Lest you think capitalism has nothing better to do with its time, in the spirit of the death of DADA, Mr. Peanut has been killed off. Long live postpeanutism and the contradiction that salted peanuts cost more than unsalted ones.
In 1974, artist Vincent Trasov ran for mayor of Vancouver under the guise of his performance art persona, Mr. Peanut. Trasov’s character was a symbol of artists and their ambitions, while its name was also (conveniently) his campaign platform: P for performance, E for elegance, A for art, N for nonsense, U for uniqueness, and T for talent. Perhaps his most broadly public project was the Mr. Peanut Campaign for Mayor in 1974 that he devised with fellow artist John Mitchell.
It was a wacky piece that got lots of media attention — including articles in Esquire, Interview, and, most importantly, General Idea’s epoch-charting FILE magazine — and it predicted the reality-television antics that have come to dominate the political circus that plays out in the mainstream media.
hyperallergic.com/...
File magazine can be referenced in this article and this article on General Idea.
Born with a monocle and top hat, Mr. Peanut was a capitalist before he knew he was gay. Introduced in 1916 as a mascot for snack brand Planters, Mr. Peanut has lived for a century as a slave-trading peanut aristocrat, selling his fellow legumes to a gruesome death by mastication.
Seriously. Vintage Planters advertisements show a grinning Mr. Peanut surrounded by children, laughing as he eats common peanuts from a bag. The monocled monster is a nut-swallowing cannibal.
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Like most gays, Mr. Peanut has gone through his fair share of makeovers. Born black-and-white, he first dyed his shell brown in 1930 and went blonde in 2004, as is gay tradition.
Mr. Peanut’s late-life crisis occurred six years later, in 2010, when he was 94 years old. He found his voice for the first time, courtesy of Robert Downey Jr. He re-dyed his shell brown for an important TV commercial and began sporting a gray flannel suit.
He also snagged his first-ever sidekick: Benson, a short, cute, one-nut peanut.
“Benson is quite enamored of Mr. Peanut,” Jason Levine, senior director for marketing at Planters at the time, told the New York Times. You can tell. He can’t take his eyes off his nut daddy. He’s clearly even raided his closet.
melmagazine.com/...