African American Studies Commons^™

Kill Your Darlings: The Afterlives Of Pepe The Frog, Sherlock Holmes, And Jim Crow, Allison E. Sardinas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis works to establish a literary theory and cultural studies as a theoretical lens with which we can view harmful emerging pop culture phenomena like the so-called alt right. The premise is supposed in three parts, with the first being a simple introduction to the Pepe character and how he is grounded in literary studies through a comparison of Sherlock Holmes and his early fandom. The second part is a survey of the legacy of Jim Crow and I present the evidence that Pepe is very much Crow’s spiritual successor in their shared preoccupation with white anxiety. The third …