Appropriating Resistance: Popular Culture as Visual Tactic in Sites of Protest

Annie Hui

Advisor: Alison Landsberg, PhD, Department of History and Art History

Committee Members: Denise Albanese, John Dale

Online Location, https://gmu.zoom.us/j/99764977509?pwd=tbhPYvrOvUZI3vNVa9y3vI0g8n8Y1S.1
April 30, 2025, 02:00 PM to 04:00 PM

Abstract:

Drawing from three protests in recent years that focus on a re/turn to democracy in Thailand, the US, and Hong Kong, this dissertation examines appropriations of mass cultural symbols in contemporary social protest movements in order to understand the potentials of popular culture in affecting political change. The three-finger salute, the handmaid habit, and Pepe the Frog have become part of a large repertoire of visually familiar and emotionally resonant symbols and narratives. They reveal how protesters might actively construct and exert their political agency through their appropriations, remaking and redefining them, while also allowing an examination of the interplay between fictional and real-life narrativizations within which the symbols appear. The spectacle of such political protests functions as key dissensual sites that highlight the role popular culture plays in facilitating democratic participation and the emergence of political agency, while also challenging hegemonic neoliberal frameworks that consistently work to silence vulnerable and marginalized populations.