Below is a link to an interesting and disturbing New York Times article regarding a story and photo shoot in the most recent Vogue magazine. Generally I'm not interested in fashion, though I have been known to watch Project Runway with my wife (she makes me watch it, really). I believe it does fall under the rubrick of the arts in that it is a creative constructive endeavor. I'm not looking here to define the arts, just to recognize that fashion is a far flung planet in its solar system. At any rate you should probalby read the article before you read any further so you can be conversant with what will follow...
Done? Did the article strike YOU as disturbing. I'm interested in hearing what different people took from the article. I'm intrigued that the director of Vogue India, which I wouldn't have imagined existed not because of any economic status in India, but because Vogue seems to me to be inherently a Western Institution, suggests that those critical of the shoot should "lighten up" given fashion is never meant to be something serious. I can understand his perspective, but speaking for me I'm not troubled by the fashion itself, but by the uncritical and exploitive juxtoposition of such opulence with such abject poverty. It almost seems a bit like a little fashionista insider's joke. By not even identifying those who are modeling these items one almost gets the sense that they might as well be manequins on which these items are placed. In fact since the items are identified and the models are not there is the implicit notion that these items are portrayed as of greater value than the ones wearing them.
On the plus side the photography is well done and reveals a beauty in the models, which I believe was not necessarily the intention of it creators. Oddly their humanity is affirmed in spite of the apparent objectification and dehumanization inherent to the shoot. In the process it almost feels like the dehumanization laid upon these models by these juxtopositions is actually reflected back on to Vogue and the authors of the piece. Perhaps that's just me.
At any rate my question in this very short blurb is , quoting the peasant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a major source of deep thinking, whether there is a violence to humanity that is inherent in our system of advertising, and perhaps even inherent to our economics? I'm not going to attempt to answer that question here because that's a doozy. But I think this gives a unique voice to that question with a clarity that perhaps should be more common.
The photo above comes from the New York Times article.
