The Twinkie Defense
In 1978, Dan White murdered George Moscone and Harvey Milk. During the trial, it was argued that he could not be tried for first degree murder because his “capacity for rational thought had been diminished.” Their evidence was his regular consumption of Twinkies. The jury accepted this, and as such he was convicted instead for voluntary manslaughter. The Twinkie defense, as a metaphor, perfectly encapsulates the way in which institutional and structural violence in America is obscured, dismissed, and glossed over, resulting in a reality defined by the absurd.
How do we make sense of a society that fills aisles, eye-level, with 27 different choices of ranch dressing (the bounties of the free market!) while simultaneously denying and obfuscating state sanctioned violence, growing inequality, and the privatization of everything?
“This body of work is the culmination of my efforts to index and make sense of what I feel to be a completely ridiculous situation: Dollar stores and Tomahawk missiles, Unaffordable health care and private prisons, Hotdogs and mega pastors, Low APR credit cards and right wing death squads, Dead Mayors and Twinkies. I made this work with the hope that, at best, it will lend itself to a better understanding of the situation we find ourselves in. Or, at the very least, create a space for solace in the midst of this confusing painful struggle called American life, by taking a moment to laugh at it all.”
