Peter Paul Rubens’ “The Rape of Ganymede” (1611, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado). It’s part of the Prado show “The Other’s Gaze: Spaces of Difference.”
It’s interesting – and not entirely coincidental that Mika-gate exploded right at the end of Pride Month and in a summer that has seen the release of “Wonder Woman” and “The Beguiled,” a movie told from the female viewpoint. Culture continues to consider women even if President Donald J. Trump rarely does (though he did take a shine to blond Irish reporter Caitriona Perry.)
That he fails to take a shine to blond journalists who challenge him like Megan Kelly and Mika Brzezinski is more the material point. It’s almost useless to plumb his fixation with allegedly bleeding blondes. Perhaps it’s a mother thing. (Mary Trump bequeathed her son swooping blond hair.) Perhaps it’s an attempt to reconcile his relationship with his first wife, Ivana, the Catherine of Aragon to his Henry VIII. Perhaps it is nothing more than a diversionary tactic in an administration that is still struggling to point to any significant accomplishments beyond the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and a subsequent partial victory on the travel ban.
The Senate health care bill appears to be on life support – a fact that became increasingly clear during the week in which Trump went on a Twitter rant against “Morning Joe” host Brzezinski, thereby suggesting that her suggestion of his mental instability might have some merit. Like a bad novelist, Trump can’t get beyond some clichés. There’s always a hot blonde, bodily fluids and himself as the not-so-obscure, squeamish object of desire. (How did someone so germaphobic ever father five children?) Someone always wants him or some thing or place he has. But he rejects said enemy, whose appearance has been found wanting.
Give Trump credit. He knows how to hit women where many of them live – their looks. But he does so at a time when the world is evolving, or, at least, changing. We’re beginning to recognize the perspective of the “other” – the heterosexual woman or gay man who objectifies male beauty. In “The Beguiled,” the camera lingers over the bare chest of Colin Farrell’s injured soldier as Nicole Kidman’s prim headmistress washes him, then has to splash water on her face. (We understand, Nicole.)
In “The Other’s Gaze: Spaces of Difference,” at the Prado Museum, tender Ganymedes, Davids and Hermaphrodites are offered up for male and female delectation.
Where does that leave Trump – overweight, flabby, with florid skin, white-rimmed eyes and a much ridiculed pompadour comb-over? Do you think he cares? The problem with being looksist – and Trump is something of an equal opportunity employer here, criticizing men’s looks as well as women’s – is that the mirror has a way of turning to reveal a self we’d rather not consider. But narcissist that Trump is, he doesn’t notice. And so he awaits the next “bleeding blonde” with itchy Twitter fingers.