Artist Ari Kuschnir's imagined Super Bowl commercial for a fictional Melania biopic has captured attention not because it looks real, but because of the unsettling world it constructs around its central figure. The ad mirrors the renewed spotlight from Melania's recently released Amazon Prime Video film MELANIA, but twists that attention into something far more fragile: a portrait of a woman realising that the social universe she once moved through effortlessly is collapsing around her.
In Kuschnir's imagined reality, Melania is not framed as a political icon or a glamorous enigma. She is a woman absorbing the slow humiliation of shrinking circles, the invitations that no longer arrive, the conversations that stop when she enters the room, the smirks traded behind her back by people who once flattered her. The trailer's emotional weight comes from this sense of erosion, of someone discovering that she has become the subject of gossip rather than admiration.
The imagined revelation that her husband, Donald J. Trump, appears in the Epstein files becomes the catalyst for that collapse. Kuschnir doesn't treat it as political scandal; he treats it as emotional fallout. The Melania in this fictional world is blindsided not by the allegation itself, but by what it means socially — what people might now be whispering, assuming, or gleefully repeating. The ad never claims anything about the truth of the files; instead, it focuses on perception, and how perception can become a cage.
One of the most striking symbolic choices is the brief shot of Jeff Bezos laughing, not at a joke, but at her. The irony is deliberate. Bezos is the executive chairman of Amazon, the platform hosting her real‑world film MELANIA, yet in Kuschnir's imagined universe he becomes a stand‑in for the elite who once embraced her and now ridicule her. It's not about Bezos personally; it's about what he represents: the power brokers who can turn someone into a punchline with a single raised eyebrow.
Ari Kuschnir just made the only other 'Super Bowl ad' worth talking about — a woman (Melania Trump) watching her world shrink until there's barely anything left. It's unsettling, brilliant, and impossible to shake. If you care about the stories we tell about power, watch this.… pic.twitter.com/wnq0gDyvLD
— Jam Radio UK News (@Jam_RadioUK) February 9, 2026
The imagined Super Bowl placement heightens the surreal tension. Instead of selling a blockbuster, the ad sells a feeling — the dread of realising that the world has moved on without you, and that the spotlight you once enjoyed now exposes every crack. Kuschnir's work resonates because it feels uncomfortably plausible, not as prediction but as emotional metaphor.
The final sequence shifts the tone entirely. After the humiliation, the whispers, and the social freefall, Melania is shown returning to her native Eastern Europe — a stark, mountainous landscape resembling the Caucasus. The imagery is stripped of American excess: stone houses, cold air, the sound of wind instead of applause. Villagers recognise her not as a former First Lady, but as someone who has come home carrying defeat. Yet the moment is not cruel. Her "tribe" gathers around her, and an older woman, possibly her mother, steps forward and kisses her on the forehead. It is not triumph, but absolution. A quiet reclaiming of identity after the collapse of everything that once defined her.
Kuschnir's imagined commercial ends not with redemption, but with a kind of fragile refuge. A woman stripped of status, reputation, and social standing, finding solace only in the place that never cared about any of that. In a culture obsessed with spectacle, the ad closes on something far more human: the return to the mountains, and the possibility of belonging after the world has stopped clapping.
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