CVK
Spotted this on Gawker yesterday. I don’t know what they’re smoking over at The Independent. Why on earth would they think it’s a good idea to illustrate “the Africa issue” with a picture of a white model in blackface?
Here’s the front of today’s Independent (UK), guest-designed by Giorgio Armani. We’ve very little to add, save to say that putting Kate Moss in blackface makes it much easier to see the coke you’re cutting on the cover.
Were there absolutely NO models of African descent (ethnic or otherwise) available? The hell?
Now, the question is, is the black makeup itself offensive or is it the fact that the model is a white American (I think) or both?
I’m wondering if this “counts” as blackface as we have usually seen it in the US - i.e. there are no red lips, no outlining of the eyes, etc. To my eyes, the Japanese models were in obvious blackface. This photo really makes it seem more like an ebony-colored statue, than “blackface.”
But that may have been a deliberate choice on the part of the magazine or the photographer/artistic director, in order to deflect immediate criticism or create “plausible deniability”…
I saw something about the drow on reappropriate, the love of drow is all about plausible deniability, but this reminds me more of the star-trek episode with the left and right black and white people or that crappy tarzan movie with Bo Derek. So my guess is that they are trying to be profound or provocative. . . . and failing.
What the hell? I can’t even bother to discuss how crazy this shit is…
What really nice tan!
[Pre-Script: Lyonside: check out my earlier response on the older post for the list of alternative women- and minority-owned vineyards that might meet your needs.]
… And there was also a full-sized poster of the image inside that issue of The Independent too. To raise money for an HIV AIDS charity. Lead story in the same issue’s Health section, ironically,: “Ultra-slim models ‘are preferred by women’”
Assuming this had to be a black/white thing in the first place, given the spectrum of shading on the continent, fashion and lifestyle industries, regardless:
(a) operate on appropriation and plagarism (but never, ever theft)
(b) apparently hold that you can gain insight into a people by donning their look
(c) you actually need to emulate the look and style of a people with whom you’re fascinated in order to treat them with respect and decency as opposed to veneration bordering on the exotic, erotic, or mystic
About a week earlier, The Independent’s editor-in-chief warned readers they were going to be treated to a special Armani-designed issue, saying: “[he] will bring his own, highly distinctive view of the world, and his unique creative vision to the pages of the newspaper, and there promise to be some spectacular visual treats.” They just didn’t say how, sheesh…
This Kate Moss cover apparently p.o.’d the rival The Guardian (UK) newspaper so greatly, they actually devoted two articles spanning five pages to the issue of “blacking up” in today’s (Sep. 22) issue.
Hannah Pool “Return to the Dark Ages” (commentary on “The Independent” cover)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1878299,00.html
Patrick Barkham “About Face” (history of blacking up, UK perspective especially in opera/theater)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1878318,00.html
[Side note: Pool, the Guardian’s health and beauty columnist, was adopted from an Eritrean orphanage and raised in England by a white father. She wrote a memoir about her return visit to Africa to experience meeting the birth family she never knew called “My Father’s Daughter” which came out last year.]
I get their point: buying into a framework that posits “politcal correctness” and “subversiveness” as your two extremes ultimately leads to this kind of excusable crap where any type of expression that’s not only offensive but damaging is sanctioned by simply saying “don’t be so sensitive”.
It also forces too many constraints and too much silence upon those who feel harmed to the point where no one can actually complain about anything, for fear about bringing “politics” into anything that doesn’t offend people with more “liberal” (codeword “open-minded”) tastes.
And all of this seems will obscure the good intentions of The Independent’s ongoing effort to benefit the RED initiative, tied to the UN-affiliated Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. Last May, Bono was guest editor for a day. For these special issues, half the revenue goes to the charity.
There was actually some interesting, provoking content from a range of public and celebrity figures speaking out on some unfamiliar perspectives, precisely to get people to pay attention to things they otherwise wouldn’t, on issues of concern affecting Africa. You can read all of it for free for about the next couple of days (search for the Sep. 21 content): http://news.independent.co.uk
On a larger level, this issue will also cloud the larger media ruckus at the United Nations this week, in which you saw the US (and by extension rich nations) being taken to task by nations and leaders you normally don’t get to see and hear. They bullied the US for not keeping their financial promises and obligations to poorer countries.
It ended with the UN itself basically saying the World Bank is crap when it comes to the needs of the poor, and it’s time for a new UN agency. The West however is saying no way. Meanwhile, the voices and faces usually left out of the debate remain on the sideline and magzine covers…
So message seems to be: If we can’t even portray the issues with the actual faces who live most with them, guess who we won’t have speaking most vocally about them, and who won’t be listening to them.
This is not a Fashion statement, but it is a bullsh$#%*t statement. !!
I have to say that the image itself I have no problem with. It could very well just be an artistic statement that has nothing to do with black people (and thus, not blackface). As someone who has one foot squarely in the advertising industry, and the other in the fashion (photography/photojournalism) industry, I’ve seen my fair share of these images featuring models of various ethnicities.
HOWEVER, being that it’s supposed to be part of an “AIDS in Africa” campaign, that does put this squarely in blackface territory.
Still, as a black man who’s always on the lookout for this kinda garbage (for example, I got into a heated debate at my agency today about the use of an Asian man’s image for the “Free to be Geeky” part of an advertorial), I’ve gotta say these kinds of shots are sometimes just attempts at creative photography.
To use the work of my friend Stephen Eastwood as an example (I hope I don’t sound like I’m plugging his work… just trying to illustrate a point):
Latina model, digitally darkened skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/recent/full/21.jpg
White model, blue skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/beauty/gal2/full/12.jpg
White model, dark skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/fashion/gal5/full/11.jpg
Black model, white, flaky skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/fashion/gal3/full/13.jpg
Black model, darkened skin - http://www.stepheneastwood.com/fashion/gal3/full/15.jpg
Biracial model, hi-contrast, somewhat-darkened skin- http://www.stepheneastwood.com/beauty/gal5/full/9.jpg
My point? While I have to question this Kate Moss photo, sometimes, these shots are merely artistic compositions.
Who cares they do not respect Black People period. so start your own magazine so people of Color images will be respected. SHEESH !!!!!
hi
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BRIGADOON.........2006 on 22 Sep 2006 at 4:21 pm
The indomitable Kate Moss…
Kate Moss Newsletter of the Week
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