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By Kenny Smith and Deeksha Sivakumar (2-3 minute read)
When we stop to consider the many different ways in which Barack Obama has been mythologized over the past six years (e.g., as anti-Christ, terrorist sympathizer, fascist dictator, socialist, communist, Marxist, undocumented immigrant, etc.) we may not at first recall that, most especially during the 2008 election cycle, Obama was repeatedly cast in hopeful, heroic and even salvific terms, appearing as Obama-Lincoln, Obama-Christ, and Obama–Superman. One particularly entertaining site of such Obama myth-making is found in “Super Obama Girl” videos, produced by the Barely Political you-tube channel and starring actor/model Amber Lee Ettinger. Throughout numerous episodes, Super Obama Girl expresses her loving devotion to (and desire for) then-candidate Obama, while also deploying her superpowers to defeat villains such as “Status” and “Quo” and “Barren Despair” (who threaten to rig the vote within the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton), and right-wing types such as Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh, whom Super Obama Girl alternately swats or deflates with the Washington Monument which she has uprooted from the DC Mall in hulk-like fashion. Despite the fact that Obama seems to be in need of such assistance in these videos, still he himself is heavily mythologized, with rays of economically-healing light emerging from his upraised hand (and one wonders whether Obama Girl derives her Super-heroine powers from Obama in some way). Of course, given American preoccupations with the apocalyptic, its persistent racism, and the lingering effects of the Great Recession, heroic Obamas have largely disappeared form the popular landscape.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIiMa2Fe-ZQ
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In another country far away, a similar kind of political myth-making has been at play. Every year on Gandhi Jayanthi, Mahatma Gandhi’s statue is dressed up and adorned for public honoring in a ritual that remembers him as a freedom fighter and emblematic leader. Among the practices adopted by his followers, the celebrations–which are remarkably similar to Indian temple gatherings and Hindu ritual processions–include: socialites and politicians competing for VIP status to enter and stand first in line among the teeming visitors to Gandhi’s garlanded statue; small temples for Gandhi conducting daily puja ceremonies (i.e., lighting a lamp and worshiping Gandhi); ritually bathing Gandhi’s statue (abishekam) and offering food (prasadam) to the Gandhi statue. Indeed, entire schools dress up as Gandhi to show their support to the Father of the Nation of India with bald heads and homespun attire and chanting his favorite verses and songs in devotion. These ritualized enactments signal the ordinariness of his devotees’ struggles as well as the extra-ordinariness of Gandhi’s message. This Gandhi makes India his creation, and his image appears in Hindi movies depicting modern Indian society in a state of denigration from Gandhi’s pure message of love, service and ahmisa–a free and democratic country. Images of Gandhi hang in important public service offices representing his principles but also giving him power suggesting that Gandhi still acts in modern society albeit through his devotees and followers. It is no exaggeration to say that, at least in these instances, the figure of Gandhi is treated in ways that bear a striking resemblance to the ways in which many other divine beings are treated in traditional Indian religious cultures, though in the case of Gandhi the spiritual is intimately bound up with Indian nationalism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teNcvR4wcDk
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So, what do we learn by holding these two examples alongside one another? What differences, and what commonalities, emerge? In the American example, the emphasis seems to reside upon imagery and narrative. For, whether rendered in heroic or demonic form, the mythologized Obama is fundamentally a story that is told about Obama and what his presidency means. In the Indian example, ritual practice is emphasized. While Gandhi’s narrative functions as a kind of implicit guiding principle, what is emphasized here is what we do in relation to this beloved figure (Gandhiji) and how our actions display our devotion and reify his power. In both examples, particular political figures function as sites from which magical powers emanate outward to the rest of us, whether for the positive transformation of society, or a dystopian apocalypse. These are, of course, claims to social authority as much as they are theological motifs. Indeed, in these figures what we might identify as magical, religious, and ideological, dimensions of social life seem to fuse effortlessly into one seamless whole.
Of course, political myth-making is never a static affair. Once Obama is safely beyond the realm of living memory, nostalgic Obama myth-making may emerge even within conservative discourse, and Gandhiji may also be creatively appropriated in ways that are difficult to anticipate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGW6qhIo1PE
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