Warhol�s celebrity culture explains rise of Trump
Warhol famously
imagined everyone being famous for at least 15 minutes. The quixotic quest for narcissistic publicity is the essence of the celebrity, consumer culture simulacrum that is the Trump campaign
Hussein Ibish
The pop-artist Andy Warhol saw deeper into his own time, and ours, than any other public figure of the late 20th century.
Though no intellectual, Warhol picked up most of the groundbreaking artistic, cultural and commercial trends around him like a human antenna. And in his banal blankness, he reflected them back at us, often blindingly, in a wave of artistic and cultural artefacts.
He also anticipated and helped shape a consumerist celebrity culture, which has culminated in, among other things, reality television. No surprise, then, that Warhol is an important touchstone in explaining the horrifying rise of Donald Trump in American politics.
Trump is a Warholian figure par excellence, although the two could hardly be more different. Warhol specialised in posing as a baffling cipher. He deftly avoided questions, throwing them back at the interviewer and refusing to engage seriously. He understood the richness of ambiguity, and his surface-level, immediately identifiable pop art couldnt survive pomposity.
By contrast, Trump spews categorical pontifications at any opportunity, relishing his own contradictions and inanities. Yet because he believes in nothing, and has no ideology, he too can serve as a mirror for his audience. This explains why evangelical Christians are flocking to vote for him although he has proudly flouted many of their core principles, and conservative ideologues such as Rush Limbaugh embrace him though he is the least conservative Republican presidential candidate in memory.
Curator Henry Geldzahler summarised Warhols public persona thus: Hes a voyeur sadist, and he needs exhibitionist-masochists, adding that obviously any given exhibitionist-masochist is not going to last very long.
Trump is neither of these types. Instead he is a full-blown sadistic narcissist. But he doesnt feed off individual masochists as Warhol did, recording their excruciating prolonged meltdowns in ecstatic fascination. Trump rather casts far and wide across entire groups with which he has nothing to do. Immigrants and Muslims have been his chief targets of late, but any outsiders would plainly do.
This is why Warhol, for all of his faults, is an infinitely more attractive figure. His nickname in the 1960s coined by the self-appointed Pope of Greenwich Village known as Ondine was Drella, a portmanteau conflating Cinderella and Dracula. His entourage knew that, if they let him, Warhol was capable of sucking the life out of them.
Nobody has signed up in the same way, least of all consciously, for Trumps narcissistic sadism. Yet he is coming after millions of innocents with a vengeance, and all in a vapid quest for personal power and glory. There is no Cinderella in him at all, and even Dracula seems too generous (certainly too glamorous). Instead this boorish charlatan simply embodies a petty, malevolent self-regard which feeds off of the promotion of fear and hatred.
Warhol famously encountered a very different full-blown narcissist when he undertook to paint the great boxer Muhammed Ali.
As Warhol snapped his requisite Polaroids, the champ unleashed an extended diatribe of random and categorical pronouncements on a vast range of topics.
Warhol was shocked. He asked: How can he say that?, amazed at Alis self-righteousness. For Warhol, almost everything could be seen as beautiful, or at least interesting. Despite Warhols profoundly devout Byzantine Catholicism, he rejected most, at least conventional, moral judgments. Yet he remained captivated by Alis fame, if nothing else.
Warhol was in many ways a self-conscious, and arguably intentional, founder of our current celebrity culture, while Trump is one of its main products. Warhols Interview magazine was the direct precursor to People magazine and its ilk, and his TV work clearly anticipated reality shows.
Trump has lumbered out of a Warholian dream, or nightmare, in which fame, wealth and power are ends in themselves and, ultimately, self-validating. Imagine the painting: hundreds of Trumps cascading across the canvas with the gaudy eyes, rich lips, and Warhols other primary colour emphases, fading in and out like a Marilyn Diptych. Or, if you dare, a single image, immovable and relentless, like Warhols celebrity portraits of the 1970s and 1980s.
Few public figures have hair as instantly identifying as Warhols bizarre, garish silver wigs. Trumps elaborate coiffeur, though, comes close.
But if we cant believe the hair on your head, why would we take a word you say seriously? Warhol never asked us to, and playfully endorsed the harshest criticisms of his work as superficial and meaningless. Trump does.
An open letter from his former strategist Stephanie Cegielski reveals that, when he planned his campaign, Trump was just on an ego trip with no intention of winning. But now, he cant stop because Trump is about Trump. Hes never wrong and he never fails. Women who have illegal abortions should be punished, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump said Wednesday, before backtracking after a firestorm erupted over his latest controversial comment.
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton branded Trumps remark horrific, Bernie Sanders called it shameful and even major pro-life groups spoke out strongly against punishing women who have abortions.
Trumps comment came during a combative interview on MSNBC, with host Chris Matthews pressing the billionaire to specify how a woman should be punished, if abortion were banned in the United States.
This is the difficult situation you placed yourself in, by saying youre pro-life you want to ban abortion, Matthews said. How do you ban abortion without some kind of sanction?
Trump tried to sidestep the question, saying he had not determined what kind of punishment a woman should face for having an abortion, but acknowledged the answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.
Asked if the man who gets the woman pregnant should be punished, Trump responded, I would say no.
The 69 year old, who during his political life has been a Democrat and an independent and is only a recent convert to the pro-life anti-abortion position, has been accused in the past of flip-flopping on the hot-button issue.
s Clinton wasted little time in voicing her disgust at the candidates remarks, the latest in a series which has seen him accused of peddling misogyny and anti-Muslim sentiment on the campaign trail.
Just when you thought it couldnt get worse. Horrific and telling, she said in a tweet.
As the outcry grew, the Clinton campaign posted a flurry of tweets saying all women deserve equal access to healthcare, apparently seeking to capitalise on the momentum.
We cant let someone with this much contempt for womens rights anywhere near the White House, one posting said.
Clinton and other Democrats are defenders of a womans right to obtain an abortion, a procedure still fiercely opposed by many Republicans, four decades after the US Supreme Court affirmed its legality nationwide.
Even Trumps ultraconservative rival Ted Cruz, an evangelical Texas senator, bashed Trump, accusing the real estate mogul of saying anything just to get attention.
Ohio Governor John Kasich, the third candidate in the Republican race for the White House, also weighed in: Of course women shouldnt be punished, he told MSNBC.
Womens health provider Planned Parenthood, which conservatives oppose for its abortion practices, said Trump is now inciting violence against women for making a decision thats theirs to make.
The Trump campaign later Wednesday issued a statement on abortion, without mentioning his remarks to MSNBC, but reversing the stance he took in the interview.
The writer is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC
