Rougarou

Expanding on the Idea of Beasts: Using beasts from European heraldry to describe American politics seemed like a juxtaposition of political legacy and history of democracy. Perhaps this is relevant because the current president is quite similar to a monarch in financial upbringing.

However, I wanted to see if I could expand upon this idea of mythology and mythologized terms in politics. I created a list of ‘terms’ that have an stereotypical icon associated with them. I want to see if I can distort that icon into mythological symbolism through exaggerated caricature. Originally I was toying with the idea that there’s no such thing as a moderate.

Hopefully of the chaotic images with all of the cross crossing prints would produce one with a convincing monster form, but all of them were a little too abstract for the purposes of creating a log of recognizable monsters. The ultimate hope would be to create some sort of field guide to put them all together. Perhaps the parody of them would point out how ridiculous name calling is. In addition to thinking of brand new beasts, I decided to add some more elements into the prints of the elephant and the donkey: swamp/fictional anatomy to add an element of magical realism to the hybrids that form.

This is directly playing off of Trump’s popular sound bite from the 2016 election “drain the swamp.” This phrase refers to the fact that he intended to get rid of all the old fashioned practices, thinking, and people in the government for a complete, revolutionary overhaul. When in reality, much of the practices and people of this proclaimed swamp have stayed in place.