Does Lebron look like King Kong to you? Are you old enough to know what the hell the controversy is? After all, the movie poster that people are pulling out to compare to Lebron’s Vogue cover isn’t exactly a contemporary piece. For those who haven’t seen it, here you go:
Could be, I guess. Big black guy holding white woman. Big black creature holding white woman. Of course the two images are separated by decades and are taken in completely different contexts both culturally and societally… but why split hairs?
I think the controversy over Vogue’s first ever cover featuring a black man is ridiculous. I rarely ever like Jason Whitlock’s writing, but we agree on this point. Of course, we agree for completely different reasons. For Whitlock’s check here.
For my part, I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be mad at over the photo. Lebron posed for the shots and unless he is a remarkably unsavvy superstar, he signed off on the cover photo. None of the principals involved in the cover have anything but good things to say about it. So who exactly are people pissed with?
Are we pulling a Jack Johnson on Lebron and accusing him of disgracing his race? Will we trot out a cleaner cut, more sober looking basketball player and tout him as the true representative of black athletic pride? Or maybe we’re taking photographer Annie Liebowitz to task for daring to frame such an image? What about Gisele for playing the weak sexual object? All three? Someone tell me because I truly don’t know where I’m supposed to be placing the blame.
Take a look at some of these other blatantly hateful cover shots:
Obviously this shot of Larry Bird is saying that once white men make a lot of money they start wearing short shorts. A horrifying attempt to emasculate rich white men.
This shot of Dr. J is a transparent attempt to suggest that black men can only succeed when held up by white men. An insidious attack on affirmative action programs if I’ve ever seen one.
An appalling attempt to link white steroid use with an increasingly violent culture and a non-too-subtle attempt to say all white men should be imprisoned.
Of course none of my “analysis” of these magazine covers is reasonable or at all sensible. And my point is not that black men have not historically been presented in negative ways in the media. Of course they have. My point is that you can’t take one or two or even a handful of dramatic examples and then throw the Lebron Vogue cover up there as the latest in an insensitive, racist trend. As my absurd examples attempt to prove, you can take any photo and read a million things that may or may not have any applicability into it.
Lebron is the first black man to appear on the cover of Vogue. They generally don’t put men of any race on their cover. But instead of celebrating a first, we are attacking all the people who made it possible. Lebron isn’t stupid. Annie Liebowitz isn’t racist. For that matter, I’m willing to bet that the publishers of Vogue aren’t either. How can I tell? These are two recent covers of Men’s Vogue.
If you can find anything offensive about those shots then you’re a much better conspiracy theorists than I. But instead of looking at the publishing group’s track record of depicting minorities, the “critics” took their shots based on… well… based on nothing. After all, why bother with something as involved as a Google search when it’s much easier to shout without substance from whatever blog, column, or TV appearance you conned your way into.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:10 am
I just thought of something else. If Annie Liebowitz and Vogue came to Lebron and said, “We want to do a shot like this King Kong poster” and then showed it to him, I’m pretty sure he’d have said, “Cool.” Lebron is a child of hip-hop culture. As much as that is dear to me I admit that it often glorifies much of life’s savagery. Coming from that background, King Kong would not have been considered an insult at all. Powerful, scary, intimidating, etc. none of those would have come off to Lebron as an insult or as inappropriate in the least. In fact, I bet those characteristics are just what he hopes to portray on the basketball court.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Actually, Chris, as soon as I looked at this picture I thought, “Wow, nice King Kong interpretation!” It didn’t occur to me to be offended, especially since I have watched more ESPN than any straight woman should in her lifetime, and I can recall countless times I’ve heard sports commentators exclaim, “That man is a BEAST!”
It’s not that I think the Vogue editors or Annie Liebowitz would have to be racist to put out a racially insensetive cover. People often do offensive things without meaning to. People often fail to be offended by offensive things.