Exploiting the Archives: Vincent Gallo's Awful Analog Memes
Vincent Gallo was a troll before the phrase even existed. In a pre-social media age Gallo was all about owning the libs with an endless series of empty provocations.
The Brown Bunny auteur and all-around terrible human being famously offered to sell his sperm for one million dollars (for an additional five hundred thousand dollars he offers “natural insemination”, i.e Vincent Fucking Gallo taking you to the bone zone to do things the old fashion way) with the caveat, “Mr. Gallo maintains the right to refuse sale of his sperm to those of extremely dark complexions. Though a fan of Franco Harris, Derek Jeter, Lenny Kravitz and Lena Horne, Mr. Gallo does not want to be part of that type of integration.”
Is Gallo joking? Who the hell knows? He’s a fucking troll and one of the hallmarks of trolls is that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain whether they’re being sincere and on the level or if it’s all an elaborate goof to piss people off.
Gallo’s personality and public persona is so ridiculously over the top in its obnoxiousness that it feels like it has to be a put-on. Surely no one could be that insufferable, right?
Like Milo Yiannopoulos, the yucky power of Gallo’s trolling lies in its seeming incongruity. Just as you would imagine that a self-consciously outrageous gay man who works in the media would be a Leftist people naturally assume that a New York bohemian artist who was in a band with his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat and established himself as an arthouse auteur would not be a Donald Trump super-fan who counts Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh among his personal heroes.
Yet Milo and Vincent are far right-wing provocateurs who get off on being the antithesis of who the public expects them to be.
Vincent Gallo is not on Twitter but he has nevertheless gotten into the meme business all the same through a series of one-of-a-kind tee shirts on his website that are like insultingly lazy memes except that you can wear them and also they all cost six hundred and sixty six dollars.
Why 666 dollars? Because that’s the mark of the beast, baby! As in, the devil! How provocative is that? You would imagine that being a proud conservative, Gallo would be against the devil but he’s as committed to being a troll as he is to being an utterly unlikely arch-Conservative.
Judging by his work in the trolling tee shirt field, Gallo is either genuinely opposed to black people and white people making babies together or he is really committed to the bit.
A typical tee shirt shows an image of Colin Kaepernik with the words “White Boy” written on his fro. Gallo continues the trolling with a snarky description reading, “Why does it seem so often the lightest skinned, most entitled mulattos are the angriest? I suggest this ex employee of the NFL read Thomas Sowell. And try to stop hating himself for being so damn attracted to white women. America is so great, and our diversity is so powerful. Let’s celebrate together and join hands. Earth Wind and Fire.”
Gallo’s Obama tee shirt also features an image of our 44th president juxtaposed with the word “White Boy” only this time Gallo has added a clown nose for extra satire/social commentary.
Dude, it’s like he’s not even trying.
Gallo is even more overtly racist towards dark skinned African-Americans. An unflattering photograph of Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is accompanied by the words “Crack Mayor.”
Ah, but Gallo doesn’t hate all black people. Like a true online Conservative he loves black people who hate black people and actively work against the best interests of their community. So you better believe he has tee shirts praising Candace Owens (every racist white person’s favorite black person) as “Smart Beautiful Black” and her protege Kanye West as “Made in America.”
What’s striking about Gallo’s meme-shirts is how boring, unimaginative and lazy they are. It’s one thing to be sexist, racist, homophobic, misanthropic and just plain mean, as Gallo obviously is. It’s another to convey that bigotry in such an aesthetically unpleasing fashion.
Leave it to an offline edge lord like Gallo to take something that was already awful and toxic, like hateful memes smugly mocking women and POC, and make them even worse.
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