US Vogue April 2008 Controversy

[Meg]

I completely disagree with mullet and electricladyland. First of all, it's not a matter of being 'young' and 'not getting it'. When I first saw the cover, I actually liked it, because they were trying to juxtapose his aggressiveness as an athlete with her 'delicateness' as a model. Besides all this, Anna Wintour is English and doesn't have the same issues with race as Americans do. Lebron IS aggressive because he has to be. He's one of the top players in the NBA. There's nothing wrong with that. Even if the imagery was intentional, which I don't believe it was, the fact is it won't resonate with the majority of young Americans today anyway since they won't be familiar with the imagery

 

[LUXXX]

I completely disagree with mullet and electricladyland. First of all, it's not a matter of being 'young' and 'not getting it'. When I first saw the cover, I actually liked it, because they were trying to juxtapose his aggressiveness as an athlete with her 'delicateness' as a model. Besides all this, Anna Wintour is English and doesn't have the same issues with race as Americans do. Lebron IS aggressive because he has to be. He's one of the top players in the NBA. There's nothing wrong with that. Even if the imagery was intentional, which I don't believe it was, the fact is it won't resonate with the majority of young Americans today anyway since they won't be familiar with the imagery

I can see both points about it being offensive and people reaching, but I also think race is general issue in almost every major country...even in some very bizarre circumstances were most of the people in a certain country look completely alike. I don't think it's America specific.

Although I highly doubt one would ever see that daring French Vogue cover with Andre J. and Carolyn Murphy on US Vogue's cover...

 

[ChloeFrancoise]

People have already mentioned this, but isn't the first image referencing the Germans around the time of WW1? Look at the helmet.

 

[electricladyland]

The fact that the original image came from an army recruitment poster is telling. The King Kong image came at a time when African Americans were moving into urban centers of the North from the South. The image of African Americans as savage and brutal and threatening to white womanhood justified slavery and lynchings. These images are used to play on the fears of people in order to move them to action. I wonder what the Vogue editors' intentions are...Seems like they are being defiantly insensitive at the very least. I mention the youth of people viewing these images because many young people do not remember or do not know this history and therefore do not recognize the images when they see them. Clearly the aggressiveness of the black athlete and the fragility of white womanhood are juxtaposed, but this juxtaposition is not new and has been used in the past to incite fear. Interestingly, even though these images are less prevalent today, their impact is still felt according to a study at Stanford University. Excuse the length of the press release, but I thought it was relevant.

