FYI... LeBron James as the "mad brute" ape; Giselle as Lady Liberty

[krkaufman]

My nephew sent me this image, of a WW-I US military recruitment propaganda poster, evidently what must have been the inspiration for the Vogue cover...

http://www.digitaldesk.org/projects/secondary/propaganda/destroy_brute.html




There's much ado about the Vogue cover, with many references to King Kong and Fay Wray... so I thought this propaganda poster needed to be catapulted, to "clear up" *some* of the misconceptions.

See? The photographer wasn't depicting LeBron as King Kong.

[krkaufman]

1. Followup... apparently the photographer, Annie Liebowitz, has a history of doing such recreations...

see: http://www.linkbrander.com/go.php?linkid=18369

[WCGreen]

2. Well LeBron play BBall with an in your face style and

the woman s a model so I guess she poses and smiles a lot...

Much ado about nothing, as far as I can tell...

[bananas]

3. It shows how regressive we have become

In the original, her tata's were exposed.
Can't have that today!

[psychmommy]

4. i was one who thought it was a king kong reference.

but if you think this is any better-wrong. there is a history of whites using simian analogies to african americans. i won't allow my kid to wear that monkey on her clothes-billy jack. when you have been called hurtful names that crap sticks with you. i am very sensitive, young folks like him may not remember but, i am in my 40's. that is the insult it was intended to be. look at the time the original was done. just because something was done before, doesn't mean it should be done again.

[krkaufman]

5. Oh, no. I *believe* I agree with you, psychmommy...

... but cannot claim total understanding, not being of a minority group, myself. Regardless of what LeBron, Giselle, Annie Liebowitz or Vogue intended to communicate in the photo*, I understand that many would take umbrage with the photo, given historical precedents -- and even more so now that I see the original image that obviously inspired it.

* Who knows, given Giselle's German ancestry, maybe they were trying to make a statement of how far we've come in the last hundred years... no longer enemies with the Germans, and more racially diverse. Without Liebowitz admitting the source of the photo's inspiration and what she intended, we'll likely never know -- and so are left to interpret the work, each in our own way, based on our individual perceptions and experiences.

As for King Kong, that the Vogue cover photo wasn't based literally on King Kong doesn't change the fact that the cover photo took its inspiration from within a long line of "damsel dragged-off by brute" representations, making King Kong and the Vogue cover siblings, of a sort, in that both appear to have been inspired by the same propaganda poster.


1887 - Emmanuel Frémiet Gorilla Carrying off a Woman 1887 Bronze




1917 - "Destroy This Mad Brute" WW I propaganda poster




1933 - King Kong movie poster (still?)




2008 - James/Bunchen Vogue cover