Donald Trump’s A E S T H E T I C S
Why Trump fits right in with vaporwave styling.
A few weeks ago I posted a rather lengthy article about the First Presidential Debate and for my header, or the photo that appears when I share an article on social media, I used a Photoshop of the candidate done in a visual style known as vaporwave aesthetics. Just yesterday, after sharing said picture with my news editor/boss Louis, he decided to use a similar picture for his own article, which can be found here. It’s not hard to see why both of us chose similar pictures; the striking colors, retro styling, and slightly off-kilter nature to the images catches the eye in a way that a simple photograph does not. But what is it about Donald Trump specifically that allows him to fit so well into this unique visual medium?
A e s t h e t i c s and you
First, a little art history on this visual style and internet subculture. Aesthetics, often stylized as “ a e s t h e t i c s” is a visual art style that’s rapidly gained popularity in internet communities such as Tumblr, 4chan and Reddit since around 2010. Seen as a cross-media artistic trend, the visual style is commonly associated with the musical movement vaporwave; a genre of electronic music that typically features ambient, New Age-esque loops and samples heavily from 80’s smooth jazz and synth pop, usually either pitch shifted or time stretched to create spacey, ethereal beats. While the art style and musical genre are technically separate entities, it is quite easy to see that the two movements feed off one-another to create a single coherent artistic movement. Shown below is a vaporwave track released in 2011 by the artist MACINTOSH PLUS that’s considered one of the first pieces of art to truly join the vaporwave genre together with the term “aesthetic”.
Like the musical genre, vaporwave aesthetics borrow heavily from the design languages of the 80’s and 90's: with retro gaming, old computer operating systems and distorted or glitched video being featured heavily alongside a backdrop of florescent day-glo color and neon lights. As it applies to the vaporwave artistic movement, the term “aesthetic” is not as much a specific artistic style or direction that “is” aesthetic or “isn’t”, but instead a broader philosophical concept about taste and beauty, the idea being that visual or thematic coherence is not a necessary prerequisite for something to be “beautiful”.
What the hell does this have to do with Donald Trump?
The answer to that question, like many other questions in this world, is memes (no, seriously).While the artistic movement runs the risk of coming off as a pretentious “2deep4u” set of concepts about the meaning of art; it does have some coherent themes that can be clearly identified. Born on the internet and borrowing heavily from 80’s and 90’s visual style, vaporwave aesthetics are oftentimes described as a satire and deconstruction of corporate and consumerist culture. Recognizable icons of late 20th century capitalism: Nintendo, McDonalds, Microsoft and the like are torn away from their original intentions and morphed into messy, glitchey pieces that are both visually interesting, but also self referential in-jokes about the meanings we humans give to certain imagery, often equating certain images to meanings just because a company or entity told us to do so (Nintendo=Fun, for example). Pieces in the vaporwave aesthetic are satire, and much like an internet meme, as a piece of work spreads across the internet, it in turn gets parodied and modified many times over; with each artist putting their own personal flair or twist on the image.
In the context of Donald Trump, a man who is just as much a meme as he is a real person, vaporwave seems to be a perfect fit. During the 80’s and 90’s, Trump positioned himself as a swaggering alpha male and business extraordinaire who ran one of the most profitable companies of all time. Rich, powerful, and famous, Trump created a persona depicting himself as the epitome of success and achievement, plastering his image onto everything from casinos, to airlines, golf courses, beauty pageants, professional wrestling, and even Pizza Hut commercials. The persona Donald created made him look untouchable, and for a long time, it worked.
But now it’s Election 2016, and the American people are three decades, two fallen towers, and one Great Recession removed from that distant era. And because tragedy plus time equals comedy, it’s fair to say that many Americans are a bit more self-aware about how absurd “The Greatest Country In The World” sounds out loud. What many Americans lost in national pride was gained back as sense of humor; and while it’s true that some Americans turned this loss into blind anger (You know who I’m talking about), on the whole I’d say with fair confidence that we’re a bit more comfortable with laughing at ourselves than we were 20 to 30 years prior. What’s more, due to the election, we can now make some pretty good assumptions that the persona Trump created for himself is further detached from reality than we once thought. So not only is “The Donald” a dank meme unto itself, but he’s also the perfect target for self referential humor, sounds like a great recipe for A E S T H E T I C S don’t it?
And sure, there’s a contingency of people on the internet that revere/worship Trump, and yes, some of those individuals are probably making vaporwave aesthetic pieces of Donald out of admiration instead of mockery; but in a way, the very movement these pictures are a part of is a contradiction to the ideals Trump peddles. Aesthetic recognizes that we can be convinced, or even fooled, into believing certain images have a specific meaning solely based on what someone tells us it means. By removing the image from it’s intended context, what was once owned by a corporation, marketing team, or billionaire is freed to the masses who parody and modify it to their hearts content. Trump insists to his supporters that he’s the lone messiah who can save us from this terrifying world and will attack anything or anyone that says otherwise. But in this hyper connected age, the persona he created for himself no longer belongs to just him, it belongs to the rest of the internet too. And the internet isn’t known for it’s obedience to “rules”.
For more on aesthetics, I suggest watching The Idea Channel’s video on the topic here
And for more vaporware examples, go ahead and give r/VaporwaveAesthetics a gander by clicking on the name.
