Visual 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 …

The Prison System And The Media: How “Orange Is The New Black” Engages With The Prison As A Normalizing Agent, Eunice Louis

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to ascertain the ways in which Orange is the New Black uses its platform to either complicate or reify narratives about the prison system, prisoners and their relationship to the state. This research uses the works of Giorgio Agamben, Colin Dayan, Michelle Alexander and Lisa Guenther to situate the ways the state uses the prison and social narratives about the prison to extend its control on certain populations beyond prison walls through police presence, parole, the war on drugs and prison fees.

From that basis, this work argues that while Orange does challenge some …