Tennessee GOP Marks a New Epoch in Contemporary Art [Fresh Vid]

There are pages in the annals of art history when artists crystalized cultural moments so succinctly that their works continue to live as historical documents. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. Picasso’s “Guernica.” Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain.” Andy Warhol’s “Campbell's Soup Cans.” Sadly, none of these artists hailed from the great state of Tennessee. Art heavyweights still look to New York, Los Angeles, Paris and London as the world’s art centers. But all of that changes today.

The official Twitter account of the Tennessee Republican party, @TNGOP, put the contemporary art smackdown on coastal elites with a video that lays bare political questions of our age. In a new video drawing from Surrealist traditions, @TNGOP references ancient Greek epic poetry by riffing on the climactic scene in Homer’s Iliad. Using footage from the film Troy, the GOP plastered Senate candidate Phil Bredesen’s face on the Trojan horse. If your copy of the Iliad is coated in dust, let us help you recall. When the Greeks departed from Troy’s shores in surrender, they left a gift on the beach: a huge horse. The Trojans, believing their victory secure, promptly returned home with the horse and got wasted. When night fell, the Greeks emerged from the horse, flung open the gates, and massacred every Trojan they could find.

In this important art piece, the Trojans (re: Tennesseans), greet the Bredesen-faced horse with joy. It signals their victory over the would-be conquerors (re: Tennessee Democrats). But hidden within are the disembodied heads of Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein and Cory Booker. Their heads now superimposed on the bodies of Greeks, they climb out of the horse, weapons in hand, and begin their race to destroy Troy and all that is holy.

Cut to CNN footage of radical feminists protesting the appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. This part is a bit unclear — contemporary art is supposed to leave us guessing! Have the Greeks morphed into these radicals? If Bredesen is elected, will we all become angry, indignant feminists bent on accusing men of rape willy-nilly? And does this signal the destruction of our great state?

The Scene anxiously awaits the renegade art group’s next piece of avant-garde cinema. Will Marsha Blackburn appear as Achilles, pulling the bloodied corpse of Bredesen behind her through the dirt? Or will they go with Blackburn as Odysseus, strapped to the mast of a ship through a storm of Democrat-faced raindrops and winds? Or will they pivot to Chaucer, Shakespeare or Tolkien? Only time will tell.

Regardless of one’s political persuasion, @TNGOP has grounded the ancient in the present, creating a contemporary masterpiece of which all Tennesseans can be proud. Watch the work in its entirety below. 

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