War porn!

[sabotabby]

This has to be one of the creepier photoshoots I've seen in the history of creepy photoshoots. (Warning: Nudity, implied rape, glorification of war, utter not-safe-for-workitude.) Jill at Feministe says ugh, but a lot of people commenting disagree, saying that only a few photos are questionable, and even that some are subversive because they show women intruding on a traditionally male space.

Maybe it's those pesky ideological blinders, but given the epidemic of rape against both women in the occupying army and Iraqi women and men, I don't see any way this shoot can be interpreted besides a glorification of sexual violence in wartime. There's also an added racial dynamic, the twisted white American male fantasy of the Big Black Cock.

I honestly don't get people who show up on a feminist blog to say, "well, just one of the photos might imply rape, so the shoot isn't that bad, really." I mean, I get them, but I hope I never encounter them in real life.

P.S. My other post about how Iraqis are getting raped—in this case, by neoliberalism as well as by neoconservatism, is here. I guess it's the oh-so-depressing blog theme of the day.

Comments

[99catsaway.livejournal.com]

Oh, how subversive, the women in the male spaces aren't wearing clothes! And they're also 90 lbs and 5'10!

Very subversive.



Also, yes, the glorification of war is disturbing.

[sabotabby]

We can't have ugly, dismembered women in war zones. That wouldn't be hawt.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

Ok I think the photoshoot is stupid and kind of repugnant on the level of "War is Sexy! Fucking Accomplished!" but I'm not sure about some of the other stuff you're saying. For one thing, there are some white guys and some black guys, so I don't see the American Big Black Cock fantasy, plus I think this is Italian, no? And the weird, "oh hey, look, my tits popped out of my dress!" women are problematic, but not necessarily in a way that has much to do with occupying armies and rape. They do appear to be on the same team as the "oh hey, look what great pecs all this killing has given me" boys.

I'm not exactly disagreeing. I think you're a much more tuned-in political observer than I am. I'm just not completely on board.

[sabotabby]

You're going to force me to look at the photos again, aren't you? The worst, as far as I can tell, is #15, which has the satisfied-looking black man and the humiliated, crying white woman, but there are quite a few others that show darker-skinned men dominating lighter-skinned woman. I don't know if that particular cultural obsession is quite as pathological in Italy as it is in the U.S., but I suspect that it might be. Regardless, the army depicted in the photos is American,* so we have to consider American fetishes.

All of the women in the pictures are white—because that's the dominant cultural idea of beauty, and these photos are meant to titillate—but the models are cast in many of the photos as trophies of war. (Of course, American soldiers are raping white women as well as Arab women in Iraq.) #13 reads as a local prostitute servicing the occupiers, #12 reeks of coercion (and she's not dressed like an American), and #8 could be any humiliated victim. It's more the poses—and the associated cultural baggage—that glorify rape as a weapon of conquest.

Oh, and #4 is nasty, given Abu Ghraib.

* Though Italy had troops occupying Iraq up until November of last year.

[notnotnevinzehr.livejournal.com]

Not to sound disrespectful, but pathological racist fantasies exist just as much in Italy as they do in the U.S., (Hell, they exist even in Japan) and the only way one can avoid the obvious subtext of rape is to bury one's head in the metaphorical sand.

[lokilokust.livejournal.com]

agreed.

[sabotabby]

*shudders*

[theoldanarchist.livejournal.com]

Good god, where does even begin with that? With the anorexic sickly-looking women falling out of their clothes? The buff, stupidly-tattooed men-barely-in-uniform? Or, just the overall glamourizing of war at a time when it should be apparent to any decent person that such a thing in disgusting?

On the level of aesthetics, though, these pictures are terrible. I don't care for the lurid style, I don't think the women are "hot" or even vaguely attractive, and most of the pictures are crowded, overly-busy, and poorly-organized. This is considered a photo-essay? Where is the narrative? Am I too dense to understand it? Philosophically, what it seems to be implying about the relationship between women and men (specifically, men in uniform) is disgusting. But, even just arguing at the level of aesthetics, it's a mess.

[sabotabby]

They don't strike me as particularly well-done photos, but what do I know about fashion photography. I think fashion photography ought to show off—well, fashion. Not rolling around in the mud and looking traumatized.

[threeliesforone.livejournal.com]

I see rape & racism everywhere in those photos. I'd point it out, but I'd rather not look at them again. Ever. Fuck Vogue.

[sabotabby]

Not that I read Vogue to begin with, unless I'm looking for a way to be offensive.

