Why I’m Not Pissed About “Piss Trump”
30 years ago, the American artist and photographer Andres Serrano won a Visual Arts competition with a photograph of a small plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of Serrano’s urine. He titled the photograph Immersion (Piss Christ).
This morning, an American artist named Salazar, in a clear nod to Serrano, began selling a photographic print of a Donald Trump butt plug ostensibly submerged in the artist’s urine. S/he titled the photo “Piss Trump” ($29/$49. A portion of the proceeds will go to RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.)
Salazar is selling the print with the sales pitch, “Buy NOW!! Before Trump makes blasphemy illegal.” A joke, of course. But in these times, humor with a legitimate fearful undercurrent.
“Piss Christ” was extremely controversial at the time, amid obvious cries of Catholic-bashing and charges of blasphemy. There were death threats. Obviously. Senators cried to cut funding to the National Endowment of the Arts, a taxpayer-funded endowment, because the agency partially funded the competition which awarded Serrano first place.
This morning it was reported by The Hill that Trump plans to shut down the National Endowment for the Arts. Another reason this photo of “Piss Trump” is timely. Pissing on the arts is not going to end well for him.
Christ submerged in urine is indeed a vulgar characterization of the way Christ had become vulgarized in the culture. But a few renown Catholic thinkers, like Sister Wendy Beckett, who had her own TV show on the BBC discussing art history, did not find the photo blasphemous at all.
In fact, in a Bill Moyer’s interview she said she was moved by the photo. “This is what we are doing to Christ. We’re not treating Him with reverence. His great sacrifice is not used. We live very vulgar lives. We put Christ in a bottle of urine, in practice. It was a very admonitory work…But I think to call the work blasphemous is very much begging the question. It could be. It couldn’t be. It’s what you make of it. And I could make something that made me feel a deep desire to reverence the death of Christ more by the suggestion this is what, in practice, the world is doing [to Christ].”
I wasn’t a big fan of the “Piss Christ” photo when I first saw it in a magazine. Did not appreciate the artistry. I couldn’t get past the urine.
But the controversy, I understood. And appreciated. I was in prison in 1987, the first time, for petty crimes. A year later I’d be released and go on a 14-month bank robbery spree. I knew to hate authority. And the desire to puncture pieties while punching people in the nose with my actions was definitely my wheelhouse. I lived for blasphemy.
But the older I got, and moved away from adolescent reactions to the world, I saw the value of free artistic speech. But while I moved closer to free speech, the world moved away.
28 years after Serrano introduced his controversial photo, two men who identified themselves as members of Al Qaeda in Yemen walked into the Paris office of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and killed 12 people. And wounded 11 others. All because Charlie Hebdo had published cartoons of Muhammed, depictions of the Big Guy a big no-no in some interpretations of Islam.
5 million people across France joined in rallies to demonstrate solidarity with Hebdo. The slogan Je Suis Charlie became a viral sensation on social media. And yet, while the world stood up to support free speech, the Associated Press chose to self-censor and remove the image of “Piss Christ” from its editorial archive.
And so I am happy to see that the photograph “Piss Trump” is vulgarly expressing disgust with the most uncouth President in my lifetime. A man who we heard brag about his techniques for getting away with sexual assaults. My feeling is that since we had to be subjected to Trump talking like a man in a room waiting to register as a sex offender with other deviants, then I’m fine with him seeing his coarse image reflected back to him in Salazar’s photo.
The Trump Butt Plug, used by Salazar as the immersed Trump, was first promoted last year by an unidentified artist who sold the item on Etsy under the pseudonym Amznfx. It was a time when Trump piñatas were the rage. Trump’s likeness used for all manner of spite.
Because Trump bragged of grabbing “pussy,” I see comic irony in the way the likeness of him in “Piss Trump” is a sex toy designed to shut up assholes real tight.
“Piss Trump” is not great art. But it is art for its time. The media was manipulated by Trump. He successfully outgamed them at almost every turn. Taking to Twitter to bypass news outlets. Sending journalist tripping over themselves with every head fake. Distracting us. Newsrooms struggled to define what should be called a Trump lie, all while he relentlessly violated the most simplistic metric the average parent uses every night to punish their children for lying.
And so here I am on Medium, owned by Twitter, explaining why Trump needs to see this interpretation of his likeness before Inauguration. We need to get in his head. Let him know that we will resist and we will continue to reflect back to him images of the puny cretin he is in our imaginations.
People will have strong opinions about “Piss Trump.” Some will even dare call it blasphemy. But one can only blaspheme if they’re being sacrilegious. And one can only be sacrilegious if the offended party was first sacred.
And though I wouldn’t count out Kellyanne Conway from trying, nobody right now is peddling that fake gospel.
Here is the link for you to buy the print, where a portion of the proceeds will help victims of sexual violence. A double-whammy against Trump.
