Saint Hoax Consolidation

Saint Hoax is a pseudonymous artist that best describes his work as ‘POPlitical’—an amalgamation of pop art with a political message. His activist art pieces use satirical and humorous self-explanatory visuals to create a form of political and social currency. 

In his campaign ‘Making America Misogynistic Again’, Saint Hoax provides political commentary on Donald Trump’s conception of both ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. Whilst satirical, Saint Hoax conveys a serious political undertone, intending to debase Trump of his regressive approach and convey counter-hegemonic discourses about social issues. Saint Hoax transforms and recontextualizes seen to be sexist vintage adverts from the 1950s through superimposing phrases that Donald Trump has said on the prints. By doing so, Saint Hoax challenges the permissiveness and overtly misogynistic language Trump uses as if suggesting that the words he has uttered perhaps belong in a different era for its outmoded and anachronistic nature. As an audience, we are made to consider whether we are as progressive as we claim to be. By highlighting Trump’s chauvinistic vernacular, Saint Hoax brings to light that for a country that boasts freedom and equality, supposedly meant to lead by example, perhaps there is more to say than mere face value. Saint Hoax’s political commentary whilst focused on Trump, also echoes a wider relevance to the issues surrounding toxic masculinity and the feminine and masculine tropes we perpetuate as a society. Toxic masculinity can be defined as a set of negative behaviours that men think they have to adopt in order to be ‘proper men’. This includes embodying old-school traits of the ‘Alpha Male’—unemotional, dominant, entitled, controlling. Saint Hoax reminds audiences of the gravity of Trump’s unique position which gives him access to audiences far and wide, urging accountability.

—then Mr. Trump is his antithesis, an old-school chauvinist embracing a new code of adolescent anarchy. He is a paradigm of feckless male entitlement, embracing male power while abnegating the traditional masculine requirements of chivalry, courtesy and responsibility.

– The New York Times, 2017

The main compositional features of his print style include utilising a form of intertextuality in order to convey multiple ideas in one visual. Satire and humour are both essential within his artworks. Additionally, Saint Hoax uses heteroglossia (when two or more viewpoints are expressed in a work; multivoiced) in order to convey multiple voices—Trump’s distinct vernacular in most often depicted in the headlines along with Saint Hoax’s own voice through the combination of both the visual text and the written text. 

Linking texts:

• Gatsby – The idea that Trump parallels Tom Buchannon; both feel a great sense of entitlement and flaunts it carelessly. Also perhaps, the idea of appearance vs. reality of the American Dream – Saint Hoax challenging whether we are truly embodying values of the American Dream or whether we still continue to disempower certain groups and identities; Gatsby exposing the reality behind the American Dream.
• Duffy “The World’s Wife” – The idea of transforming, remodelling and recontextualising texts anew in order to give voice to the silent. Challenging the social constructions of femininity and masculinity seen across both texts.

Personal Notes