Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are like the Patrick Star and SpongeBob SquarePants of presidential politics. No, they’re more like the Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar of politics. Or maybe they’re the Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of politics. In truth, they’re all these things and more in Trump X Hillary: I Love To Hate You, a half-delightful, half-disturbing series of images by Brazilian artist and graphic designer Butcher Billy, who defines himself as “a pop culture mean butcher.” The project consists of a series of diptychs, each one presenting the candidates as different pop culture characters whose relationship is defined by a potent mixture of affection and enmity. Here they are, for instance, as the Red Queen and the Mad Hatter from Tim Burton’s 2010 film Alice In Wonderland. Trump seems to be in a puckish mood, enjoying the irritation he is causing Clinton.
Considering the content of Suicide Squad, this picture makes some disturbing implications about the nature of Clinton and Trump’s relationship. Have Trump and Clinton secretly been the fun couple of 2016, pranking the entire country just for the hell of it?
Appropriately, given the influence of street art on Butcher Billy’s work, the artist’s gallery contains some examples of the I Love To Hate You series “out in the open.” Here, for instance, is how his depiction of Clinton and Trump as characters from SpongeBob SquarePants would look if it were plastered on the side of a building.
And for those with no patience whatsoever, here is the entire series in one rapid-fire GIF. Each individual viewer will have to decide exactly what Butcher Billy is implying by transforming Clinton into Princess Leia and Trump into her estranged father, Darth Vader.
[via Laughing Squid]