Trump’s skin, like many of the fixtures around him — items both organic and inorganic — is gold. Or aspires to goldness.
On the one hand, this bears almost no explaining. Trump surrounds himself with gold, even enwraps himself in his own gold skin, to convey in the most primitive way imaginable, that he is gold, that everything he touches turns to gold, that he cannot escape how gold rushes in upon him, following him like a cloud of gold dust seeking the man who is both its source and its final destination.
But there is something more about this skin and that something is its obvious artificiality. Trump’s skin color obviously comes out of a can and is applied badly. It is impossible that Trump would not be able find the right kind of professional help with his bronzer application, so we can only conclude that Trump’s skin is the way it is because he wants it to be that way.
With his skin, he is sending us a message . . . and it’s not just a message that says “I am a golden child.”
The message also says, “I am wearing a Trump-shaped golden suit. I am comfortable in my own skin because I am only my skin. Isn’t it something?”
Trump’s skin almost forces you to stare and invites you to imagine an inner Trump, offering you the promise of an ingeniously active political and social agent operating from within the golden skin-suit.
It’s an impression that is reinforced by the words and ideas that emerge from the skin’s interior that achieve the same simulacrum of humanity, sometimes almost but just not quite what a real person might say or think.
All in all, everything is just a little “off” visually . . . and I think that’s the point.
To those for whom Trump is negatively relevant (“fascinating” in a bad way), the skin is a flashing alarm light alerting them to the dangerous duplicity of a demagogue. It says to them, “Look, look, look, he’s conning you! Don’t be fooled!” This is not a great strategy for winning the votes of those people, but it is a very effective strategy for occupying a permanent place on their radar screens, where all flashing alarm lights properly belong.
For those who dislike Trump, the skin serves a practical purpose . . . the way the warning coloration of certain animals alert other animals not to eat them.
To those for whom Trump is positively relevant (“fascinating” in a good way), the situation is more paradoxical and complex . . . and in many ways more magical.
For this group, the skin is an emblem of reassurance as compared to the reactions prompted by the “establishment” candidates he is competing with. Those candidates (let’s say Sen. Marco Rubio, to pick one) are unsettling to people who are sensitized to the idea that “all politicians are phony” because, although they accept this reality, in Rubio’s case, they can’t precisely identify the ways in which he is “phony.” Rubio’s mask is “too good” . . . which is upsetting to people conditioned to believe that Rubio must be “just another politician.”
Trump’s skin, on the other hand, provides people with easy access to the seams and discontinuities between the “real Trump” and the skin-suit. Because it’s obvious and easy to see that Trump is inhabiting an exterior unreality, it paradoxically makes Trump more attractive and relevant to people whose primary goal is to affirm the fundamental duplicity of all political types.
In other words, Trump’s skin is a both a transparent and cynical communication to those who view him favorably. It is transparent ABOUT its cynicism. It says to people, “Yes, we’re all wearing masks and enacting a kind of deceptive theater when we talk to you . . . but my costume is less well constructed, you can see it’s a costume and therefore, I’m more ‘real’ than those other guys.”
It is paradoxical, because in a brand environment of believed falseness and duplicity, where people by default assume “all politicians (brands) are lying to me and will betray me,” Trump’s skin does two things at once. First, it serves paradoxically as camouflage, allowing him to blend in with the other political brands, even though politics is not his natural ecosystem . . . like certain poisonous toads blend in with a pile of leaves in the forest.
But secondly — a double-paradox — Trump’s skin is a camouflage that calls attention to itself as camouflage and therefore provides a basis of assurance and trust . . . as if he were a leaf in a pile of poisonous toads.