Mugshots of Donald Trump (24 August,
2023)
and Hermann Göring (22 June 1945)
So much has already been said about Donald Trump's instantly iconic mugshot taken at Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia - apparently the most viewed photograph in the world - that there's not much for me to add.
The muted grey background is rather flattering and deflects from the harshness of the lighting. Trump, wearing a blue suit with a white shirt and red tie, stares down not just the anonymous prison photographer, but all of his political opponents and critics in the mainstream media.
It's a fuck you look of angry defiance and with this one image, Trump brilliantly turns the tables on those who had hoped to humiliate him and, perhaps, seals victory in the 2024 presidential election. For this photo, available on a wide range of merchandising (i.e., commercial propaganda), has already helped the Trump campaign to raise millions of dollars.
Malcolm McLaren may have showed us how to create cash from chaos, but it's Donald Trump who best understands how to monetise notoriety and I think that the conservative commentator Candace Owens is right to describe Trump's approach to doing politics as punk rock (something that Johnny Rotten had pointed out years ago) [1].
Even those who loathe Trump concede that this picture is, in its simplicity, visually compelling. One that has not only historical but cultural significance; i.e., one that can be discussed in relation to art as well as politics. Zach Helfand amusingly - and rightly - discusses it within the context of work by Da Vinci, Henri Fantin-Latour, and Andy Warhol [2].
Helfand also suggests that the Trump mugshot has a precedent in the arrest photograph of Hermann Göring, which, as I think readers will agree, is an excellent spot. For we see in this image of the president of the Nazi Reichstag the exact same mixture of indignation and contempt for his enemies as in the Trump photo; it's a portrait of a powerful man cornered, but unbowed.
One wonders, in closing, why it is exactly that good people never seem to produce such captivating images: Is is because they always like to smile and signal their virtue? Is it because they lack menace? Or is it simply the case, whether we like to admit this or not, that evil has a more photogenic quality?
Notes
[1] See the Candace Owens podcast on the The Daily Wire (20 August 2023) in which she gives her take on the Trump mugshot and discusses the positive reactions of other black Americans: click here.
As for Johnny Rotten, the former Sex Pistol declared his support for Trump several years ago - and voted for him in 2020 - seeing in him something of a kindred spirit (anti-liberal, anti-establishment, anti-woke). See Drew Wardle's 2021 article in the online magazine Far Out, in which he expresses his disappointment with Rotten's MAGA brand of conservatism and offers a possible explanation for it: click here.
[2] See Zach Helfand, 'The Trump Mug Shot's Art-Historical Lineage',
in The New Yorker (28 August, 2023): click here.
Video bonus: to watch Trump's own take on having his mugshot taken on Forbes Breaking News (1 Sept 2023): click here.
A few (rather obvious) issues/objections here:
ReplyDelete1. How is compelling Trump to answer for his numerous serious breaches of law and political protocol seeking to 'humiliate' him (which view is itself just buying into his own persection/paranoiac complex)? What's risible here is that humilation is exactly the monotonous move Trump himself has used every single time to try to discredit those who refuse to be steamrollered by him (including many of his former acolytes), calling them weak, corrupt etc. etc., since he doesn't make arguments, only crude and increasingly pathetic assertions of monomaniacal 'power'.
(ii) Is a police photo executed in custodial space plausibly connectable to the arthouse machine of Warhol etc. and its products circulated in an aesthetic economy?
(iii) Can Helfand's tongue-in-cheek mischief-making (putting this mugshot into some kind of supposed genelaogy with Leonardo - I ask you!) really be taken as anything more than journalistic high-jinks and clever-clever post-modernism?
I agree that Trump and McClaren might have found a lot to talk about in regard to capitalising on chaos, both literally and politico-culturally - which latter, when I briefly met him in London courtsey of the blogger, made the telling association to lovely Paris as it being a city where 'it's difficult to sell things'. Nihilism does allow one to keep turning (the screw), if nothing else.
Cold-blooded malignancy (Trump resembles here a kind of leering reptile in a man-suit) may also well be darkly photogenic - one thinks of course, in the UK, of the infamous police shots of Brady and Hindley - and I shan't deny this picture has, I suppose, a horrible fascination of sorts. Perhaps it will even delight some of the neo-fascists, sociopathic entrepreneurs and miscellaneous morons among his flag-waving constituency, even if his personality cult has surely now sunk into psychosis.
As to the writer's anticipation of a presidential victory sealed by a Goring-esque image, whether even Trump can aspire to governing the country from a jail cell is, even by the parameters here, fanciful bordering on deranged, but just don't ask me to 'celebrate' it as anything other than the repugnant run-off of American politics.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I was, however, a little disappointed that, for the most part, you seemed to want to play the man rather than the post and didn’t really pick up on Baudrillard's idea of the evil genius of the image.
DeleteI didn't say that bringing Trump to justice if, in fact, he has broken any laws, was an attempt to humiliate him. However, obliging him to attend Fulton County Jail in person and needlessly have a mugshot taken was precisely that.
In answer to your question 'Is a police photo executed in custodial space plausibly connectable to the arthouse machine of Warhol?' I would say yes – and refer you to the latter's large mural entitled 'Thirteen Most Wanted Men' (1964).
I would also answer yes to your question as to whether 'Helfand's tongue-in-cheek mischief-making' can be taken as anything more than 'journalistic high-jinks and clever-clever post-modernism?' To me, his remarks are pertinent and well-informed, rather than merely playful and 'clever-clever'.
Finally, who are these 'neo-fascists, sociopathic entrepreneurs, and miscellaneous morons' you mention? Are they the same deplorables that Hilary Clinton spoke of – and do you think this kind of language furthers political debate?
Trump turned himself in to Fulton Jail as a result of being indicted on multiple charges of conspiracy and racketeering - no differently from any common criminal suspect as far as I can see. I don't really see what your problem is here, or (very Trumpian) preoccupation with the idea that he is somehow being singled out and socially shamed. The oddity is, if anything, he's evaded retribution till now. This action is surely overdue.
DeleteThe fact that Warhol happened to produce a commissioned mural 60 years ago is hardly sufficient to establish an equivalency (in the opposite direction) between a suspect's mugshot and the world of art, as far as I can see.
As for Trump and US politics, it's amusing to think that one needs to respond politically seriously to a man whose 'answer' to democratic politics has been to create a paranoiac personality cult around himself that shows itself by trying to decredit, destabilise or destroy literally every individual or institution who delimits his monomania. He's a dangerous lunatic, a clinical narcissist, and his followers are delusional.
PS One can also be good and defiant, beautiful and angry, spiritual and 'punk rock' - viz, Sinead O'Connor. And it too radiates from the face: https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/sinead-oconnor-dies-aged-56/
ReplyDeleteIf you make a Reality TV star the head of a country, you get Reality TV politics. I think this image is the same. It's just a game that adds to the overall mythology which can be monetised. It pains me to respond to this post because it makes me complicit in the mythologising. But I couldn't resist. We're all guilty of feeding the machine.
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty much it: we're all complicit in the Swindle, or what Debord termed the Spectacle. Still, don't let it pain you too much ...
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