Discrimination against blacks linked to dehumanization, study finds

Crude historical depictions of African Americans as ape-like may have disappeared from mainstream U.S. culture, but research presented in a new paper by psychologists at Stanford, Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley reveals that many Americans subconsciously associate blacks with apes.
In addition, the findings show that society is more likely to condone violence against black criminal suspects as a result of its broader inability to accept African Americans as fully human, according to the researchers.
Co-author Jennifer Eberhardt, a Stanford associate professor of psychology who is black, said she was shocked by the results, particularly since they involved subjects born after Jim Crow and the civil rights movement. "This was actually some of the most depressing work I have done," she said. "This shook me up. You have suspicions when you do the work—intuitions—you have a hunch. But it was hard to prepare for how strong [the black-ape association] was—how we were able to pick it up every time."
The paper, "Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary Consequences," is the result of a series of six previously unpublished studies conducted by Eberhardt, Pennsylvania State University psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff (the lead author and a former student of Eberhardt's) and Matthew C. Jackson and Melissa J. Williams, graduate students at Penn State and Berkeley, respectively. The paper is scheduled to appear Feb. 7 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
The research took place over six years at Stanford and Penn State under Eberhardt's supervision. It involved mostly white male undergraduates. In a series of studies that subliminally flashed black or white male faces on a screen for a fraction of a second to "prime" the students, researchers found subjects could identify blurry ape drawings much faster after they were primed with black faces than with white faces. The researchers consistently discovered a black-ape association even if the young adults said they knew nothing about its historical connotations. The connection was made only with African American faces; the paper's third study failed to find an ape association with other non-white groups, such as Asians. Despite such race-specific findings, the researchers stressed that dehumanization and animal imagery have been used for centuries to justify violence against many oppressed groups.
"Despite widespread opposition to racism, bias remains with us," Eberhardt said. "African Americans are still dehumanized; we're still associated with apes in this country. That association can lead people to endorse the beating of black suspects by police officers, and I think it has lots of other consequences that we have yet to uncover."
Historical background Scientific racism in the United States was graphically promoted in a mid-19th-century book by Josiah C. Nott and George Robins Gliddon titled Types of Mankind, which used misleading illustrations to suggest that "Negroes" ranked between "Greeks" and chimpanzees. "When we have a history like that in this country, I don't know how much of that goes away completely, especially to the extent that we are still dealing with severe racial inequality, which fuels and maintains those associations in ways that people are unaware," Eberhardt said.
Although such grotesque characterizations of African Americans have largely disappeared from mainstream U.S. society, Eberhardt noted that science education could be partly responsible for reinforcing the view that blacks are less evolved than whites. An iconic 1970 illustration, "March of Progress," published in the Time-Life book Early Man, depicts evolution beginning with a chimpanzee and ending with a white man. "It's a legacy of our past that the endpoint of evolution is a white man," Eberhardt said. "I don't think it's intentional, but when people learn about human evolution, they walk away with a notion that people of African descent are closer to apes than people of European descent. When people think of a civilized person, a white man comes to mind."
Consequences of socially endorsed violence In the paper's fifth study, the researchers subliminally primed 115 white male undergraduates with words associated with either apes (such as "monkey," "chimp," "gorilla") or big cats (such as "lion," "tiger," "panther"). The latter was used as a control because both images are associated with violence and Africa, Eberhardt said. The subjects then watched a two-minute video clip, similar to the television program COPS, depicting several police officers violently beating a man of undetermined race. A mugshot of either a white or a black man was shown at the beginning of the clip to indicate who was being beaten, with a description conveying that, although described by his family as "a loving husband and father," the suspect had a serious criminal record and may have been high on drugs at the time of his arrest.
The students were then asked to rate how justified the beating was. Participants who believed the suspect was white were no more likely to condone the beating when they were primed with either ape or big cat words, Eberhardt said. But those who thought the suspect was black were more likely to justify the beating if they had been primed with ape words than with big cat words. "Taken together, this suggests that implicit knowledge of a Black-ape association led to marked differences in participants' judgments of Black criminal suspects," the researchers write.
According to the paper's authors, this link has devastating consequences for African Americans because it "alters visual perception and attention, and it increases endorsement of violence against black suspects." For example, the paper's sixth study showed that in hundreds of news stories from 1979 to 1999 in the Philadelphia Inquirer, African Americans convicted of capital crimes were about four times more likely than whites convicted of capital crimes to be described with ape-relevant language, such as "barbaric," "beast," "brute," "savage" and "wild." "Those who are implicitly portrayed as more ape-like in these articles are more likely to be executed by the state than those who are not," the researchers write.
The way forward Despite the paper's findings, Eberhardt said she is optimistic about the future. "This work isn't arguing that there hasn't been any progress made or that we are living in the same society that existed in the 19th century," she said. "We have made a lot of progress on race issues, but we should recognize that racial bias isn't dead. We still need to be aware of that and aware of all the different ways [racism] can affect us, despite our intentions and motivations to be egalitarian. We still have work to do."
For Eberhardt, two stories of race exist in America. "One is about the disappearance of bias—that it's no longer with us," she said. "But the other is about the transformation of bias. It's not the egregious bias anymore, but it's modern bias, subtle bias." With both of these stories, she said, there is an understanding that society has moved beyond the historic battles centered around race. "We want to argue, with this work, that there is one old race battle that we're still fighting," she said. "That is the battle for blacks to be recognized as fully human."
This research was supported by a Stanford University Dean's Award to Jennifer Eberhardt.

 

[iluvjeisa]

They definitely made the cover with the King-Kong image in mind. There are too many similarities between them - both of their poses, down to flowing dress. They certainly needed Gisele's big ugly smile to make the image fly...

 

[brokenenglish]

They definitely made the cover with the King-Kong image in mind. There are too many similarities between them - both of their poses, down to flowing dress. They certainly needed Gisele's big ugly smile to make the image fly...

Worked with me, it was the first thing I noticed.

 

[softgrey]

i agree about the reference probably being in someone's mind during the shoot......
there is always a reference in a photographer's mind...

but i think it's more about creating some tension and drama in the photo..
something to sell mags on the news stand than anything else...
it's meant to be arresting and stop you as you pass by it on the news stand...
even if you don't consciously know why...

i doubt it's a coincidence...

