Visual Violence and the Black Woman's Body: Janet meets Jean Paul (*Revised Comments*)
Note:
In reading some of the responses to this post, I returned to the images and reconsidered my initial comments. Let me clarify a few things. Some of you seem to be suggesting (vis-à-vis your disagreement with my thoughts) that the images of Jackson and Jones are open to a broad range of interpretations. I actually agree 100%. Like any visual work the “meaning” of the images is dependent upon the context in which they are consumed and in the subjective positions of the consumers. Simply put: the images take on different meanings for different people.
To call the images “racist” was perhaps a bit dramatic, nonetheless I do contend that Goulde’s photography invokes—however so slightly, or not—a violent representational history of black women’s bodies. This is not to say that as contemporary viewers we cant “do something with” these images, or that we cant re-appropriate their meanings and take “pride” in the “beauty” of blackness being represented here. My point rather was to at least highlight something that V Magazine completely elided in their overwhelmingly celebratory embrace of Goulde: there is indeed something problematic about the photographer's “fetish” for visualising black women in overtly “primitivist” contexts.
For a well rehearsed debate on similar issues related to the consumption of "negative" images of black bodies, i'd recommend Kobena Mercer’s classic essays “Skin Head Sex Thing: Racial Difference and the Homoerotic Imaginary” and “Looking for Trouble”.
Now onto my original post, slightly revised:
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The magazine's inside tag-line reads something like " Janet meats Jean Paul." At first, based on the crazy “cotoure” headpiece on Jackson's head, I assumed that the publication was referencing Jean Paul Gaultier, the fashion designer.
Then I looked again. I realized that the cover image is actually by Jean Paul Goulde, the “legendary” French photographer. In the magazine he is quoted as saying he wanted to photograph
Visually, Jackson's dramatic "euro-Africanist” head-piece and brown bare-body resonates as a sort of postmodern Josephine Baker.
Goulde seems to have an interesting history photographing black women as exotic objects. He is perhaps best known for his early collaborations with Grace Jones, whom he was briefly married to. Many of Jones’ visually striking---and deeply problematic----images were crafted for Goulde.
Take for instance his famous photograph of Jones’ 1985
Here we see Jones visualized as a sort of retro, black superwoman-turbo-bitch. Her face obscured and turned to the side, the image clearly fetishizes her black skin and muscled ass. Visually the photo renders her as an intimate object rather than as an actual living body.
And then we have this precious little gem, equally animalistic:
No, you’re not seeing things. Not only is Grace Jones is a cage, the sign overtop reads “Do Not Feed the Animal”.
Janet, c’mon now. Why are you collaborating with the devil ?
Frank, I must disagree with your feeling on Jean Paul Goude's photography. Now, I don't particularly like the images of Janet(the jeans with the headpiece was a weird contrast) but I didn't get anything you got from them. Janet is well muscled yet she's feminine. That's her body. She's an athletic black woman who celebrates it. Greasing her up doesn't make her more masculine looking at all. And I LOVE the classic images Jean Paul Goude and Grace Jones COLLABORATED on. I think they're iconic and highly artistic. Grace Jones is a tall, exotic, striking, androgynous, athletic, and oftentimes overtly sexual Jamaican woman and she totally plays on that image. I kinda get your feelings on the pic of Grace in the cage but Grace is controversial! Her entire image is the wild uninhibited woman, before and after all the work she did with Jean Paul.
Posted by
Anonymous |
3/01/2007
I think on a very basic level it is RACIST photography, and I don't see how one can argue otherwise. The body politics, which are for black women are a matter of race, are clear whether it be Grace Jones, Janet Jackson, our mothers,partners, sisters, aunties, etc. The institution of racism was supported by the proliferation of these images of black women's bodies as available, exotic, and so on. Ditto for the black male body. We can go on and on about how these sexualized images then relate to the perceived natural heterosexuality and reproductive purposes for those same bodies too. But, suffice it to say, for me, its this simple... when I see these pictures, I think these women are being portrayed through the gaze of the slave master and if that ain't racist, then I don't know what is. If Grace and Janet are fine with these images, then they are complicit in what these images (mis)represent. I mean, what will we defend next. Mapplethorpe? lol.
Posted by
Anonymous |
3/02/2007
Frank, why recant your agument? Jean Paul's photos are clearly racist. He use terms such as, "child-like" and Gould clearly plays off stereotype. It is quite simple, if there is a feeling of emptiness in your stomach when you view these images, they are racist. Stand behind your agument. Why must the black body always be exoticized? Grace Jones in a cage, whether she is accepting of it or not is disgusting, and is futher proof that even 2007 society is still searching for the next Saartje.
Posted by
Anonymous |
3/02/2007
Frank, could you please tell me if there is a ball community here in Los Angeles. I have searched high and low and have not been able to locate a lively gay black community much less anything that would even be half of what the ball scene is on the east coast and in the south. If you know that there is such a community here could you work your magic connections and let me know when the next one is. This place is cultural wasteland and I'm not about to be fossilized with the rest of the white drag queens walking up and down hollywood.
Posted by
Anonymous |
5/19/2007