about. The echo chamber of online visual culture is gaining the ability to both provide a cathartic experience to those dismayed by abuse of power, and catalyze people to confront those abuses faster than ever before. I think that’s thrilling.

A lot of the Photoshopped images are on Tumblr at http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/, but they've been popping up everywhere.

According to National Public Radio, the Pepper Spray Cop meme apparently started with visual artist James Alex, who blogs on Tumblr as Jockohomo, who has a fine collection at http://jockohomo.tumblr.com/ of his own mashups and a couple of others he particularly admires (including the Trumbill painting of the Declaration of Independence at the top of this page). Maura Judkis of The Washington Post has several of the best in a lifestyle blog post headlined "Pepper-spray cop works his way through art history."

In a thoughtful analysis, Philip Kennicott, culture critic for the Washington Post, suaggests the original photo "probably will be the defining imagery of the Occupy movement, rivaling in symbolic power, if not in actual violence, images from the Kent State shootings more than 40 years ago." He adds:

It looks as though he’s spraying weeds in the garden or coating the oven with caustic cleanser. It’s not just the casual, dispassionate manner in which the University of California at Davis police officer pepper-sprays a line of passive students sitting on the ground. It’s the way the can becomes merely a tool, an implement that diminishes the humanity of the students and widens a terrifying gulf between the police and the people whom they are entrusted to protect.

Kennicott also suggests:

The UC-Davis video might open up a broader conversation about the proper role of the police, especially during an era in which it appears that protest against the established order may be more frequent and widespread. This new era of protest, if it continues to develop, will play out on the Internet, with rapidly uploaded videos providing not just evidence of what happens, but evidence from numerous perspectives, as each encounter is recorded by dozens of onlookers and participants.