My Sarah Palin As Blessed Virgin Mary Trumps Your Obama And Unicorn
Courtesy of Kathy Shaidle’s “Baby Jesus Wants You To Murder a Muzzi For Christmas” site, I came across this astonishing addition to the Sarah Palin Iconography, and inspired by an exchange with JJ, I thought I should bring it to your attention.
You will recall that the Furiosi were alternately scandalized and mocking about some of the more rococo portrayals of Obama last fall. However, this rendering of Sarah Palin as Virgin Mary is apparently a different matter.
It’s not her transformation from bright-eyed, giggly Everywoman to Steely Amazon that’s disturbing – as noted elsewhere, she has always been a bit of a cartoon, especially among the followers for whom X-Men comics marks the summit of western literary and graphic achievement.
What’s truly weird is the parody of Catholic images that symbolize the Virgin Mary. Note:
- a plain, round halo
- the crushing of The Snake
- the Marian blue dress
- the background of stars
I’m not sure what to make of the crotch chastely concealed by shotgun shells – I’m fairly sure that’s not standard issue imagery. I’m also not sure what to make of the fact that her Blackberry, whose screen presumably reads “Death Panels”, is obscured by her finger so that it appears to say “Dea Panei”, or “Goddess Bread”. And hey, what happened to her wedding ring?
I find it all weirdly funny, but I regret that it’s only available as a print. If it were a wall hanging on black velvet, I’d clean out their stock in a flash.
Gee whiz – how difficult could it be to find a starving artist™ who would gladly accept a commission to render this image on black velvet for you, in UV-sensitive paint so that certain … ah, features would really pop when you turned on the black light?
As JJ pointed out, there’s a least five doctoral theses in this poster for either a theologian or a Freudian.
I had to put on my glasses to read it, but one of her buttons says “Judges 4″, which is OT, so that’s a departure from Catholicism. I’m not sure what to make of the passage, but oddly enough it has a guy named “Barak” in it and it sounds like he gets nails hammered into his head at the end. Huh!? Yikes
the crushing of The Snake
I thought this made it look like Palin had a lizard tail.
It’s kinda cool that she’s stomping on the same edition of “Rules for Radicals” that I own. Strange, though, because her crazier fans have adopted it as their playbook.
Does Stageleft have some kind of polling application? I ask because I am wrestling internally with a whole bunch of reactions to this, and I can’t figure out which response is the dominant one. The options are:
a) Vulgar
b) Funny
c) Sick
d) Blasphemous
e) Insane.
I’d like to settle this by poll, if possible.
I note that this comes to you by way of Ms. Shaidle. I can’t help but note how well this imagery complements her attraction to Nazi pornography.
If she’s not winking, I’m not interested.
Throbbin – As I suggested to balbulican, get someone technically skilled to produce the version that rings your bell.
@Sarah N. Dippity –
Option F) All of the Above
What it really reminds me of is the obsessive fetishism of underground cartoonist Robert Crumb. That queasy mix of attraction and revulsion is almost his trademark.
http://williampaiva.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/crumb_sex.jpg
It’s only because most conservative are thinking with their little heads when they see this woman. If you catch my drift.
She IS the Madonna of politics, I think.
The other Madonna.
The artist who did this thing has a blog (cache link) if you want to see some of his other work. Wingnut art, who knew?
That’s amazing stuff. But I still think this is his masterpiece. Not only does it evoke the Virgin Mary and Rosie the Riveter, but it’s also reminiscent of those heroic fascists or Mao-era Cultural Revolution images
“But I still think this is his masterpiece”
For sure, “Sarah Para Bellum” (”prepare for war!”) is obviously the artist’s magnum opus — nothing else even comes close to it for disturbing metaphors and Freudian symbolism.
You know what else is weird — he’s depicted her as a lot more bulked up than she is in real life (she’s a runner and has that kind of physique, small-boned and light). Add to that the way she’s seated, legs wide apart like a guy would sit… and those transvestite-style platform shoes…
This thing really is a surreptitious look into the deepest darkest recesses of the wingnut mind.
Surely this poster is not made with her approval. Surely she has more sense than that. Surely.
Can the subjects of such posters collect royalities?
Here’s a frightening prospect
Don’t forget that she’s perching on a wharf piling, Ă la St. Simeon Stylites. (Or a pelican.)
That upskirt POV makes the dual implications of her pose kind of unmissable, too…
Given that St. Simeon was an ascetic, I will opt for the pelican interpretation: its cry has been described as a “raucous honking”, which approximates Ms. Palin’s oratorical style.