Some people are fasion zombie-slaves, sad or fun :]

[Beau]

I too am shocked and disgusted by the use of the oil spill in this format. EGVG, the reason people are offended is because a tragedy is being used commercially for profit. It is a complete mockery to those who are suffering from this to be commercialized like that. If they truly wanted to help, they wouldn't be using it capitalize on public interest in the subject for personal monetary gain.

 

[paralleloscope]

Its great to see fashion take the right direction

Imo, they are cloaking themselves in conscientious garb, leaching production value from an emotionally charged event. Black in black, Ironic repetition. Heroin chik did nothing for drug addiction but perhaps make it trendy to 'go zombie'. It's an exploit!

 

[EGVG]

Its great to see fashion take the right direction

Imo, they are cloaking themselves in conscientious garb, leaching production value from an emotionally charged event. Black in black, Ironic repetition. Heroin chik did nothing for drug addiction but perhaps make it trendy to 'go zombie'. It's an exploit!

Sure I understand your points, but we know better! Knowledge protects remember? So actually when I see this kind of stuff in the fashion world, that go far beyond this oil spill, I'm actually learning what goes on in the fashion factory agenda, I believe is a valid stamp of the current world. If you want to go deep, we could say its like reading the paper on the clothing :D

EDU

 

[Approaching Infinity]

If you want to go deep, we could say its like reading the paper on the clothing :D

I would say it's more like sending a model to Palestine, dressing her up like a child who has just lost its parents, and taking pictures.

Have you read the series Laura posted about the degradation of art??

 

[Keit]

Keit, how is this Photo spread, mocking human and animal suffering? On the contrary I think this is a way for fashion to bee more relevant! Its a way to inform people that maybe didn't even new about this oil spill, Its a valid way to inform some people.

Because it is similar to having a fancy ball (not a fundraiser, mind you) in honor of starving children in Rwanda.

Because it is cynical and cruel for a fashion magazine to use the opportunity to present and sell expensive design clothes while entire Golf ecosystem is being destroyed and people struggling to survive and even kill themselves in despair.

 

[EGVG]

If you want to go deep, we could say its like reading the paper on the clothing :D

I would say it's more like sending a model to Palestine, dressing her up like a child who has just lost its parents, and taking pictures.

Have you read the series Laura posted about the degradation of art??

I have to say that I don't agree with you, but you know its OK, just imagine if all of us think the same, there will be no lessons to learn from discousing with each other. And no I haven't read the Laura post on art degradation, but we are talking fashion here, what does it have to do with art??? Appart from the obvious, fashion has always been degratted.

EDU

 

[EGVG]

Keit, how is this Photo spread, mocking human and animal suffering? On the contrary I think this is a way for fashion to bee more relevant! Its a way to inform people that maybe didn't even new about this oil spill, Its a valid way to inform some people.

Because it is similar to having a fancy ball (not a fundraiser, mind you) in honor of starving children in Rwanda.

Because it is cynical and cruel for a fashion magazine to use the opportunity to present and sell expensive design clothes while entire Golf ecosystem is being destroyed and people struggling to survive and even kill themselves in despair.

Fashion is based on been cynical, but not in a good way. I think your getting way way carried away. You know that a fancy balls of that nature would not be on the cover of Vogue. There are fancy balls that don't honor anything ,but being self serving, every day.

EDU

 

[Mrs.Tigersoap]

Why would you say its shameful?

As others have said, because it is cynical and cruel. This will not raise awareness (the people who paid 15 to 20 $ to 'read'- there is not much to read in that magazine, so let's say browse - the magazine have the communication means to be aware of the oil spill)

Mrs.Tigersoap... I don't know what to say to you... (actually I do know but is inappropriate)

I don't see what in my comment would prompt you to make inappropriate comments (but thank you for refraining). I just gave my opinion, like you did.

One thing I can say is that this Vogue article does as much for helping victims as you do with your comments

Unlike Vogue Italia, it actually saddens me to not be able to do anything to help the victims, and unlike Vogue Italia, I don't have the means necessary to properly and honestly report to (their usually wealthy) readers who may actually have the means to help. But then again, it is not Vogue Italia's job to do so. Their job is to sell ad space and, from there, fashion. That is fine to me as long as they don't use other people's misery to do so. FWIW.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Because it is similar to having a fancy ball (not a fundraiser, mind you) in honor of starving children in Rwanda.

