Can art effect change in society? Yes it can and does. I want to explore this question from a modern political perspective in the internet age. Views of art in this age are not limited to painting and sculpting. The internet has introduced a democratisation of the image. There are respected artists in society, but there are many who are also disdained. These are not looked upon as artists but instead as cultural vigilantes. However, the people who produce this work are artists, even if we disagree with them. It all provides an interesting springboard for discussion. I firmly believe that art does effect change in society, but I’m also very interested in whether it is positive or negative change. When does the change in society stimulated by this art go too far? Changes in society caused by artists, creatives, and madmen alike have brought us all manner of leaders, movements, societies and organisations. From Momentum to ISIS, and from the KKK to Greenpeace, the list is endless. These initiators have provided our society with visual clay to mould, and in some ways, this has been fantastic but in other ways it has been terrible. I will explore parts of both sides, with a good dose of my opinion threaded into this piece.
Meme is the principle amateur art-form of the 20th and 21st century and yes, although it’s debatable, it does seem that a proportion of the public and several academics view it as an art-form [1]. So let’s look at the origin of meme then. The term ‘meme’ was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 bestseller The Selfish Gene. Dawkins said “Memes spread through human culture as genes spread through the gene pool”. The internet has expanded on this idea, and how! They have become so prevalent in our society that now you can even do a whole degree on them from Northwestern University [2]. For those that don't fancy travelling from the UK to America, there’s a shorter course available from Cambridge University [3]. My first example is Pepe The Frog. This semi-adorable little frog man famously features in quite a few memes. Memes commonly present a pictorial idea with snappy text explaining it. Pepe the Frog, (now sadly deceased May 2017 [4]) is a key example of this and took the meme world by storm. The ideas and feelings around this figure were meant to convey a relaxed and friendly attitude. At first, it was taken as a good hearted meme, suggesting jovial compromise. Then it all went badly wrong to the horror of its creator Matt Furie. Its nemesis came in the form of the alternative right (term first used by Paul Gottfried, 2008) or alt-right for short. They used Pepe to further their agenda and his creator Matt Furie loathed what it had become. Matt wanted Pepe to be known as a “chilled” and “good-natured frog” (The Atlantic, Adam Serwer, 2016). Initially, Pepe spawned in 2005 when Matt Furie wrote his first story about the character in a grown up comic called Boy’s Club. Pepe was born and he was beautiful. He was a symbol of innocence in all of Furie’s books on the character and was meant to be about educating the younger generation with catchphrases such as “be nice man” and the now well-known phrase created by Furie “feels good man”. Pepe was a nice frog.
The alt-right have taken a symbol that means fun and hope and effectively changed it into a piece of propaganda, saying “look, hey, it’s fun to be a Nazi”. We can see this clearly in the use of the images in online chat forums such as Reddit and 4Chan. One of the areas on the net where I have found Pepe is on the right-wing gun-praising forum, ar15 from August 2016, three months before Trump was elected. In a post entitled, “When will HRC (Hillary Rodham Clinton) be arrested?”, we are introduced to the monstrosity of the image we see here. We are presented with a rather crude Pepe the Frog, dressed as none other than Donald J. Trump with a contemplative smile on his face. This is perhaps the most famous example of meme culture gone bad, and my first evidence on influential art from both a good and bad viewpoint. Trump fans exploited Pepe, and
prostituted him for their own ends. This shows how malleable art is in the hands of the unscrupulous. The artist creates the image and it belongs to them until it gets into the hands of its spectators who use and abuse it as they wish. Who does the image then belong to? Who decides what it means? The internet? The public? The Government? Or the author? It’s quite difficult to separate it all out and decide. In this case Matt Furie made the final decision and killed his creation, showing Pepe in a coffin at a funeral. More importantly, he also threatened lawsuits against the misuse of the image he created. The fact he took the abuse of the image he’d created so very seriously shows how profoundly influential this sort of art is perceived to be. In the same way, other artists, namely rock musicians, have publicly protested at the use of their music during the meetings of politicians whose views they detest. Artists clearly believe that their creations are powerful and influential, because they are so outraged when they are misused. I would suggest that this is also a strong piece of evidence in my casefile.
We see the distortion and adoption of images all over the place from the German National Socialist Party’s swastika in the 1930s to the red flag of communism being used as an emblem by the Labour Party until 1986. What about modern Britain and our main left wing activism group Momentum and its founder Jon Lansman? Momentum was a key force in the last general election. Their collection of memes made mainly directly by their membership feature the Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn dressed as all manner of superheroes, cartoonish philosophers and underdogs. We see a wide variety of images from Obi Wan Kenobi to Superman. These present him as a hero but the media seems to think that, in most cases, these memes don't endear us to Corbyn’s way of thinking, “Corbyn is a great leap backwards for Labour” [5]. Labour’s recent successes might suggest an alternative view and further evidence of art’s power. In fact now, many would attribute Labour’s change in fortune to the combination of the way amateur artists portray Corbyn and the hope for change from the young, the main viewers of this kind of imagery. Just as Barack Obama harnessed the power of technology to reach the young in his bid for the presidency, so did Trump in his profligate use of Twitter. Corbyn is following their lead, but the examples above show that it is a dangerous unpredictable medium that can bite as well as caress.