 

[brokenenglish]

I completely disagree with mullet and electricladyland. First of all, it's not a matter of being 'young' and 'not getting it'. When I first saw the cover, I actually liked it, because they were trying to juxtapose his aggressiveness as an athlete with her 'delicateness' as a model. Besides all this, Anna Wintour is English and doesn't have the same issues with race as Americans do. Lebron IS aggressive because he has to be. He's one of the top players in the NBA. There's nothing wrong with that. Even if the imagery was intentional, which I don't believe it was, the fact is it won't resonate with the majority of young Americans today anyway since they won't be familiar with the imagery

I don't understand that.
Is there no racism in England?.... I'll go book a ticket.

 

[Meg]

My point wasn't that there is no racism in England, my point was that Anna Wintour doesn't have the same connection to American slavery as say, Americans do.

And yes you need to descrimination leads to dehumanization. It always has. As for the movement of blacks into northern urban centers, that had been happening since Reconstruction pretty much up until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and really doesn't have anything to do with the poster. Monkey imagery is common in American war propaganda and has been used against African Americans, Asians (most notably the Japanese in WWII) and Germans.

My point isn't that racism doesn't exist or that it's not still an important issue but this image can be referenced and it doesn't have to have racist intentions behind it and this imagery of a 'ape' with a white woman has been used against pretty much ALL ethnicities, even whites (ie Germans).

 

[smartarse]

i agree about the reference probably being in someone's mind during the shoot......
there is always a reference in a photographer's mind...

but i think it's more about creating some tension and drama in the photo..
something to sell mags on the news stand than anything else...
it's meant to be arresting and stop you as you pass by it on the news stand...
even if you don't consciously know why...

i doubt it's a coincidence...

it's definitely the photographers take [depiction/reference] ...
but i saw it as his intense emotion of the game or win ,perhaps it's because of march madness currently goin on.

looks to me annie wants us to interpret it in our own way...
?

 

[The_Ida]

I think the cover is supposed to highlight the contrast - big strong athlete and petite pretty model. Instead Giselle looks possesed and LeBron looks pissed. I don't really get what is or might be racist about this picture. I do think they should have chosen the pic where Gisele sits on his shoulder (or something?), and neither of them look possesed or angry.

That was an interesting article, though, and I wonder if it's the same in Denmark. I have noticed that me and BF get a lot of funny (and not so funny) looks when we walk down the street together. He's from Iran, and they all probably think he's a terrorist and a criminal The media, of course, has a great deal to do with this, it must be the case in USA as well.

 

[wendla]

Reinforcing historically racist attitudes with subconscious imagery is powerful. Hmm, shocking.

I don't understand why the researchers only used white men from Stanford and Penn State (which were from the same colleges conducting the study)? Couldn't they have used both men and women with a variety of backgrounds? I'd imagine the results would be similar across all ethnic backgrounds and for both genders.

I also couldn't discern from the article if they conducted studies with no subconscious imagery or words at all.

 

[jules4u]

My question is why is he yelling? It's an odd photo to be sure and I immediately thought of Kong and saw the allusion. Does that make me "sensitive"? I just don't understand the unbridled display of rage/power from LeBron next to a smiling Bündchen.
And just because one doesn’t see it initially, doesn't mean it is not there. Many will say they don't see anything wrong with the image, but for some viewers that was the end product because there's a century or more of depictions of black men that in their sum are overwhelmingly racist. This photo evokes that tradition in a few unfortunate ways: black man striking aggressive pose, baring his teeth at the camera, sexualized white woman striking submissive pose, drawing most limbs inward, straining against and away from him.
Media stereotypes, at least those pertaining to race and gender, aren't really part of some coordinated conspiracy. The question, is the picture in itself racist? is rather sterile. It is obviously an insensitive photograph at best, and at worst a racist one. Obviously, Vogue isn't filled with a bunch of foul-mouthed black hating miscreants. It is just that they do not feel bound to be reasonable. You would think that they would know that with so much negative portrayal of black men in the media, perhaps this would be offensive to People of color. Perhaps, do our very first photo shoot of a black man in a positive light. Instead Vogue made a decision perhaps for marketing $$$ to release something with vaguely racist or insensitive stereotyping in order to be edgy, and still get away with it because everyone knows “we are really not racist." What they have done here is called "race-baiting for profit."
Yes we can say "people who see racism everywhere must be racist." But it’s obvious this line of thinking is from mainly people who haven’t experienced stereotyping and racism, and couldn’t see why the picture perpetuates stereotyping if I hit them over the head with the magazine.

