After Sean “Spicey” Spicer took his minifridge and left the White House in a huff over Anthony Scaramucci’s ill-fated hiring, his unenviable role as mouthpiece for the Trump White House fell to Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Now Jim Carrey, who has taken time off from acting to work on his painting, has come out with a painting of the embattled Press Secretary.
That painting is now controversial. Did he go too far?
Jim Carrey has never been shy about voicing his political beliefs.
Unfortunately, one of those opinions is that vaccines somehow cause autism, which has long been debunked by actual medical experts.
(And, quite frankly, even if it were true, autistic people have pointed out that using that to justify not vaccinating children seems to be saying that parents would rather see their child die of a fatal disease than be autistic)
Not all of his beliefs are irresponsible and medically unsupported nonsense, however.
Like most Americans, Jim Carrey is a strong critic of the Trump administration, even going so far as to dump his Facebook stock upon learning of the social media platform’s role in getting Trump to the White House.
Now, he’s expressing his political views through a different medium: art.
Specifically, painting.
Jim Carrey did not identify Sarah Huckabee Sanders in this painting, merely writing:
“This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous!”
Reactions to this have been mixed.
Some reactions have been to call out Jim Carrey for alleged hypocrisy.
They say that painting an unflattering caricature of a woman flies in the face of what the Left (which, to many critics, is synonymous with Hollywood) claim to represent.
Others believe that the painting, unflattering though it may be, is a warranted caricature of a woman who is voluntarily and vocally aiding an indefensible regime.
To summarize their view with a Kim Kardashian quote that is now a meme: “It’s what she deserves.”
Trump fans on Twitter expressed their displeasure.
“James Woods, do you have a comment about Jim Carrey and the insulting portrait he has presented of Sarah Sanders?”
As far as we can tell, James Woods has yet to respond to this tweet. At the moment, he’s raving on Twitter about how self-driving cars are part of a government plot.
Others tweeted their condemnation of Carrey for his painting.
“What a disgraceful thing to do.”
Another alleged that this is all part of misogynistic elements within Hollywood.
“This is just one more example of how Hollyweird empowers women! #JimCarrey is just doing his portion, right Jim? He’s a has been!!”
It is worth noting that Jim Carrey did not take either of the easy routes for caricature that were open for him with Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
His painting clearly is not emphasizing her weight.
Body-shaming is body-shaming, and poking fun at an evil person for being fat rather than for the evil that they do is, uh, super problematic and distracting from the point that you’re trying to make.
(Some exceptions may apply, but you still want to tread carefully if you don’t want to indirectly insult plenty of nice people)
Jim Carrey also didn’t seem to be calling attention to the fact that sometimes Sanders’ eyes seem to be doing that thing that her father’s do.
That would have been another cheap shot, but he didn’t take that road.
Ultimately, it’s not only Jim Carrey’s Constitutional right to make art, but he may have a calling.
His non-literal paintings show a lot of skill. Specifically, he was able to so easily capture Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ likeness that he didn’t need to identify her by name — and even is caption was just a condemnation rather than a needed clue.
