The White House, the Rebel, and the Chimp, 2005 Oil on linen 68 × 52 inches
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The White House, the Rebel, and the Chimp, 2005
Oil on linen 68 × 52 inches

Again, I’m a super-lefty liberal, and this I feel is a comment on our current administration, and by allegorical relation, patriarchy (symbolized by the house-and the "man" behind the curtain-the chimp) in general. This is from a scene almost taken completely out of the film, where a gang, dropping his "groceries," harasses a man and running away, observed by a drunken Dean in character. The actual film opens up with what happens next: during the title sequence Dean drops to his knees to get closer to the mechanical monkey, emulating the stupid way he bangs his cymbals, and "putting him to bed" by placing the toy chimp on his back and covering it with the paper to his right that had wrapped the lily’s to his left. This is a clean symbolic allegory for me: "Rebel Without a Cause" is W. and Iraq, and Dean is making fun of the chimp in front of a nightmarish White House and the bourgeois suburban culture it is a part of… Ultimately, this movie is so great (and Dean in it) because it has come to symbolize in the most iconic way the adolescent-like hopefulness of the power to rise above patriarchal oppression and ignorance. (2005)