Vogue recently announced that its April cover features basketball star LeBron James and model Gisele Bundchen, and that Mr. James is the first black man to be on the cover. However, critics are that white photographer Annie Liebovitz - who has taken heat in the past for the way she shoots black subjects - shot Mr. James in a King Kongesque pose, with Ms. Bundchen in a Fay Wrayesque pose. Or Beauty and the Beast imagery. Either way, it perpetuates "black man as savage" imagery.
Count me in as one of the critics. When I first saw a picture of this magazine cover yesterday on somebody's blog, what jumped out at me was the negative racial imagery. Last night, Marc Lamont Hill, a black liberal professor, and Angela McGlowan, a black conservative Republican commentator, debated last night about the magazine cover on "The O'Reilly Factor". Professor Hill was spot on in arguing how the cover reinforces racist stereotypes about black men. Meanwhile, Angela McGlowan tried to argue that it was an innocent cover and that "Gisele Bundchen is Brazilian, so she is not really white" (either ignoring or not knowing that Ms. Bundchen's family on both sides were German immigrants to Brazil).
It was interesting to hear and see John Kasich, who was the substitute host on "The O'Reilly Factor" last night, claim that he had no problem with the photo. However, at the beginning of the segment, he had a Freudian slip. Mr. Kasich uttered the word "ape" for "April" when discussing the Vogue magazine cover, so we know how he truly reacted to it.
Being a fashion magazine, it is telling that Vogue did not put Lebron James in a tailored suit or some context that we are not usually used to seeing from him - like they do for non-models who they have put on the cover - but instead did this cover perpetuating racial stereotypes. What was wrong with this photo of Mr. James and Ms. Bundchen, or some of the 100+ others that were shot? Nor am I convinced by Ms. McGlowan's argument that Vogue would have chosen this photo for the cover had the model in it been black.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Is This Cover Racist? Yes, It Is
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3 comments:
Thank you! When I first saw it, my heart sank and my frustration rose. Everything about this picture is insulting. His face shows nothing other than 'animal' ferocity. She's so uncomfortable next to him; it looks as though she's going to run away. I'm glad there has been some debate on it. It's amazing to see black men still portrayed as ignorant apes when we have one running for the White House.
Kasich was covering a story where people have accused a photo of being designed to make a black man look like an ape. He happened not to think that's what's going on in the photo, but the story he was covering was about people who do. Then he says "ape" instead of "April". What that shows, at most, is that he was thinking about the connection people were making between this cover and King Kong. That's a perfectly sufficient explanation. It doesn't say anything about his personal opinion of the cover, and I'm surprise to see you giving credence to the idea that it does. Whether the cover relies on a racist stereotype or not, someone reporting on the story may happen to confuse words that are related to the story without the person actually thinking those words are genuinely related to the cover.
It is not racist. If think critics of this issue are way too sensitive looking for racism under every rock and corner. From my experience, those that are that sensitive have never experienced racism and are constantly looking for it.
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