Election-Related Folk Art Samantha Close Arts & Culture, Politics & Economics “Ted Cruz Republican Leading the Fight” from ConservativeArt “Feel the Laser Bern” from DanSchaubDesigns “Women for Hillary jewelry” from slrfreespiritjewelry “Donald Trump doll” from TobeyTimeCrochet The stuff of politics is never supposed to be important. Signs get taken down, pamphlets get thrown away, and people move on to laws, policies, and budget disputes. In traditional thinking, this arena of financial appropriations and negotiating which and what laws make it on the books is the important political “stuff,” the way you see what the candidates are really made of. There is a lot of truth to this. But, as Stephen Duncombe (2007) points out, this is also a highly intellectualized, rationalized, and cerebral way of understanding politics that misses out on much of what inspires and motivates people to take part. The craft and folk art objects related to candidates in the 2016 presidential election that are pictured here suggest a different, more affective and emotional relationship to politics that requires an outlet in durable, material stuff that will remain long after the candidates are selected and the election concluded. The contemporary political climate in the United States, as many of my comrades are pointing out in this discussion, is often highly cynical. Political talk is heavily inflected by irony, humor, and sarcasm—to the extent that, at first glance, many might wonder if the folk art pictured here isn’t taking the piss rather than being sincere. It’s an elitist, urban—Duncombe might say traditional leftist—sensibility that sees a hagiographic woodcut or hand-penciled (and sharpie-d) portrait as parody rather than proud declaration of identification and admiration (Sweeney, 1997). Particularly in communication and cultural studies scholarship, this kind of highly invested affective relationship is more familiar in the realm of fandom—we would have little pause in characterizing a Harry Potter amigurumi doll as made out of love. It is past time that we take as much care and bring as much nuance to analyzing how identification works on an emotional level in the domain of political communication as we do in the domain of popular communication (for one example of such analysis, see Liana Gamber-Thompson (2016) on Libertarian fandom). Such a politics is at once more and less empowering for the average citizen and very different from how we were taught that our political system works in sixth-grade civics. It much more closely resembles the Christian “What Would Jesus Do?” philosophy, oriented towards the impact of identification and belief in daily life rather than in official spheres (Jackson, 2006). This is in line with the religious overtones and symbolism of much candidate-related folk art. This election folk art suggests a different interpretation of the ubiquitous question “does my vote matter?” It matters because it matters to the voter, not necessarily for them. References Duncombe, S. (2007). Dream: re-imagining progressive politics in an age of fantasy. New York: New Press ; Distributed by W.W. Norton. Jackson, G. S. (2006). “What Would Jesus Do?”: Practical Christianity, Social Gospel Realism, and the Homiletic Novel. PMLA, 121(3), 641–661. Jenkins, H., Shresthova, S., Gamber-Thompson, L., Kligler-Vilenchik, N., & Zimmerman, A. M. (2016). By any media necessary: the new activism of American youth. New York: New York University Press. Sweeney, G. (1997). The King of White Trash Culture: Elvis Presley and the Aesthetics of Excess. In M. Wray & A. Newitz (Eds.), White trash: race and class in America (pp. 249–266). New York: Routledge. This article originally appeared at www.henryjenkins.org. Featured image courtesy of Pixabay.
