The Anti-Gospel According to “the Mooch”: Trumpo-mimesis and the Dogma of Moral Reversal

Type of content
Journal Article
Publisher's DOI/URI
Thesis discipline
Degree name
Publisher
University of Canterbury
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
Date
2020
Authors
Taylor, Victor E.
Abstract

President Donald J. Trump (DJT) is in many ways a “beautiful” example of an objet a – like the shark in Spielberg’s Jaws or the avifauna in Hitchcock’s The Birds ... if we recall two of Slavoj Žižek’s more ominous examples from The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema and The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. 1 A recent meme (actually retweeted by @realDonaldTrump) depicting DJT’s head on “Rocky Balboa’s” sweaty, sculpted body2 illustrates well this openness to wide-ranging pop cultural interpretations of the president. The image first circulated, vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin 2020 calendar pics3, with gleeful mockery but then became for many “Trumpsters” a non-joking symbol of the president’s enduring strength and determination, e.g. “eye of the tiger” political style. This uncanny power of interpretive reversal, even to the point of ridiculousness, is one of the keys to DJT’s political and, more importantly, religio-cultural success.

Description
Citation
Keywords
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.