In this weird world of “memery” and mockery, Corbyn does have his competitors however, and such is the power of these images, I would suggest that we ignore them at our peril. The impossible and improbable (splutter, Trump, cough, Macron, gag, Boris) seems to have a way of coming true these days. This is why the situation surrounding Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg is interesting. The ideas and imagery of his potential candidacy as the leader of the Conservative Party has caused a bit of a stir over the last few months. Initial scoffing amongst the Mayite members of the party faithful has fallen silent, such is the dawning awareness of the power of the image transported by technology.
Jacob Rees Mogg has been MP for North East Somerset since May 2010. He seems to typify the accepted image of old-fashioned Conservatism and inherited privilege. His dressing style appears to be from a bygone era; many of his public statements seem at odds with modern daily life and his eccentrically posh accent seems to confirm this. This has created a fascination amongst many people, not least the media. His very “otherness” is part of his attraction. Thus came the creation of Moggmentum, essentially a fan movement, which has produced countless images and memes. There are multiple improbably named Jacob
Rees-Mogg adulation sites, from ‘Can’t Clog the Mogg’ to ‘Middle Class Memes for Rees-Moggian Teens’. An article from The Sun suggests that part of the reason Rees Mogg is so successful is that he is the polar-opposite of Jeremy Corbyn. The same article also says that “both are similar because they are outsiders. They are individuals in a world of spin. They mean what they say and are not willing to compromise their views to fit in” [6].
These social media pages idolise Rees-Mogg in a similar way to how Momentum idolises Corbyn, but whilst Momentum has a clear leader and is targeted and organised, Moggmentum seems all over the place and mildly chaotic in its approach from a media perspective. The organisation of how art is transmitted into society is as important as the posts themselves. So what goes on in these pages? As with Corbyn, the producers want to create a meme which will stir the pot of rebellion in the Conservative Party, whilst its leadership continues to look shaky. The media colludes and sometimes puts Mogg forward as a potential candidate much to the joy of his many fans [7]. The Moggfather is a perfect example of this sort of meme madness. Clog the Mogg does a fantastic job in the creation of the Moggfather meme, because it is clear, punchy and interesting to observe, although I am slightly peeved that they didn't change the red flower to a more conservative blue.
There’s another random and quite fascinating context here. All of these memes are to some extent preaching about morality and their beliefs being the correct ones to follow. However, in all of these scenarios they are appropriating, perhaps even stealing imagery. Both Trump and Rees-Mogg make a big deal about their solid Christian values. Let’s see what Moses says. The first section of the second commandment says, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth:”. This does not seem to sit well with the implied moral code of many meme sites. Let’s remember that Matt Furie was outraged at the theft of his intellectual property to preach an alternative message. So much so that, after warning the main meme-makers, he has actually sued some of them [8].
So has meme culture in fact had a bad effect on society? Well, in some ways it has and in other ways it hasn’t. It stimulates debate, and this is the most important thing that politics should do, but when that debate threatens the leadership in our own parties, is the change too much? We have been so greatly affected by memes without even noticing it. Memes are loud and bolshy, but the wider message is what we extract from them. With many memes based on online platforms such as Facebook, it is easy to scroll past them, and to not give them the time they deserve. They’re also fairly anonymous with the creator of the image being concealed by the names of the pages Moggmentum, Momentum and the various pages that idolize one crazy little frog. The one thing that's ceased to exist in this new art-form then is credit given to the makers. I am a maker. You are a maker. We are all makers, or at least we all have a capacity to be. There are now Meme Apps which supply readymade memes as templates for individual use. This is another of the major influences of meme art, the realization that we can all create, even if we have to borrow. This links back to another interesting part of the Pepe story. A new book, Pepe & Pede, was planned only this time it was a rightwing storybook by Eric Hauser, an assistant principal from Texas [9]. Furie managed to stop its publication [10]. You really can tell how Boy’s Club is a symbol of happiness and hope when you read the text. It is a comic of innocence, featuring quite silly statements that kids would ask, such as “hey pepe, I heard you pull your pants down all the way to go pee.”, asked by one of his mates Landwolf [11]. To this Pepe simply replies, “feels good man”. This runs completely contrary to the image of Pepe as a misogynist racist that Hauser, Trump and his supporters present him to be.
Like all things then, meme culture must be controlled, and so moderators on forums have taken a crucial role. A moderator is someone who controls the distribution of images and language on social media sites. If the imagery or language is uncomplimentary to specific individuals within the page or contradictory to the purpose of the page, then ‘the rules’ on the forums dictate it as having no right to be there, just like Pepe and Pede, and similarly other images if the original creator takes offence to how their likeness is being portrayed. This shows how obliquely the internet effects change, and how challenging it is to have no control over this change as the creator. Moggmentum and Momentum are organisations that authorise the distribution of their artworks as campaign material, however Matt Furie is just one guy, and this is why we should respect where he wants his artwork to go.
So does art effect society? In my opinion it most certainly does, but not always as intended. Art is like a plastic bag in the wind, resting here, sticking there, tangled in branches, eventually torn to pieces by the wind but never quite biodegrading, ever present in the cultural landfill.