Lebron James is only the third male to ever appear to the cover of Vogue magazine. He is featured in an article about the body maintenance of top models and star athletes. You may think,
"Wow, we have made such improvement in the area of racism and the image of black males. See, this man is on the cover of a woman's magazine with a white model."
"The black super-Athlete is the 'tough guy' par excellence, embodying the physical qualities of the laboring/soldiering ethos . . . This combined class appeal of black athletes - who have emerged from among the impoverished and downtrodden Americans - is both their major asset in commercial sport culture, and a supreme irony. For the presentation of the black super athlete is still, in many ways, continuous with the racist representation of black males in culture more generally."
Look at the stance and facial expression he has: ready to pounce, exuding brute strength, extremely aggressive, with his mouth open like he's screaming. He really doesn't look that nice and he's grabbing this smiling white woman who is balancing on one foot inside his leg span. He is being esteemed by being on this cover. He is being esteemed for physical strength, brute, base qualities of masculinity. He is a black man and that is what he is good at and honored for: being able to play ball.
The perspective of the majority of Americans really hasn't improved that much. Its an illusion to think that the mere fact that this man in on the cover of vogue means much has changed.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0803/caught.in.the.act0314/content.3.html
3 comments:
This is horrible to say, and I hope it's not simply revealing the racist socialization I've had in America, but don't you think they've posed Gisele and Lebron in kind of a King Kong pose? I mean, here's the black male athlete (and, of course, an extremely common racist insult is to compare black people to apes), with a possessive grip on the white, blond Gisele. Lebron is even posed in a classic primate posture of rage, violence, confrontation, aggressiveness. It just seems really obvious to me, and I can't believe my eyes. Why would Vogue do that if they're basically presenting Lebron in a positive light (at least INSIDE the magazine)?
Of course, the other vile racist stereotype is that white men have to protect their white women because black men covet them. It makes me sick even to type that because it's such a horrifically hateful belief to perpetuate. But this cover seems to tap that mythology as well.
All I can ask is: WHY? Is it supposed to be a critique of those stereotypes? Kind of like, "see, we've come a long way because this representation used to be racist and now it's a mainstream magazine cover?" I just don't know...
After reading another blog entry about this Vogue cover, I decided to write my own entry. If you're interested, check it out: http://mediagenderraceclasssexreligion.blogspot.com/2008/03/king-kong-james.html.
The racism (and sexism) of this Vogue cover gets more and more disturbing to me the more I think about it.
i'm feeling this piece...
when i took this class this is something that we talked about more in terms of the dominant, brute, african american male.
in some ways, this is an accomplishment as an African American male, but at the same time, do you think a non-African American male could get a spot on the cover?
I don't know.
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