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.
3 comments:
“fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful,” she said.
Can you say emotionally and intellectually stunted?
I really don't know how to respond to that other than to put my head over the toilet.
I wonder if it ever hit anyone at vogue to think of what poor taste that this might be percieved, or are they simply waveing at an armless man. In thousands of years of human history man has not changed. We still pay for the freak show.
Or....... one can think about driving through Tibet and Navajo Land where people live remote places for no other reason than their religion tells them to do so.
I did and as I was riding through one day I looked at the guy I was riding with and said I was thinking of the old Sam Kinison joke when he talked about Ethiopa. He said he a long message for them that would change their lives: "Go where the f-ing water is!" Maybe a sick joke about the suffering of others? Or maybe righteous anger at whatever keeps people in places like these?
Anyway, I think God spoke to me through this man's words years later as I drove through Navajo Land in the middle of a desert and realized that the people needed to leave to go where progress was. Or progress needed to come to them. Both are resisted because it will anger the spirits of the four spiritual mountains.
I look at the "Whopper Virgin" commericials involving groups that are cousin to Tibetans, and realize that Burger King will unseat Mc Donald's in the next 20 years. Why? A new middle class is rising in these parts of the world. Former nomads come into the cities for opportunity and do not want to see commericials about white guys eating a burger. They want to see themselves. It makes it real to them.
Exploitation in this article? Maybe. But the other side of it is that it gives that village guy visual evidence that he can one day get there. What is wrong with that? The fatalism that their religion teaches them that ends in poverty needs to be replaced by a hope and desire for better. When people interact with beauty it should point them to God. These items are beautiful. Desire is ok or we are just a bunch of fatalistic Buddhist telling everyone do not tast and do not touch.
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