[queerasmoi.livejournal.com]

I would suggest that one of the photos implies shared grief for a lost one... (although it could also be read as post-rape trauma).

My big beef is, where's the man-on-man action? Just because they don't ask and don't tell doesn't mean they don't screw. C'mon models, get with the times!

[peterbilt-47.livejournal.com]

I love you, man.

[notnotnevinzehr.livejournal.com]

A woman should intrude on Steven Meisel's cranium, a traditionally male space, with a hollow point.

[sabotabby]

You can't rape a .38!

[automaticdoor]

Wow! Subversive! Skinny tall white women used to pornify war by a MALE photographer, not that this would have been more acceptable if shot by a female. Of course, we all know that Bush's right-wing buddies get off on war anyway, so this is just the icing on the cake.

Besides, the pictures, other than the ideological content, are all blah and forgettable. Few have any notable focal point, and they're all muddled and drab. I don't really see the fashion here, especially since they're all mostly naked anyway. I don't know if Abercrombie and Fitch have Canadian stores, but their advertising is basically the same--half-naked people selling clothing.

[notnotnevinzehr.livejournal.com]

"we all know that Bush's right-wing buddies get off on war anyway"

See, I don't know, to me what's so shitty about this is that it's so cheesily liberal. "Hey, if we all fucked instead of going to war everything would be so much better!" Like male pigs in the u.s. occupying army aren't having their way with female officers and Iraqi civilians on a regular basis. This war is basically a power struggle over who has the right to rape women.

[auralarua.livejournal.com]

regressive

[sabotabby]

Heh.

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

What notnotnevinzehr said. It's stupid liberalism. In real life, there's no way such scantily clad, basically defenseless women would avoid harassment and, at the very least, the threat of rape, so this is some puerile fantasy about a world in which the sexual power and attractiveness of its men and women are sufficient to prevent wanton violence. That they seem to be waging a desert campaign is supposed to be a poignant reminder of the Iraq war, and the absence of sexy and dominant Iraqis is supposed to be an acknowledgement of the occupation and a way of avoiding the sort of reactionary outcry that attended the Bennetton magazine ads of prisoners on death row. I think the two models in 15 and 17 are the same people, and therefore a couple, and that the first picture is supposed to gratify some viewers' selective lachryphilia, while at the same time offering a "poignant" reminder of the horrors of war (a lost love one, as was suggested in this thread). Treacly, muddy, excessively tattooed stuff, and a good example of Larry Summers' idea of racism in effect, if not by intent.

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

None of which is to say that this photoshoot doesn't evidence any lingering enchantment with violence, including that of the militarism, of course.

[beeblism.livejournal.com]

all the rape and race stuff is kinda "duh" and par for the course for vogue, in my opinion -- but what sets this series apart for me is its balls-out corporate-pomo glorification of this particular iraq war. i mean, "make love not war"? come the fuck on, what is this eastasia bullshit? obviously, barry jackson has earmarked a good chunk of taxpayer money to strongarm/seduce conde nast into winning a few hearts and minds that might have been slipping away from the fold among the big-city upper classes.

thank you... i was almost in a good mood about life today.

[sabotabby]

Hey, if I have to be bubbling over with moral outrage, everyone else has to be bubbling over with moral outrage. It's a thing.

[constintina.livejournal.com]

UGH

[sabotabby]

Goth!Bunny disapproves?

[jenlight.livejournal.com]

Wow, war is so... hip!

I am angry.

[sabotabby]

As well you should be.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

They can't really be intruding on said men's space when they are wearing evening gowns in a war zone. The whole photoshoot seems to be just one soldier's wet dream, there is nothing subversive about a woman being a gun-wielding man's sex toy.

I agree that the series was creepy though I found it more bizarre than anything else. On a technical level I have to give them props on the way they combined the presentation falsh media with a traditional magazine photo shoot layout.

[sabotabby]

See, I hate Flash, which makes it even worse.

[lopukhov.livejournal.com]

I think one of the other fashun magazines came up with something else that looked all wrong. I mean, not as wrong as this, but oh, wait, it was super-thin women getting strip searched at the airport.

[sabotabby]

There was something similar awhile ago. But I couldn't remember what it was or where I saw it.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

UGH. (I think it's been said already, but it's OK to be unoriginal when it's true, right?)

Or, to paraphrase Brass Monkey, "I puked up my pelvic bone".

