Vogue is known as like the queen bee of fashion magazine throughout the universe. Vogue typically portrays beautiful, thin, well dressed white women. This image is the first black man ever put on the cover of Vogue, and man did they mess up on this one.
Black men have been sketched and portrayed as primates throughout history. This is disgusting, of course, but it is a subtle (or not) media technique which pushes a continuous stream of racism through our brains via many sources. It causes us to decide which is worse, to notice and point out racism or to not notice it as it passes through our daily life. Vogue monopolized on this battle through this cover of LeBron James and the lovely Gisele. Just reading their bodies sums up the semiotics of this image.
Notice that LeBron is standing with his feet past shoulder width apart, arms outstretched, and head tipped forward to indicate strength, and to invoke fear (almost like when the gorilla’s come and hit the glass at the zoo). He is dressed in black to portray an all-dark image, again with the power trip. Gisele is turned sideways, knees and feet together to signify her helplessness, and her body is leaning back, signifying submissiveness and lack of power. The pairing of these bodies highlights the classification of each as “raced” and “gendered” bodies.
This image leads me to Stuart Hall. As humans, our brain requires us to classify; classify colors and shapes with people and naturally with like things and this is good because it gives images meaning, even if that means tying together African American athletes with primates. HOWEVER. When images cause for one to associate LeBron with King Kong, and let’s be honest, there is a shocking similarity here, media and culture is maintaining racism through classification; through creating bridges between reality and fantasized ideals*.
There is one more example of this racial and primate classification issue in Remember the Titans; I know it makes my blog post too long again, but I love it and it's worth checking out.
http://www.youtube.com/user/xTheTitans#p/u/3/BRPqHpDdIaA
At 1:57 in this YouTube link, the opposing team’s coach is being interviewed on TV, and upon being questioned about Coach Boone (Denzel Washington) he quotes, “I’m not going to do anything to help that monkey.” The political and racial based humor takes place in this clip at 6:33 when Coach Boone (Denzel Washington) throws a banana at him, acknowledging the satisfaction in defeating the giant; the giant in this situation being not only the opposing football team, but racial inequality through classifying Denzel with a primate. And guys, no bitch calls Denzel a monkey.
THE END.
*If interested, NPR covers this cover issue and brings a few very interesting points of view to the table: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=89151096&m=89151084
I find it interesting that Vogue would create a magazine cover like this, and not only that, but that Lebron James would go along with it. I personally would not want to be compared to an ape if I were him. I can understand how an athlete like him would want to portray the image of being strong and tough, but the image of an ape that would throw around a beautiful woman like Giselle is definitely not what I would want. I also find it strange that this made the cover of a high fashion magazine because the content of the image does not show high fashion, but instead a wild savage.
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