I love Mad Men — I love the clothes and the cars and the way in which Don Draper navigates New York City, but mostly I love it because it’s fascinating to explore an era that feels distant from today. These days, however, it is feeling a lot less distant. With our president making overtly sexist comments — pussygate being the crown jewel of his various lewd remarks — Mad Men era advertisements feel particularly poignant, or so feels Saint Hoax, an anonymous artist working in Beirut and New York City.
Every year, to mark International Women’s Day, Saint Hoax creates a collection of work that delves into gender dynamics. Last year, he created a viral photo campaign of Syrian refugees dressed as their favorite Disney Princesses. His most recent collection pairs advertisements from the 1950s with statements from Donald Trump.
On his collection, Make America Misogynist Again, he writes, ‘I removed the original headlines from these misogynistic advertisements and replaced them with quotes that Donald Trump said about women. The headlines and visuals strongly complement each other, although there’s almost a 30-year gap between them.’
He originally showed them to friends without saying where he had lifted the phrases and they were shocked to learn they had come from the mouth of our president. The pairing works so well, in part, because it is not immediately evident that the text is not the original text. The pairing heightens our awareness of Donald Trump’s sexism and the historical continuum within which he fits.
‘Sadly, Donald Trump is trying to take America back to the ‘Mad Men’ era,’ Saint Hoax said in a conversation with Mic. ‘I’m hoping that these posters would make people realize that Trump’s ‘locker room talk’ is extremely dangerous especially now since he is the president of the United States and he’s ‘supposed’ to be representing one of the most feminist countries in the world.’
When asked why he pursues these specific International Women’s Day projects, he explained to Mic, “I identify as a man, and that is exactly why I make it a point every year to celebrate International Women’s Day by publishing a project inspired by the event. Everyone should be celebrating women today and every day”
More from Make American Misogynistic Again:
All Images from Saint Hoax
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