Vogues Controversial Cover

[Serendipper]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover



[quote user="jay"]Zamb, very nice. I am a writer myself and found your work beautiful.[/quote]

Co-sign.[73]

I haven't seen the cover so I cannot comment, but as far as race and such things go, I only hope that this forum maintains the cool grace and intelligent decorum that it has shown when discussing raceas it has when discussingother controversialtopics, like shorts on grown men over the age of 20.[:O]

Speaking of Obama, I think his speech on race was brilliant. It spoke on black AND white perspectives (not to mention asian, gay, hispanic, etc.), which is important.

[jay]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover

[quote user="Serendipper"]


[quote user="jay"]Zamb, very nice. I am a writer myself and found your work beautiful.[/quote]

Co-sign.[73]

I haven't seen the cover so I cannot comment, but as far as race and such things go, I only hope that this forum maintains the cool grace and intelligent decorum that it has shown when discussing raceas it has when discussingother controversialtopics, like shorts on grown men over the age of 20.[:O]

Speaking of Obama, I think his speech on race was brilliant. It spoke on black AND white perspectives (not to mention asian, gay, hispanic, etc.), which is important.

[/quote]

I generally do not talk politics but I also found Obamas speach brilliant.

[gerry]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover

I honestly don't think this cover would have been nearly as big a deal if Vogue didn't have a reputation for staying away from black models... but then again, there has also been a backlash in the model industry about that, so it can hardly be seen as exclusively Vogue.

[clay]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover



I saw the cover and thought nothing of it. Then I read about the
controversy on The JC Report( Jason Campbell is a black man I recently found out) and I looked again at the cover and OK I
get it
only cause it was pointed it out. I still don't mind it but
those that do probably are right to a degree. But if it were a white man doing
the same thing there would be no issue, just a athlete showing a
little emotion. I am one the most sensitive people around when it comes
to racism in America towards black people and I am not upset. I just thought why James? But everyone is talking about it and I'm sure that has helped sales of this great "first" for Vogue. I wonder what Andre thinks.

Lets be frank, dark black people still remind others and blacks themselves of apes. Is that a racist stereotype? You bet it is. I wish it were possible that just by being mild mannered, educated, and intelligent we could be considered equal to one another as humans in this country and the world for that matter. But we are brainwashed by those that have an agenda to keep us distracted from seeing what is really going on
as our world is being changed into something else..

By the way isnt it crazy we still have black firsts and women firsts in this country. But we are still a young country. I'm sure in another 200 years all that will be behind us.

[Serendipper]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover

[quote user="clay"] ..



By the way isnt it crazy we still have black firsts and women firsts in this country. But we are still a young country. I'm sure in another 200 years all that will be behind us.

[/quote]

.................................................

...or in another 200 days.[66]

-Seren

[Canaduh0415]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover

The fact that consciously we acquiesse to racial interpretation harkens to the overall difficulties with foreign or dissimilarities between cultures, or if you happen to believe in the idea of race, then yes race....It has been my cotention for a long time that we spend so much time isolated in these mono-ethnic pockets that when we see the union of simply two different shades we feel the need to become analytical or paranoid...these types of conversation simply fulfill a righteousness to speak on something that we need to be relevant because naturally everyone would have an opinion; a lazy arguement.....scientifically I believe that the substance of race relations in America is mute issue..the combination of two different entities is always a case for friction...so what...see people as vessels of idea's and maybe we will care about the death and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis rather than a vapid model and albeit athletic but overall irrelevant athlete.

[Serendipper]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover



I like your thoughts, Canaduh0415.

[Faust]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover



[quote user="gerry"]I honestly don't think this cover would have been nearly as big a deal if Vogue didn't have a reputation for staying away from black models... but then again, there has also been a backlash in the model industry about that, so it can hardly be seen as exclusively Vogue.[/quote]

I don't think it would've been a big deal if it wasn't Vogue. Bad publicity = publicity = sales, and no one knows this better than Ms. Vintour. Sometimes I wonder, as Clay does, whether we as a culture have largely moved on, and all we have left is a bunch of academics shouting into the void. But, then again, maybe not...

