[UPDATED: found one! HT Jess Bellamy]
[CN: misogyny and fat-shaming] If you’re not Australian, you might not have heard of Gina Rinehart. She’s the richest person in Australia, currently the 4th richest woman worldwide. A mining heiress who inherited an enormous fortune from her father, she’s has grown it ever since. She’s also a horrible person who supports class warfare to the extreme. She’s expressed concerns that Australian miners getting paid too much won’t be able to compete with $2 a day mining wages in “Africa”, painted essential social services as reflecting an entitlement mentality and is into climate change denialism. In other words, a woman who’s almost universally despised and roundly criticised satirised.
She’s also fat. Which brings me to my impossible dream. I want to find one, just one example of great satire that rips Rinehart’s shitty views, horrible actions and pernicious influences to shreds — but without making her being fat the central part of the satire. I want something funny that doesn’t require the assumption that fat people are horrible (and fat women are disgusting) to be funny. Surely that’s not too much to ask for? Australia currently has 23.5 million people. Based on conservative estimates, let’s say 75% of the population despises Rinehart. 10% of those people are funny talented. 1% of those are actively creating content. There should be almost 18,000 great satires out there. I should be able to find ONE. But no…
The mildest trope is to depict Rinehart eating something large from a bowl. Because her company is “gobbling up” corporate welfare and “eating through” our natural environment, and also FAT PEOPLE EAT the time geddit, geddit?!
Gina Rinehart with a giant bowl filled with money, about to eat it with a giant spoon. A man running a barbecue dressed in an Australian flag apron is cooking some up and asks her ‘more?’
Not content with a knife and fork, this cartoon has her eating with mining implements. Apparently she literally shovels food into her mouth.
Two panel comic of Gina Rinehart sitting at a table with a giant bowl of Corn Flakes and mining equipment for cutlery. Gina speaks in panel 1: Bloody BRW makes you puke! Got their figures wrong again. I’m not THAT rich. Don’t know why I bother to buy it… Panel 2: That’s right. I AM buying it…Bit by bit.
Taking things up a notch, there are endless comparisons of her to Jabba the Hutt, which takes the imagery to monster level. When you hear the word dehumanise, you don’t normally associate it with something so literal as making her out to be a slug-like creature.
Gina Rinehart’s facial features superimposed on a photo of Jabba the Hutt
It’s also an “amazing” coincidence that Jabba the Hutt is a male character and by drawing Rinehart up to be like him, you get to indirectly say she’s not a woman either. Nope, this is not the misogyny you were looking for *Jedi wave*. It must just be me craaaving to find something to be offended about.
Meme with photo of Gina Rinehart and a photo of Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars, saying ‘Separated at birth?’
Gina Rinehart holding up a lump of coal smiling, mashed up with figurine of Jabba the Hutt in a similar position
Someone probably spent hours trawling the internet to find an image of a Jabba figurine that they thought matches Gina’s expression:
The above image was featured in a forum on DrummerWorld.com here. The comment is below. Nothing like calling Rinehart “that thing” to show how much you disapprove of her actions!
That thing makes all of the creepy-crawlies in Australia, Africa, and South America look positively friendly and pet-worthy. Hell I wouldn’t go near that thing with a 10 metre electrified cattle prod…I’ll take the bottom one thanks!!!
Of course Jabba’s image as a villain is often woven directly into these pieces. Here’s a talented cartoonist portraying prime minister Abbott as Salacious B Crumb to Rinehart, apparently for being her lackey.
Gina Rinehart as Jabba the Hutt with Tony Abbott as the grovelling creature at her feet
Even this otherwise very well done YouTube video called “Tony Abbott – Happy” which went viral just this week is not immune. It does a great and funny job ripping into Tony Abbott’s Prime Ministership. Which makes the Jabba reference all the more jarring. It shows how deep this goes — to have funny, talented and progressive artists not realise that portraying Rinehart as a monster that personifies the apparent “horror” of fat people might be a shitty thing to do and unworthy of their work.
YouTube video cartoon showing 2 miners about to enter a mineshaft. Gina Rinehart with a figure mashed up with Jabba the Hutt (complete with tail) is standing outside the entrance, her eyes sunken presumably due to being so fat.
Ok, we’re at the final notch of the dehumanisation — references to Rinehart’s sexuality. This is not something that generally comes up when people are mocking a public figure who’s a man. People have used the picture of Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers but without revelling at how repulsed they are; nothing like with Rinehart. Here is a satirical song broadcast by the ABC which I thought might make my impossible dream answered. Then, we got this:
YouTube clip of woman dressed to look like Gina Rinehart singing the lyric ‘get in my hole’
The next line was that she was talking about a mine — but of course that’s the point of the “joke”. I’ve never seen a clearer illustration of the concept of women as public property. Someone really decided to bring Rinehart’s genitalia into the song because the cultural revulsion at the idea of fat women’s sexuality is just too strong. And so we’ve reached the end of the road below:
Cartoon of Tony Abbott having sex with Gina Rinehart
This is supposed to be for shock value and the single comment on the Facebook thread where it was posted is the single word yuck. Yes, the idea of government being “in bed” with big business is pretty common. But think how different the cartoon would have been with (say) a thinner woman. I doubt the cartoonist would have felt the need to make it so graphic, because there is no equivalent shock/revulsion value at the idea of a thin woman having sex. The joke requires revulsion — if you think that people of any body size and shape enjoying sex in any consensual combination is pretty unremarkable stuff then the “joke” wouldn’t work. That this cartoon gets the expected reaction is a sad indictment of how far we have to go.
As an exercise, consider your reaction if a cartoonist in the 1960s was trying to use the public disgust against interracial sex to discredit a black woman by drawing her having sex with a white politician. Or if someone today was to use our society’s discomfort that people with disabilities can be sexual to draw the same cartoon if Rinehart happened to use a wheelchair. The shittiness would be obvious.
Bottom line is, this stuff should be as unacceptable as calling Henry Kissinger a genocidal kike and similar scenarios where legitimate criticism is mixed in with slurs that marginalise others. If you create or enjoy such satire, it probably means one of two things. Either you don’t think that perpetuating these assumptions causes harm (in which case, do some Googling), or you don’t care and consider it acceptable splash damage in the Great Cause of mocking Gina Rinehart (in which case, reexamine your life). Plus you’re saying you think all of this imagery is funny or original or brave or cutting edge and is THE MOST important thing to mock about Rinehart — in which case I feel sorry for you.
If you’ve seen a non-awful satire of Gina Rinehart, please let me know in the comments so my impossible dream can come true.
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