Protesters Dressed as Marie Antoinette Roast “Melania” Film at Kennedy Center
The action unfolded during the $75 million film’s premiere, days before Trump announced the two-year closure of the performing arts center.
WASHINGTON, DC — Local activists and artists gathered in 18th-century French court attire in front of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday, January 29, to protest the premiere of Melania (2026), one of the most expensive nonfiction film acquisitions on record. Of the $75 million Amazon paid for the film, about $28 million went directly to the Trump family.
Wigged and dripping in fake jewels, approximately 40 members of Free DC and Hands Off the Arts denounced the critically panned documentary about the First Lady, holding signs that read “Let them eat Whole Foods,” “Let them eat cake,” and “Authoritarianism — get it faster with Prime.”
Gathered around a cardboard three-tier cake and raising plastic champagne glasses, they cheered and rang bells as an organizer blared into a megaphone: “When loan forgiveness is cut, when crop prices soar and people have to choose between rent and medications and food, our dear queen Melania says 'Let them eat cake.'”
Days later, on Sunday, President Trump announced that the Kennedy Center — which now bears his name on its facade — will close for two years for renovations starting in July.
While the protest was originally planned for the Kennedy Center Plaza, police and Secret Service had erected fences keeping people a block away from the physical buildings, checking tickets before letting visitors through. So the demonstrators assembled at Triangle Park, a small grassy inlet at the nearby turnabout, shouting at black armored SUVs driving past.
“Many thanks alone to Great Lord Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon Manor for having the courage to bankrupt and produce this great work of art for the paltry sum of $75 million,” shouted a man wearing a navy waistcoat and white powdered wig standing atop a heap of snow.
The choice to evoke Marie Antoinette and the extravagant court of Versailles was deliberate, said Keya Chatterjee, executive director of Free DC, a woman-founded grassroots movement dedicated to securing statehood for Washington, DC.
“The people behind this, Bezos and Trump, are putting on this lavish display at a cultural center that they took over to be theirs — that is ours, to be clear, paid for by the people as a memorial to a president who was killed,” Chatterjee told Hyperallergic.
“It just stood out, that juxtaposition and frank grotesqueness of taking things from the least powerful among us and having this gilded celebration,” Chatterjee added.
It’s not the first time Trump’s administration has drawn comparisons to the history of the lavish, out-of-touch French queen. This past October, his White House refurbishments were called a “Versailles on the Potomac.” One month later, during the longest shutdown in US history, California Governor Gavin Newsom shared an AI-generated image of Trump as Marie Antoinette, threatening SNAP food benefits while he took his 13th trip to Mar-a-Lago.
In the face of Trump’s slide toward authoritarianism, Chatterjee said, “we have to look at what works in the anti-authoritarian playbook.”
She specifically cited the Otpor movement in Serbia. Отпор!, which translates to “Resistance!” in English, began as a civic protest group and transformed into a movement that took down Yugoslav president and dictator Slobodan Milošević. Despite orchestrated opposition from other countries’ governments, “no one could take them out except for these young people, and their primary tool of communication was street theater and skits,” Chatterjee said.
“They really want us to be afraid,” Chatterjee said of the Trump administration. “They’re executing people in the streets in order to try to intimidate people away from criticizing, away from dissent, away from protecting our neighbors.”
“Using art to bring a sense of humor to a situation, a sense of whimsy, can really diffuse their effort to make us feel afraid and alone,” she continued.
With this explicitly arts-focused protest, Free DC collaborated with Hands Off the Arts, a coalition of arts, labor, queer, and community allies organizing to keep culture free from government control. This past November, Hands Off the Arts hosted a protest dance outside the Kennedy Center in response to Trump’s takeover.
“It’s really important that Hands Off the Arts stands in solidarity with the artists and creators, amateur or professional or otherwise, that are trying to take a stand in the city, no matter how that shows up,” Mallory Miller, co-founder of the group, told Hyperallergic.
And show up they did — including one woman dressed as a Hamburglar version of Melania, a man wearing a long pink gown underneath a tactical vest embroidered with the last name “Noem,” and local drag queen Tara Hoot wearing a sparkling boa.
Although the protest ended about 20 minutes early because of the biting cold, Hands Off the Arts organizers offered a parting gift: fake Playbills for “Melanie Antoinette” featuring the First Lady in a towering wig.
“We are right now in our sixth month of a military occupation of the capital of this country, but what they don’t really understand is that this is our home,” Chatterjee told Hyperallergic. “They can’t have it. This is our place, and so our ability to use art to take up space here is what actually keeps the capital of this country in the hands of the people.”
