Matt Furie, who created the Pepe the Frog character over a decade ago for his web comic, has killed the character in an admission that he can’t reclaim its image from the Alt-Right trolls who co-opted it.
I wonder what the Venn diagram looks like between “Tough shit, art changes and you don’t control its meaning” defenders of co-opting the Wall St bull into Fearless Girl and the “Tough shit, art changes and you don’t control its meaning” defenders of co-opting Pepe into a white supremacist symbol.
Are you allowed to co-opt a piece of art in this way, as long as you don’t violate copyright? Of course. Do I consider it great when the art is co-opted to support a message that I believe in, and a tragedy when the art is co-opted to support a message that I would like to see eradicated? Of course. No hypocrisy there, just sadness that white supremacy and anti-Semitism are even a thing that can be used to co-opt art in a perfectly legitimate way.
I would draw a distinction between the two. Adding a new piece of art as a commentary on an existing piece of art (and things associated with it) is different from copying an existing piece of art and using it for something else. A closer parallel might be if a hypothetical vegan group made a copy of the Wall Street bull and placed it in front of a slaughterhouse. That, however, would still show more in the way of imagination and thoughtful commentary than copying an existing, unrelated figure and using it as your mascot.
However (barring valid trademark and copyright issues), I would not be comfortable ruling out any of these variations. Imitation and adaptation are important parts of art, especially as practiced in the internet age.
The assholes who hijacked Pepe are still assholes, though.
Eh, I don’t see it. I mean, obviously you can point out differences because they’re two separate events but both ultimately are acts of someone else actively co-opting an art piece for their own political aims and saying “Eh, too bad” when called on it. Different events but the core philosophy regarding art is the same.
What’s the discrepancy? The art was used in a way the creator didn’t want. It sucks, but that’s the way it goes.
The main difference is that the person who recontextualized the bull did so for a good cause, while Pepe was redrawn to be racist first by people who wanted to be “edgy” and then by actual racists. So of course I think better of the former than the latter.
The other difference is the Pepe had to be redrawn to be racist, as he wasn’t originally, while the male power themes were already present in the bull. But, if you don’t think that’s important, fine.
I don’t really support either one of them whining about the change. I’m glad the Pepe guy tried, since he was fighting racists. And I’m fine that the guy who made the bull says it wasn’t intended to be sexist.
Unfortunately, the artist doesn’t control the meaning.
I wonder about the nature of copyright protection - what it extends to and what it does not.
But beyond that, yeah it sucks to be an artist who had a message intended with his/her work and to have your work be “re-contextualized” to mean something very different. But that’s the way art works. You can, as both artists did, try to reclaim the interpretation, but don’t too hopeful that you can succeed. You do not own the interpretation.
Yeah, but most people’s first thought of Calvin isn’t him pissing on Ford logos but the legacy of the comic itself. I wouldn’t say that Calvin’s been co-opted in nearly the same fashion as the other two art pieces. People think the Calvin stickers are low brow or dumb but no one says “Now I mainly associate Calvin with being anti-Ford”.
I didn’t even know Pepe was from a comic, but I also don’t associate it with alt-right or racism. I figure it’s like any other meme on the internet. You take a vague picture out of the ether (or Google images) and specific it up with some text of your choice. If the text is racist, that doesn’t mean the picture is. You know how many racist trolls use the crying Michael Jordan picture for their memes? Does that mean Michael Jordan is racist?
As far as I can tell, linking Pepe with racism is exactly the same error as associating Calvin with anti-Ford zealots. Or for that matter associating Michael Jordan with internet trolls. Not that I blame the artist for giving up and killing him off.
Pepe’s use goes far beyond Crying Jordan. And is largely exclusive to the Alt-Right (whereas a lot of people use Crying Jordan or other popular meme backgrounds). Pepe in avatars, frog heads used as shorthand in Twitter or Facebook messages, etc.
It seems fairly clear that copyright applies here – as noted above, the closest analog is the “peeing Calvin” stickers. In both cases, it’s a clear infringement, with the perpetrators effectively shielded by the fact that, like roaches, it’s just too hard to find and squash them all.