Noli Irritare Leones

Some stuff that’s been nagging me that I’ve been meaning to write, and which now seems to have already been overtaken by events, but I’ll write it anyway.

Last month, Vogue had a cover with LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen which stirred up some controversy. The photo’s framed for masculine/feminine contrast: James in sports gear, with his mouth open, eyebrows drawn together, and teeth bared, and Bundchen in evening dress, awkwardly hanging off his left arm, long hair windblown and a smile on her face. Lots of controversy in the blogosphere and even the mainstream media – is James being posed in a way that makes him appear a scary, savage black man, threatening the beautiful white woman? Some people produced pictures for comparison – an old King Kong poster where King Kong has a similar pose, an even older WWI propaganda poster that has a similarly posed black man. Some people questioned what the big deal was. Some doubted the comparison with King Kong – isn’t Bundchen smiling here, as if this is all fun? And still others accused critics of being racist themselves, because how could you possibly think the media would portray a black man as a savage animal, if not because you yourself are racist and see black men as savage animals?

Look back even further: blogger Amanda Marcotte at one point had a book in production, now just released, and blogged a preview of the book cover. The cover, at that time, showed a big gorilla carrying off a white woman; the book was a feminist humor book. There were horrified reactions and complaints about the way the King Kong movie reflects racist tropes, defensive reactions from Amanda about how people didn’t understand her sense of fun in retro pictures, and, finally, an announcement that the cover was being pulled. The book, titled It’s a Jungle Out There, was released with a different cover, of a woman wrestling a crocodile.

Digression on King Kong – I saw an older version of this movie when I was young, at which age all racial references, good or bad, tended to go over my head (I remember seeing South Pacific at a similar age, and having no clue why Nellie Forbush broke up with Emile – I think I figured she was upset about his kids because she just didn’t like kids). In the remake I saw: big black gorilla, check, scary black natives, check, noble and intelligent black seaman whom I didn’t remember from the original, ah, they’ve taken critiques about race into account and are trying to accomodate them, noble and intelligent black man dies trying to save the white woman, um, no, this doesn’t really do it. It works as a movie if you block out that whole side of it, but I really can’t defend the racial angle here. (Similar recent stuff with the Pirates of the Caribbean series.)

Back to Amanda’s book: a thread at Feministe announcing a promotional event turned heated, referencing yet another dispute in which Amanda was recently involved, which dispute I’ve been studiously trying to avoid blogging, and so I’m not going to backtrack and summarize it now, except to say that Amanda has received criticism related to her handling of a particular racial issue, and that Amanda, in turn, has dismissed the complaints as trumped up, and that this whole debate has been going on in voluminous threads on several blogs, with much posting of comments by Amanda and her critics (but with no comment at all on Amanda’s own blog).

Somewhere in that thread, reference was made to the original book cover, and also to pictures inside the book, which at that point most of us had not seen. And someone remarked that Amanda’s pictures were ever so different from the Vogue cover, not in any way to be compared, because Amanda was trying to subvert the stereotypes she portrayed, while the Vogue cover was just reinforcing said stereotypes.

I looked at that remark, and thought, huh? Wait a second. No. The difference between Amanda’s work and the Vogue cover is that we all know Amanda, and we don’t all know Annie Leibovitz, the photographer who shot the Vogue cover. And so, knowing Amanda, we know – that she loves retro art, and thinks that using it to introduce pieces that mock whatever sexual stereotype the retro art represents is great use of kitsch. That she has invited Pam Spaulding to be a co-blogger, who is black, and that her blog has categories on race, immigration, etc., and just look and see, she’s always been progressive on these issues. Or we know – that she’s been involved in a whole series of disputes with different women of color, and every darn time she has this same defensive reaction, just can’t acknowledge her white privilege, and here she goes again. Or we know – that Hugo’s her friend, that belledame has never liked her, and that anything the one says to support her or the other to criticize her can be discounted. And so on. We know all kinds of things about Amanda’s life – what part of rural Texas she comes from, what songs she now likes to sing in Austin karaoke bars, the normal self-revelatory stuff that you learn about fellow bloggers, that make you think you know who they are.

And, if we knew Annie Leibovitz, don’t you think we’d use that knowledge in responding to criticisms of her? Don’t you think we’d say, oh, of course Annie meant the cover of Vogue ironically, ironic references to old movie posters are just what she’d do, and see how she subverts the savage black man trope by having Gisele Bundchen happy and smiling? Or we’d say, Annie would never have dreamed of thinking of King Kong when making this kind of picture. Or we’d say, no she’s not racist, she has all kinds of black friends, or has dated black men, or whatever. Or, yes, she’s always had a blind spot about race, and this is just another example. But we don’t know Leibovitz, so the photo has to stand for itself. It is what it is, and we judge it racist or not based on the photo, and not what we might infer about her intentions, from some personal knowledge of what sort of person she is. And looking at the Vogue and book covers, by themselves, no, it’s not particularly obvious that the Vogue cover is way more racist than the book cover, or that the book cover is somehow delightfully subversive. But then, Amanda had seen sense, taken criticism, and pulled the original book cover.

This is what I had been thinking. And then, as I was delaying getting around to pulling my thoughts together for a post, someone scanned the pictures that are being used inside Amanda’s book, and all hell is breaking loose. Because it turns out that she didn’t gain much by pulling the cover with the white woman and the black gorilla, given that the pictures inside the book still show a white woman in the jungle facing actual threatening black natives. Holly of Feministe reacts here.

Unrelated stuff: I’m postponing Friday Random Ten till Saturday, but here’s a totally unrelated link that may be of interest to Jean and any other readers who are based in New York City.

Why Women Need to Support Women Artists: Crooked at the Women’s Project.

I’m embarrassed to admit that before last week I had never been to a show at the Women’s Project, a 30-year-old feminist theatre company based in NY dedicated to presenting theatre by and/or about women. But I remedied my significant oversight and I hope all New Yorkers –both men and women — who are interested in challenging theatre will also take the time out to visit the Women’s Project which is presenting Crooked by Catherine Trieschmann and directed by Liz Diamond….

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 6:59 am and is filed under Race. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.