“Thomas O'Hanlon came to St. Helens to chew bubblegum and put up a billboard — and he's all out of bubblegum.” [1] Living in the rural Oregon community of St. Helens, as a parent and resident, I’ve become weary of the racist and alt-right militias that plague us. Far too often this ugliness shows its face; not long ago the community newspaper, the St. Helens Chronicle, reported that “two or three unidentified males drove by in a small gray or green pick-up truck. One of the men threw a soda can at the 12-year-old while yelling racial slurs.” [2] Before that, Mayor Rick Scholl had to get involved in an incident with a resident to remove a black trash bag resembling a lynching from a tree, then during one of our towns local JV and Varsity games racial slurs were being yelled at the visiting players. You’d think that it being the year 2020, this type of bigotry wouldn’t be so blatant yet here are. It got worse when some students got together to organize a march to protest the death of George Floyd, they began receiving threats of violence. ““The hate was extremely overwhelming,” Cahill said.” [3] Nevertheless, the march went on with the support of community allies. Inspired by this, I wanted to show a way to keep that message of solidarity going.I had seen other communities put up billboards with the Black Lives Matter slogan and thought why not here in St. Helens, Oregon. So, I put together a fundraiser and in no time we had raised enough funds to get the billboard printed, installed, and kept up for 6 months. However, the conservatives of Columbia County became bitter about the Black Lives Matter billboard and they decided to move forward with their own project of putting up a pro-Trump one alongside it in retaliation. So, I thought it might be nice to help them out so I reached out to artist, Mitch O’Connell, and received permission to bring his ‘They Live’ Trump parody to St. Helens. “Mitch O'Connell, originally drew this parody in 2015 for a horror film festival featuring the John Carpenter classic “They Live”. If you haven’t seen the movie, the basic set up is that both the media and the government are comprised of subliminal messages meant to keep the population subdued, and that most of the social elite are skull-faced aliens bent on world domination.” [4] Originally, I came across Mitch O’Connell’s parody image of Trump on Twitter when John Carpenter himself shared an image of it saying, “Truth or reality? You tell me.” [5] I immediately recognized where the parody came from and thought it was a
creative and quirky approach to political satire and felt, what better place to put one of those billboards up than in my own community of St. Helens, Oregon where we’re also known as Halloweentown?“ The image itself has developed something of a cult following, showing up on shirts and signs at protests, and winning cover of the year from the Scottish Magazine Awards after it graced the front of a U.K. magazine.” [6] After the billboard went up in St. Helens, I did receive some push back due to the nature of the design and living in a more conservative rural community. However, the overall response has been positive, the project received some interest in local news and it even had people in other communities reach out for help to bring a ‘They Live’ Trump billboard to their town. Which led me back to my hometown, Phoenix, Arizona, where Mitch O’Connell and I collaborated to bring the parody to a billboard across the street from the Republican Party of Arizona headquarters. However, with fundraising for the billboard being done over social media the Republicans were able to catch notice of our plans and get them derailed. Nonetheless, the vendor still wanted to work with us we just couldn’t put the parody where we initially wanted it but were able to make a compromise to a location down the street where it would still pick up a significant amount of exposure. Which it did because not long after, the New Times along with NBC Channel 12 News. Even one of the Kings of Comedy, D.L. Hughley took notice when he crossed the New Times article and shared it with his fans on social media. [6]
I kept the criticism and fun with the political satire going by orchestrating a cosplay parody photo-shoot at our St. Helens location where my son, Jude (5) and I played out the roles of Roddy Piper’s character George Nada and the parody of the ‘They Live’ Trump. We went all out Hollywood; got costumes, props, and even staging furniture to accessorize and add context to the situation. Afterwards, the photo-shoot was shared throughout social media where it received a lot of praise for its creativity and execution. Overall, this journey from its beginning to its end has taught me a few things. First, don’t take things too seriously and secondly, “there will always be haters. And the more you grow the more they hate; the more they hate the more you grow.” [7]
Photographer: Lance Allen Reis from Kickass Designs
Works Cited [1][6] Gormley, Shannon. “St. Helens Residents Successfully Fundraised an Anti-Trump Billboard Inspired by a Cult Classic Sci-Fi Movie." Willamette Week. 12 August 2020. https://www.wweek.com/arts/2020/08/12/st-helens-residents-successfully-fundraised-an-anti-trump-billboard-inspired-by-a-cult-classic-sci-fi-movie/. Accessed 09 November 2020.
[2] St. Helens Chronicle.“POLICE SEE INFORMATION IN HARASSMENT INCIDENT.” Facebook, 07 October 2018. https://www.facebook.com/sthelenschronicle/posts/2480372761988036. Accessed 09 November 2020.
[3] Campuzano, Eder. “Threats of violence canceled a student-led protest. Neighbors stepped in to put it on, anyway.” Oregon Live. 05 June 2020. https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/06/threats-of-violence-canceled-a-student-led-protest-neighbors-stepped-in-to-put-it-on-anyway.html. Accessed 09 November 2020.
[4] O’Hanlon, Thomas. “A St. Helens ‘They Live’ Trump Billboard!” GoFundMe. 10 July 2020. https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-st-helens-039they-live039-trump-billboard. Accessed 09 November 2020.
[5] Carpenter, John. “Truth or reality? You tell me.” Twitter, 21 April 2020. https://twitter.com/TheHorrorMaster/status/1252765142615392256?s=20. Accessed 09 November 2020.
[6] Hughley, D.L. “There’s a New Anti-Trump Billboard Inspired By They Live in Phoenix.” Facebook, 05 October 2020.
https://www.facebook.com/219856014723410/posts/5043942165648080/?extid=0&d=n. Accessed 09 November 2020.
[7] Liccione, Anthony. “There will always be hater. ”Good Reads. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/haters. Accessed 09 November 2020.