Still, I don't know how progressive it is to single out any one Vogue photo-shoot over all the others. Is there any defensible fashion photography? Is fashion defensible, period? I haven't seen anything in any of the mags I've leafed through while waiting for my take-out, ever, that on a scale of one to "WTF" did not rate at least a seven. Consumptive consumerism. The galloping trot of the skeletal horseman, Capital. I don't care if they make it worse pairing models with child soldiers, mine amputees, or dead Indian farmers, shit is shit no matter how you douse it with extra diarrhea.

Speaking of the "epidemic" of suicides, I'd be careful that you not invoke the dead of the uprising without thinking these numbers through as percentiles of population (of India; of bankrupt farmers; of bankrupt farmers whose bankruptcies are directly linked to Monsanto seed), not just so much raw meat to be weighed on scales against each other. Not disagreeing with the concept of picturing how and why GM seed-dependencies are evil, but I am much more horrified at the blown up or shot than those driven out of business who choose suicide as their (certainly not only) solution.

(Lastly: you have a duplicate paragraph in the last quote in the punkassblog)

[sabotabby]

Still, I don't know how progressive it is to single out any one Vogue photo-shoot over all the others. Is there any defensible fashion photography? Is fashion defensible, period?

God, I hope fashion is defensible. I hope that after the Revolution I can still have pretty clothes. I mean, of course the fashion industry is fucked, and I only read Vogue when I want to get upset, but this one struck me as grosser than normal because it had so many different dimensions of Wrong.

I'd be careful that you not invoke the dead of the uprising without thinking these numbers through as percentiles of population (of India; of bankrupt farmers; of bankrupt farmers whose bankruptcies are directly linked to Monsanto seed), not just so much raw meat to be weighed on scales against each other. Not disagreeing with the concept of picturing how and why GM seed-dependencies are evil, but I am much more horrified at the blown up or shot than those driven out of business who choose suicide as their (certainly not only) solution.

I hope I was careful to not say that the Indian deaths were worse; I was trying to convey just how horrible and widespread the situation is. I showed the post to a journalist friend of mine from Pakistan who has written on the subject last night, and he said that 4,500 is a low estimate. That's not counting the farmers who don't kill themselves. Or the people starving to death as a result of what's happening to the agricultural industry.

but I am much more horrified at the blown up or shot than those driven out of business who choose suicide as their (certainly not only) solution.

This is where I want to avoid saying that some deaths are worse than others. I'm going to Godwin for a second, so excuse me.

When we criticize Stalin or Mao for killing millions of people, we're not talking about a situation like the Holocaust, where there were concentration camps and death squads. Certainly, those things did exist, but the huge death toll is not primarily from gulags; it's from bad economic policy. As a result of centralization and rapid industrialization, people starved to death. In large numbers. If we want to say that 20 million deaths under Stalin was a bad thing, then we have to conclude that deaths caused by failed economics are as horrifying as deaths caused by bullets.

(Lastly: you have a duplicate paragraph in the last quote in the punkassblog)

Thanks; it's fixed now. I was having a bad HTML day.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

Hummm. I just re-read this (always a good idea BEFORE hitting send

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Hummm. I just re-read this (always a good idea BEFORE hitting send <_<) and one thing occurs to me: maybe the people who look at #15 and <i>don't</i> automatically cry 'rape!' are under the influence of an internal "anti-racism" censor?

I mean, in the context of our so-called 'rape culture', I expect most female viewers of this "text" are more finely attuned to the emotional nuances of rape than the male ones are. In the absence of a forceful goad (i.e. gender solidarity) to acknowledge that as the most likely reading, alternatives are suggested <i>because</i> the rapist is black and the rapee -- white, and the pre-conscious leftie blinkers snap on: "Am I seeing rape? No, I can't be seeing rape, because that would mean I am seeing a black dude who's just raped a white chick smiling about it, and that is <i>so racist</i>, I am just gonna squash that thought before it rises to my conscious mind!" Whereas the progressive <i>female</i> viewer is more likely to override these blinkers and call a spade a rape.

[caprinus.livejournal.com]

And this was supposed to follow on my comment in mistersmearcase's thread. Sigh, it's 6:20 am, I can't do anything right. Time for bed.

I pretty much disagree but...

[woe-cruel-world.livejournal.com]

[anothereleni.livejournal.com]

Regarding that picture you were referring to with the crying woman, I don't think the man beside her looks satisfied, I think he also looks sad. Either sad or sleeping. But definitely slightly frowny faced. I think everyone, including the women, looks like they're having fun in all the other pictures. That's what I find more objectionable ("lets have sex and party while atrocities are happening to other people around us").

I've seen way more mysoginistic ads (and I don't think this one was) from the idiot fashion industry and worse from Vogue, even... did you see the shoot with the SWAT team? They're complete morons.