Because it is cynical and cruel for a fashion magazine to use the opportunity to present and sell expensive design clothes while entire Golf ecosystem is being destroyed and people struggling to survive and even kill themselves in despair.

Fashion is based on been cynical, but not in a good way. I think your getting way way carried away. You know that a fancy balls of that nature would not be on the cover of Vogue. There are fancy balls that don't honor anything ,but being self serving, every day.

EDU

EGVG, can you see how muddled your thinking is on the topic? On the one hand, you say fashion is degraded and cynical, and yet you defend a cynical and degraded photo shoot in the Gulf. On the one hand you say fancy balls are self-serving, yet you don't see the connection Keit was making, connecting this useless "self-service" with the useless "self-service" of doing a fashion shoot in the gulf.

You mention you haven't read the art series. It is here: _http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Darkmoon-ArtI.html

Your doublethink on the subject of fashion just shows how identified you are with it. Have you read the forum topics dealing with identification (do a search), or the cass glossary entry? It's here: http://glossary.cassiopaea.com/glossary.php?id=41&lsel=I

 

[EGVG]

Yes, I don't know what to say, why does it always happen that when I read this fashion posts I get so mean minded!?=! :( Its sad, something similar happend to me in the Lady Gaga topic that was locked. If someone felt I owe an apology, here it is. IM SORRY. For real, I'm so brain washed by fashion. As I said before, I do undertad your views, its just that I suffer from identification. I need to clean away that nasty dirt that is inside me. I'm immature Some times I can't help myself ,and star shothing hurtfull, or hurtful intended things out of my mouth. I think I have tourettes syndrome, have to remember that's not about who wins, or who's right.


EDU

 

[truth seeker]

In addition to the above link, EGVG, perhaps this post will help clarify as well.

Interestingly enough (and slightly off topic), I just read an article today on Alternet that I think describes well part of what is going on with not just these photographs, but the reactions to them by some in the general public. The article is referring to the cover of Time magazine that ran today with the picture of the Afghanistan woman who had her nose and ears cut off by her husband after she ran away from home to escape being beaten (bold mine). Because the picture may be offputting to some, I've left out the link to Aisha's picture but it can be found on the Time magazine site.:

It's hard, perhaps impossible, to look at the picture of Aisha and not feel horror, anger, fear. What's to be done? Time's editors have just the solution. The story's headline reads: "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan." Critics, including Muslim women bloggers, are accusing Time of exploiting Aisha to gather support for Obama's futile war in Afghanistan and boost dwindling sales of the magazine as well.

But Time isn't the only with Photoshop and a political agenda.

The editors at Time magazine were preparing for outrage over putting such a disturbing picture on their cover. Their managing editor reported that the staff consulted with child psychologists before deciding to run the photograph of Aisha with her missing nose. But the reaction they had expected never materialized. As the AP noted, very little of the discussion has centered on the shock of seeing the mutilated face of a young woman. In a visually saturated culture like ours, it may be that we are reaching a point where we can no longer see violence without --- as (Rosemarie) Romero's exhibit suggests --- putting it out of context.

Compare with AI's link to Occidental Observer above:

Marxist revolutionary Willi Munzenberg made no bones about his mission in life. It was to destroy Western civilization. No kidding. To accomplish this, he said, the Frankfurters would have to “organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only then, after they have cor­rupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dic­tatorship of the proletariat”. (OO's italics).

To summarize: Let’s create a culture of pessimism. Let’s make Western civilization stink. Let’s create a godless world and drive people to despair. Let’s corrupt society’s values and make life impossible. In short, let’s create hell on earth.

The alternet writer goes on to say:

The more I've looked at the picture of Aisha this week, the more I've found something that's as disturbing as her mutilation and Time's call to war: the beauty of the image.

In the cover photograph, Aisha's hair is thick and wavy as if it had been carefully arranged in a New York studio. The camera has captured her at a moment when she's staring at us from the corner of her eyes, her lips slightly parted as if she's about to speak. The light falls across her pale brown cheeks, picks up the contrast in the shawl covering her dark hair. The nose, cut away, the flesh having healed as one commentator wrote into a "heart shape," is the only indication that this young woman's life is endangered.

