‘Golden Trunks’: The Arctic Monkeys lyric that predicted the future of US politics
What policies have been proposed by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in the forthcoming US election? Are any of them practicable? Will any of them truly change the plight of the nation? Do any of these questions even matter to voters? From the outside looking in, the answer would largely be ‘No’. A recent study by Yale University even tested this theory and found that only 3.5% of Americans would vote against their preferred candidate, regardless of whether they exhibited undemocratic behaviour.
In essence, that means that 96.5% of Americans would rather live in a dictatorship of their choosing than a democracy that went against their preproposed ‘team’. This stance has changed politics from a fluid discourse to a bipartisan pantomime. Enter the wry repartee of Alex Turner, who seemingly prognosticated this perilous fate of modern democracy with the song ‘Golden Trunks’, released back in 2018 on Arctic Monkeys’ sorely overlooked Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino.
In the track, there is one simple vignette that carries a whole host of multitudes: “The leader of the free world / Reminds you of a wrestler wearing tight golden trunks / He’s got himself a theme tune / They play it for him as he makes his way to the ring”.
Firstly, let’s look at the imagery. As soon as he croons the line, you can instantly picture Donald Trump’s swollen frame squeezed into a pair of golden trunks with unnerving mental veracity. It’s an image that doesn’t play out nicely on the playground of our imagination, but that doesn’t stop our psyches from summoning it in a flash.
We’ve seen him mocked up like this countless times in cartoons. Why not? He’s a cartoonish man. Would he care about this sordid squib? Well, his ego might be bruised, but you highly doubt his team would be anything short of delighted—people’s minds being able to identify a candidate in a millisecond is an electoral advantage, even if he is the butt of a joke.
Then there’s the wrestler aspect of it all. US elections now closely resemble the hammy theatre of the WWE—one extreme wheeled out to face the other in a debate that pertains to real politics about as much as the WWE pertains to real martial arts. These democratic ‘shows’ are engaging, but are they anything more than high-octane entertainment that just so happens to determine the future of the world to no small degree? There are conspiratorial folks out there who would even add that Alex Turner was onto something when it comes to the fact that wrestling winners are preconceived beforehand.
There’s also the theme tune factor—a facet of modern democracy that seems to recapitulate every time a new artist launches the obligatory, ‘Stop using my song for your campaign’ argument against Trump. Alas, that happens so frequently now that it all seems like part of the libertarian master plan, showcasing how people can do what they want with what they want.
The songs in question are all preselected by a committee of advisors, not thinking of policies or how to solve the many grave issues that the world faces, but rather how best to present their candidate. The public face of politics is all about talking points not real policies. Turner’s ludicrous image of trunks and theme tunes is far from a million miles away from the ‘no tie’ scandal that dominated the discourse surrounding Jeremy Corbyn. Substance is secondary to the multimedia showcase of identitarianism.
Finally, there is the worrying first line that frames the whole thing: ‘The Leader of the Free World’. The definite article that presides over the whole vignette, and the whole of democracy, for that matter, which in its sworn allegiance and penchant for pure spectacle mirrors the very propaganda-driven autocracies it once sought to topple.
