The Steve White Experience

Booklet

Abstract

The Steve White Experience deconstructs how absurdist narratives are often used by political media-commentators as a veil for spreading bigotry and discrimination against minorities and vulnerable people. Whether intentionally hateful, or motivated by the wealth, attention, and influence that misinformation and extremism on public platforms generates, these individuals are culpable for the perspectives and communities they foster.

In particular, this project was inspired by the outlandish, yet popular, alt-right conspiracy theory that soy-based products and veganism are part of a wider plot to ‘feminise the men of the Global West’ through the consumption of plant-oestrogen. The amount of visceral and varied responses to the rise in popularity of plant-substitute foods, and how right-wing commentators use ‘chemical imbalance’ as a segue way to essentialist and fascism-adjacent talking points, provides an excellent example of these absurdist politics in action.

This series of animated music videos tell of fictional public-figure Steve White’s rise to fame, his confrontation with the self and the perceived Other, and his role in perpetuating cycles of hate. The Steve White Experience invites the audience to discard any perceived binaries around personal and collective identity in favour of an intersectional approach to reimagining the self.