There has been a lot of hoopla about Vogue Magazine's April cover which features LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen, specifically some have said it depicts LeBron in an aggressive "King Kong-ish" stance and Gisele as the Fay Wray, demure and helpless woman. LeBron says "Everything my name is on is going to be criticized in a good way or bad way," James told the paper. "Who cares what anyone says?"
ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill had this to say about about LeBron, Gisele, and the cover "LeBron is dressed in basketball gear, with his muscles flexing, tattoos showing and bared teeth. Gisele, on the other hand, is wearing a gorgeous slim-fitting dress, and smiling. She looks like she's on her way to something fashionable and exciting. He looks like he's on his way to a pickup game for serial killers...A black athlete being reduced to a savage is, sadly, nothing new. But this cover gave you the double-bonus of having LeBron and Gisele strike poses that others in the blogosphere have noted draw a striking resemblance to the racially charged image of King Kong enveloping his very fair-skinned lady love interest."
My question to you is, what do you think when you view this image? Personally, although I don't care for the cover, I'd have to question anyone that would correlate a black man with a gorilla in the first place. I never once thought King Kong when I saw the cover...but maybe that's just me.
JI
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Controversial Vogue Cover..What Do You Think?
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2 comments:
I didn't think of King Kong either! We (Blacks) are so quick to draw on racist notions and pull that card. Lebron being "depicted" as such and such is far fetched, IMO. A-listers decide what they do and don't do on photo shoots (you only have no say if you have no name, ya dig?). I say that to say that if it's alright with Lebron, it's alright with me. I think both he and Gisele are actually just shown in their natural habitats (he a gruff b-baller, she a smiling pretty model).
On another this cover is all wrong, wrong wrong for VOGUE. When I see it, I think of Sports Illustrated.
I don't think you know the history of the movie King Kong so I will explain it to you. That movie was used in the same way as the movie Birth of a Nation.(Hope you know what about the that movie) Since the beginning of blacks time in this country we have been thought of as Monkeys and Jungle Bunnies. It was once said that black people were created from Gorillas and a white man. King Kong was used as a why to scare white men and women of the dangerous black man who wants to rape white women. Back in the day white people could get away with this kind of racism. Fast forward to today, and in this racist media, whites still try to use those same tactics. Jemele Hill is right in what he is saying because he know the history behind King Kong. I don't mean this in a bad way at all, but sista please learn the history on these things. Look at Spike Lee's Bamboozled, and do some research. White media is always doing things to try put little messages out there to discourages us and cause racism toward us. I have to add that I love your blog, and that I love how you are trying to make us aware of brands that don't support us.
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