This Image of UC Davis students being pepper sprayed struck me right in the lizard brain. I was angry. Not the good kind of anger that can be focused, but the unproductive rage that festers like a sore in your mouth that you keep hitting with your tongue. The event is/was disgusting, and the image makes it even worse. It takes the disgusting and ratchets it up to the level of a late 90s Al Pacino performance full of scenery chewing BooYeahs!

The over the top elements of the image make it well suited to run on a loop in my head for far too long. The dark side of the meme if you will. Unlike many of the “protest violence” images that we’ve seen since Seattle The offending officer is a character. He’s not simply a man dressed in black riot gear, nor is he a specific person. He matches the the stereotype of the police officer that you might hear called “Pig”  in a movie from the 70s. The nonchalance in his pose combined with the helpless position of the students is also significant. It makes the violence the especially cruel kind that is unnecessary but performed anyway, fullfilling our what we’ve learned to feel about the “pig” character.

For relief (and the chance to destroy the image) I turned to photoshop. I worked on a few, but the Internet beat me to it. Awesome Job Internet.

thanks boinboing and canv.as for collecting/making these images.

Speaking of powerful images, the students silent protest the day after, blew the pepper spray image out of the water, although its not as photoshoppable.

UPDATE:
Pepper Spray Cop images now have a tumblr