I personally see this cover as stereotyping rather than racism!

 

[Harumi]

How popular is that image that people think they were recreating?
This is the first I am seeing of it.

The image doesn't have to be popular. We are all familiar with the King Kong imagery. The reference was brought up on its own in the magazine thread, it was maybe the third post after the cover was posted.
It wasn't the first thing that jumped on my mind, but I can see where people are coming from.

I don't think people are overanalyzing the image, or have too much time on their hands. If you decide not to analyze the images that the media and especially advertisement feeds you, you are basically going to be a passive veal. Ideas don't exist in a cultural limbo: there is always a reference, always a subtext.

The cover wasn't offensive on its own to me, it was the combination of that and the Jennifer Hudson cover that disturbed me. Vogue US has a long tradition of rendering its cover subjects hideous, but at least they always attempts some kind of glamorous and expensive imagery. The complete lack of dignity in both those covers is what bothered me.

But then, looking back at it and treating it like a completely independent cover, I now realise that for a start Gisele too isn't either looking good nor dignified in the cover and second Lebron is there as an athlete and not as a Black man (now of course it bring the question of why they choose to portrait the athlete in a testosterone fit of furry on the cover of a female fashion magazine, but that's another issue).
That changes the whole way I now analyse the cover. The race isn't an issue to me anymore in this cover, and if there had not been the Hudson cover so soon before this one, it would never have been.

The cover is still offensive to me, but because it is just so hideous. Period.

 

[Harumi]

It is just that they do not feel bound to be reasonable. You would think that they would know that with so much negative portrayal of black men in the media, perhaps this would be offensive to People of color.

I don't think Vogue, with its (undeserved) status as a creative outlet, should feel bound to be reasonable or inoffensive. In a way it is good that this is the most talked about cover of Vogue since a long time because fashion, imo, is unjustly considered a subject that is beneath intellectual analysis and discussion.
I explained in my previous post that I now think the racial subtext has been blown out of proportion, but even if you want to see it that way, I think it is not the fact that Vogue may or may not using a racial stereotype that is the problem, but the complete lack of creative vision and intent and most importantly, wit that is problematic.
When Newton uses Nazi/Aryan imagery to portrait his towering, icy and menacing blond women, he transcends the simple stereotype and make a powerful and iconic statement.
Vogue just scrapes the barrel.

Perhaps, do our very first photo shoot of a black man in a positive light. Instead Vogue made a decision perhaps for marketing $$$ to release something with vaguely racist or insensitive stereotyping in order to be edgy, and still get away with it because everyone knows “we are really not racist." What they have done here is called "race-baiting for profit."

Not wanting to be inflammatory but a lot of the insensitive stereotyping against Black people in the US are perpetrated by Black people themselves.

PS: sorry for the double posting

 

[nyc_art_style]

When I first saw the cover I thought of Tarzan and Jane.

I seriously don't unstand why Lebron couldn't have worn a suit with his jersey poking through. he could have had his arm around gisele, and she could have held a basketball. And Vogue uses so much dang text they probably would have said on the cover he plays basketball. Vogue did not need a gimmick for people to buy this issue. The fact that a black man is on the cover would have been enough for people to buy it.

Wasn't the point of having Lebron on the cover was to prove that he can play a sport and be fashionable?

And don't even get me started on Jennifer's cover.

 

[electricladyland]

Harumi, totally agree with the first part of your (double ) post. Images are not created and nor do they exist in a vacuum. Points well taken. And yes, African Americans do often reinforce and perpetuate stereotypes against their own group (sadly). Most of the current hip hop artists who have any popularity are clear examples.

As for the movement of blacks into northern urban centers, that had been happening since Reconstruction pretty much up until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and really doesn't have anything to do with the poster. Monkey imagery is common in American war propaganda and has been used against African Americans, Asians (most notably the Japanese in WWII) and Germans.