It's a photograph in the tradition of the National Geographic, where brown and black women and men and even children are rendered in bright colors, made exotic, almost desirable, and placed alongside images of whales and polar bears. The pain of hunger or war or disease is eerily absent. The images -- out of context -- are made more palatable to audiences.

It was National Geographic whose editors put an Afghan girl on their cover in the 1980s. Sharbat Gula was photographed in a refugee camp and this became "the" image of the war along the Afghan border at the time, even though the photographer never recorded her name. 



Sharbat's picture, like that of Aisha's, was a palette of rich colors: the haunting green of her large eyes, the light brown hues of her face, the dark cherry red of the shawl. With a nose intact, Sharbat could have appeared on the cover of Vogue as Afghan chic.

What were the photographers thinking?

I think Occidental Observer sums up well what they thought:

To undermine. To corrupt. To create discord. To drive crazy. To destroy. ...

Back to the alternet article:

Time's managing editor, Richard Stengel, has written that he published Aisha's picture not to support the war but to show "what is actually happening on the ground." The problem is he forgot the ground.

Granted, a cover photo can't serve too many purposes, not even more than one really. But placing the image of a young woman who's been mutilated outside of the context in which the horror has happened obscures the reality of the situation and conceals those who are responsible.

Here, I'm thinking of Phan Thị Kim Phúc.

The 1972 picture of her as a child, naked, her light brown body burning from napalm, running, revealed the cruelty of the war in Vietnam and actually of the 20th century. It unmasked what was happening on the ground, precisely because it showed Kim Phúc running down the road along with other children, soldiers behind and to the side, in the background the sky had been replaced with ominous man-made clouds.

I'm not suggesting that a photograph should have been taken of Aisha as she was attacked. But it's a disservice to the reality of war to have her image so carefully constructed and divorced from its context: the men and women dying at the hands of American forces, the collaboration of Pakistan spies and the Taliban.

It suggests that photojournalists and their editors today, unlike their 1970s counterparts, might be leaving the hard work of revealing what's actually happening on the ground to young artists of color like Romero.

There's obviously much more to what's going on than the writer has surmised, but I do appreciate her questioning of it. Also, while the author is focusing on women of color in this piece, we can clearly see examples around us of how all people are exploited in this way for many different agendas.

I won't place the link directly because I found the last picture to be offensive but for those who wish to read the full piece, the article is titled, Beautiful Women Used to Obscure the Horrors of War and is on Alternet.org

 

[Oxajil]

This thread reminds me of something.

I once took part in a poetry competition. And so we all sat down to listen to a guy telling us who had won the first, second and third prize. At first the guy spoke about the poems and stories they received from hundreds and how they didn't like it, because it was about love and romance. (As was mine as well) He said we should have written these for magazines instead.

It turns out the person who won the first prize wrote a story about having found a dead duck with its head missing on the street, taking it home, staring at it and kissing it. The end conclusion was ''hugging dead ducks isn't allowed".

It was quite a distasteful story. But I thought, well if those guys, who I assume have some knowledge in poetry and writing, think this story is great and is a product of talent then maybe it is. But now thinking it over, it is kinda sick.

 

[EGVG]

Thanks truth seeker, It did help me clarify. The link was also very interesting, and I saw the documentary that is on the previous post and it also make me realise how foolish and inconsiderate I'm sometimes.

EDU

 

[truth seeker]

Thanks truth seeker, It did help me clarify. The link was also very interesting, and I saw the documentary that is on the previous post and it also make me realise how foolish and inconsiderate I'm sometimes.

EDU

Try not to be so hard on yourself! We all find ourselves stuck at some point. :)

This thread reminds me of something.

I once took part in a poetry competition. And so we all sat down to listen to a guy telling us who had won the first, second and third prize. At first the guy spoke about the poems and stories they received from hundreds and how they didn't like it, because it was about love and romance. (As was mine as well) He said we should have written these for magazines instead.

It turns out the person who won the first prize wrote a story about having found a dead duck with its head missing on the street, taking it home, staring at it and kissing it. The end conclusion was ''hugging dead ducks isn't allowed".

It was quite a distasteful story. But I thought, well if those guys, who I assume have some knowledge in poetry and writing, think this story is great and is a product of talent then maybe it is. But now thinking it over, it is kinda sick.

You know, it's experiences like this that make people think they're insane sometimes.