In light of our recent posts regarding the racial overtones of the Vogue magazine’s recent cover on LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen, The New Republic magazine has weighed in with an edition with the above illustration.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what that cover illustrates in this TNR issue. The issue has a vaguely environmental theme. But is this how one illustrate environmental issues? It’s truly a head-scratching cover.
I can’t and I won’t say anything.
Stuart Noble in The Agonist, one of my favorite blogs, did a post last week that I only became aware of this morning (I usually visit daily but . . .). It’s on the LeBron James Vogue magazine cover that I first blogged about a couple of weeks ago. It is very well done. He drew on more sources and wrote a very good post.
Feministe and Jezebel have posted thought-provoking pieces. And Bag News Notes, another one of my absolute favorite blogs, unbeknownst to me, had also already weighed in.
I am not sure if this changes anything, but it is available at Vogue. Here is the Vogue story. Other images in the package:
Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and model Caroline Trentini.
Rollerboarder Shaun White and model Daria Werbowy.
Model Raquel Zimmermann and Olympic discuss thrower Jared Rome.
Model Doutzen Kroes and Olympic speed skater Apollo Anton Ohno
The image below came from the comments section on the post.
Here’s how the commenter, Zuma, described how the image came about:
when lisa and i first got together, she told me about a book by john tigges that she liked, ‘monster’, so i drew an illo of it for her. the monster’s love for the female protagonist was about providing, hence i named the drawing provide. it was one of extremely few such files i did not color. god knows why. i just knew there was an unusual amount of factors at play in the piece.
Noble had this to say about that image:
Thanks for the observation
It’s an interesting sketch but I don’t think the emotion of your image resembles at all the negative cultural heritage which I argue the LeBron image represents.
stuart noble April 2, 2008 – 2:27am