[dontbecruel]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover

I really have to disagree with pretty much all of the comments above (I know, grumpy). The picture is completely offensive. It is obviously supposed to be a pastiche of the poster for the original King Kong, with the model standing in for Fay Wray and the poor basketball player representing the ape. Which is totally fucked up. Whether it's Vogue or any other publication, whether you're sensitive to race issues or not. It may well have been done by the editor to provoke controversy as faust says, but who gives a shit about that? Someone, somewhere in the company should have refused to put that hideous crap on the newsstands.

[laika]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover



Thanks, dbc. I am also grumpy and pretty in much in agreement with you.

Here is the poster in question, along with the cover.

[Faust]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover



[quote user="dontbecruel"]I really have to disagree with pretty much all of the comments above (I know, grumpy). The picture is completely offensive. It is obviously supposed to be a pastiche of the poster for the original King Kong, with the model standing in for Fay Wray and the poor basketball player representing the ape. Which is totally fucked up. Whether it's Vogue or any other publication, whether you're sensitive to race issues or not. It may well have been done by the editor to provoke controversy as faust says, but who gives a shit about that? Someone, somewhere in the company should have refused to put that hideous crap on the newsstands.
[/quote]

I do. Wintour knows that her magazine in constantly in the cross-hairs, because people will always demand political correctness from the biggest publications, and she knows this (I mean, why aren't PETA throwing pies at Elle editors?) , and will use it to drive sales while laughing with immunity at the offenses she causes.

[laika]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover



I think dbc means that regardless of that, the cover is still offensive and should have been pulled.

I get as frustrated by political correctness as the next person, but I don't think it's paranoid or over-analytical to be disgusted with this cover--it is screamingly offensive, nothing covert or subtle about it.

[dontbecruel]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover

Faust, I understand what you say as an explanation of Anna Wintour's method, but I can't see how it is a justification of it or how she gains "immunity"

[Faust]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover



[quote user="dontbecruel"]Faust, I understand what you say as an explanation of Anna Wintour's method, but I can't see how it is a justification of it.
[/quote]

I didn't say it was. It's absolutely not justified. I just said I think the reasons for the cover matter. It was obviously publicity, and here we are giving in to this publicity. I am not saying that it's wrong of us - I am saying that Anna Wintour as a racist, and Vogue as a publication with a racist cover, should be irrelevant. Do you think their aim is to promote racism in America?

Ok, it seems like I'm telling you to shut up, but I am not. It's just in some perverted way raising stink may contribute to more racism. The more we scream about the wrongs they do, the more they will antagonize us, because in their world it's absolutely valueless, and therefore they are not affected by it. Same with Gaultier sending down sees of fur in response to PETA; same with Marc Jacobs selling logoed garbage in his West Village stores (his real is in SoHo) because the Midwestern tourists buy into the brands, not the goods, etc. etc. They are reflecting the Zeitgeist, so to speak...

EDIT: She gains immunity because she is the reigning queen of fashion media. Throwing a pie in her face is not exactly punishing, is it?

[laika]

Re: Vogues Controversial Cover

[quote user="Faust"]

I didn't say it was. It's absolutely not justified. I just said I think the reasons for the cover matter. It was obviously publicity, and here we are giving in to this publicity. I am not saying that it's wrong of us - I am saying that Anna Wintour as a racist, and Vogue as a publication with a racist cover, should be irrelevant. Do you think their aim is to promote racism in America?

[/quote]

They are promoting insensitivity towards racism in America, by turning a certain perception of race relations into a supposedly meaningless and empty magazine cover. And Vogue is not socially irrelevant--as much as I also wish it were--since even if you don't buy the magazine, it's occupies a highly visible position in the public sphere.

I definitely understand your point about how raising a fuss contributes to publicity for the magazine and therefore winds up being somewhat complicit with it. But don't you find it troubling that so many people (not you) are claiming that any racist reading of the cover is paranoid and academic? That the similarity to the poster was a "coincidence?" The willingness to just sweep an offensive image under the carpet by arguing that its critics are over-analytical shrieks of laziness and complacency to me. (Again, none of this is directed at you, Faust--it's a response to the general reactions I've read).