Memes As Resistance
Professor Doris Cacoilo
Ishmael Adams
Art 2632049 Activists, Interlopers and Pranksters
9/17/2025
1. MAGA and by extension the Republican Party tends to blame people not of the same community for all the nation's problems. Be it immigrants, people of a different gender orientation, people of different races and even people of different political spheres.
Memes are continually a form of modern resistance against the gatekeeping of data and though not always contextual in execution, are able to spread knowledge in a fast an effective way where it would otherwise be lost. In a world where information is untrustworthy from any number of sources and attention spans are in a lull, memes as crazy as it sounds is a good way to gain access to knowledge in quick succession.
2. Patriarchy is a form of male dominated governmental oppression where men have a majority, if not all the power and authority. In a Patriarchal society women are shown to have less power, privilege and freedom that men have. Though that's not to say that men are excluded from suffering under the strain of Patriarchy, as men have had their emotions restricted and regulated aside from producing anger and aggressiveness against their fellow man. Which in turn leads to men fighting against their fellow man, which leads to an escalation of violence due to our society being predominantly lead by men. It's a societal cycle of violence that keeps turning due to unresolved emotions by family and society which leads to more violence.
Activism is a form of overarching protest to campaign for long-term societal change. Activism can mean protesting on the street, informing people in a meeting to even doing art on the subject. With good activism systems of power at the lowest can be agitated to even disrupted. For so long systems of power use control, apathy and fear to orchestrate in their favor so the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the people who try to stand in their way either get pushed out the way in some form or fashion or the work that does get done gets reversed or pushed back.
3. "Art, on the other hand, doesn’t often have such a clear target. It’s hard to say what art is for or against; its value often lies in demonstrating or provoking new perspectives."
“The soldiers spring into action, closing the distance in a few seconds and grabbing a man dressed in street clothes. They throw him to the ground, slip plastic ties around his wrists and a bag over his head. Piercing shrieks ring out and the crowd surges. The soldiers form a ring around the body on the ground, screaming at people: “move it, get back, get away!” Some of the bystanders yell back at the soldiers, others move quickly to get out of their way, still others gaze on, seemingly unable to process what’s going on before their eyes.”
This chapter encapsulates the drive and struggle for art activism justice and how much power the powers that be have. It also shows how that struggle has been going on for quite a long time and will seemingly keep being a struggle and that art goes hand and hand with that. Art and Activism at the end of the day have the same goal, to get people to see different perspectives. Whenever we see activism or protests we get all caught up in what it represents that we forget that activism isn't just about telling people they're wrong, (at least not always) but trying to see the issue from a different point of view. Just as art is a process of communication to see a different side of things in a creative lens.
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