My point isn't that racism doesn't exist or that it's not still an important issue but this image can be referenced and it doesn't have to have racist intentions behind it and this imagery of a 'ape' with a white woman has been used against pretty much ALL ethnicities, even whites (ie Germans).

Actually the influx of African Americans to urban centers happened since Reconstruction, yes, but there were waves of migration not a steady even flow. Each world war caused more movement because of the jobs they created in urban areas.

And of course there is racism and bias against all ethnicities. No one is trying to win the oppression Olympics. But ape imagery has a particular resonance with bias against African Americans. Interestingly, some of the racist language used to describe African Americans in the US was also used to describe Italians and Irish when they first moved into urban areas of the northeast from Europe. Some is also currently used against Mexican Americans and other Latino groups. All the more reason to be vigilant against these kinds of images that portray certain groups negatively.

And I guess I no longer wonder about the Vogue editors' motives. They want to cause a stir and bring attention to their magazine. And apparently it's working.

jules4u well said!

 

[jules4u]

Vogue just scrapes the barrel. Not wanting to be inflammatory but a lot of the insensitive stereotyping against Black people in the US are perpetrated by Black people themselves.

PS: sorry for the double posting[/quote]


Insightful observation Harumi! But I have to disagree with the above statement. Apersons behaviour is not streotyping just because we perceive that behaviour to be negative. Stereotyping is a preconceived or oversimplified generalization involving negative beliefs about a particular group. Negative stereotypes are frequently at the base of prejudice.

And though I know this is OT. Below is an interesting article I came across on this subject.



"In the 1930's, studies found a high level of consistency among adjectives used to describe black people. Furthermore, most of these adjectives were negative, and included terms such as superstitious, lazy, and ignorant. Today’s stereotypes are not much different, and include unintelligent, loud, poor, unable to swim, and criminal. Stereotypes can also be “positive” terms, although this does not make them less damaging to their targets. Current stereotypes of African Americans include athletic and musical/rhythmic
Stereotypes are powerful and omnipresent. They are part of how we judge others, which we do quickly. Race, gender, hair style - people may get one chance to make a good first impression, and perhaps not even that, because stereotypes may stand in the way. Let's look at a few examples.
There are myriad stereotypes of Black people in America. If you're old enough, you may remember the television character "J.J", played by comedian Jimmie Walker in the 1970's sitcom Good Times. A wise-cracking young Black man, he was criticized as "television's most visible young African American male, [yet] he was devoid of any signs of maturity or intelligence."

I know it doesn't even stop there. Stereotypes of Blacks include: arrogant, athletic, devious, dirty, dishonest, drug addicts, "having rhythm", incompetent, inferior, lazy, unintelligent, noisy, passive, poor, primitive, untrustworthy, and violent. If you're Black, that's quite a lot to overcome if you meet someone holding on to those stereotypes.

It works both ways. Some of the stereotypes of white Americans include: assertive, cold, dishonest, evil, greedy, lacking athleticism, lacking rhythm, lusting for power, racist, untrustworthy, smart, and unclean"



All in all I believe stereotyping is in the history and frame work of America.I t has always existed and cuts both ways..... And its a sad reality!

 

[Spike413]

I think the fact that people, regardless of race, still associate the image of "the ape" with racism is kind of telling.

Meg is absolutely right, for a lot of newer generations of people, I just don't think this kind of stuff would resonate as racist...and that has nothing to do with being naive or ignoring it. It has to do with the fact that the overall mentality has changed.

Like I said in my original post, I just didn't take away anything having to do with race from this photo. Yes it has similarities to the image of King Kong and Fay Wray, but again, my mind doesn't immediately equate giant gorilla with black man.

Maybe it's youthful idealism on my part, or just outright stupidity, but if people are going to cling to dated stereotypes and tip-toe around something as insignificant as photographing a black athlete in an aggressive and domineering pose next to the glamorous white woman, will racism ever actually end? The image itself isn't offensive, it's the meaning people put into it.

Then again, it's Anna Wintour, and she's the antichrist as far as many are concerned and no matter what she does it's always evil, malicious and cutting. No, she doesn't feature enough models of color in the pages of Vogue, but really, if she finally does shoot a black man for a cover does it automatically have to have an agenda behind it? I mean, wouldn't it just be easier for her to not include the black man on the cover at all?

 

[electricladyland]

I mean, wouldn't it just be easier for her to not include the black man on the cover at all?

I wish she had taken that route.