Why the Donald Trump Mugshot Flopped
Take the mugshot t-shirt out of your Etsy cart before I catch you being uncool.
If anyone was on the app FKA Twitter last night when an alleged Trump mugshot was released and you saw a tweet about it that was actually funny, could you send it to me? Cuz I’ll be honest, it was dry, you guys. To my dear friends who I saw trying to get a hit tweet off, love you, but you guys are better than that.
People were tweeting all day yesterday, expressing impatience over the fact that the mugshot had not been released yet. I’m gonna be honest, in the world of famous mugshots, that kind of reaction is a new one.
Mugshots would join pop culture iconography when we were still kind of scandalized by them. Back in the age of tabloids (the 90’s baby’s age of innocence), we’d see mugshots on the covers of magazines with printer ink yellow and pink letters. As a kid I would look at them, almost guiltily, almost like I shouldn’t have been, like I should’ve been minding my business, looking at the fruity IceBreakers instead, but God, I couldn’t help myself. They were warning signs for the rest of us. They were meant to make examples out of these beautiful, simple famous people who ultimately didn’t do anything super evil, just simple indulgences like drug possession charges or public indecency (or mildly evil, like driving under the influence.) They were relatively low grade offenses committed by people — rich, hot, vapid, vain — who could, to the rest of us, be scapegoated as perfect supervillains back when we were starved for supervillains. That, plus, we’re gluttons for the lo-fi Hollywood glamour of flash photography against hair and makeup that looks lived in from a night out. (Shout the fuck out to 2014 Justin Bieber’s perfect blowout, glassy eyes, and school picture day smile.)
That shit does NOT work anymore. Not when you’re banging on the door of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office asking for a mugshot like it’s about to be the song of the summer. There was something rebellious about celebrating a mugshot. There was a sense of humor in the fact that Kris framed Khloe’s mugshot and put it on the wall and said it was really cute (she was right!). Some people were going to find that depraved, and that was the whole point. It was like Gossip Girl using it’s terrible critic’s reviews as something to brag about on its posters and billboards. The Donald Trump mugshot on a t-shirt is not some snarky, punk Rage Against statement, it’s actually very tame, which means it actually kind of sucks.
Also like, Donald Trump is a real life bad guy. A real criminal and a fascist. There will be effects of his candidacy and presidency coming into American life that we won’t see or know for years. So it’s not this cute and funny thing where the girl who played both twins in The Parent Trap got older in the public eye and became a party girl who made a little trouble. Hate to be sincere for a minute, but he did ruin lives lol.
It does make me wonder, though, what will be the new version of a mugshot. Because while you guys are still looking at mugshots thinking that they still mean what they meant 15 years ago, the pearl clutchers are always finding new things to blush at, and if you want to even pretend you know how to predict a future icon, that’s where you should look. I think it’ll be something along the lines of Twitter screenshots from a misdirected cancellation or screenshots from back when you could see that feed of which pictures celebrities were liking on IG.
(Though, there are exceptions. Like I do think a Taylor Swift mugshot could eat, plus her reputation could so benefit from a legal scandal.)
Well written