When the camera shutter blinked inside an Atlanta jail on Thursday, it both created and documented a tiny inflection point in American life.
Captured for posterity, there was a former president of the United States, for the first time in history, under arrest and captured in the sort of frame more commonly associated with drug dealers or drunken drivers. The trappings of power gone, for that split second.“It will be forever part of the iconography of being alive in this time,” said Marty Kaplan, a professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications.
“It is not a comfortable feeling — especially when you’ve done nothing wrong,” he later told Fox News Digital about the moment.Trump facing charges is by now a familiar sight of 2023 to Americans who watched him stand before a judge in a New York courtroom or saw watercolor sketches from the inside of federal courthouses in Miami and Washington, where cameras aren’t allowed.As Anderson Cooper put it on CNN: “The former president of the United States has an inmate number.” P01135809, to be exact.
“‘Indictment’ is a sort of bloodless word. And words are pale compared to images,” said Kaplan, a former speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale and Hollywood screenwriter. “A mug shot is a genre. Its frame is, ‘This is a deer caught in the headlights. This is the crook being nailed.’ It’s the walk of shame moment.”
Months before he was photographed in Georgia on Thursday evening, his campaign used the prospect of a mug shot as a fundraising opportunity. For $36, anyone can buy a T-shirt with a fake booking photo of Trump and the words “not guilty.” Dozens of similar designs are available to purchase online, including many that appeal to Trump’s critics.
Recent history is full of politicians seeking political dividends from their booking photos. They’ve offered large smiles or defiant smirks and tried to make the best of their predicament.
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