{"id":522,"date":"2008-03-14T11:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T16:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/03\/14\/athletes-and-models\/"},"modified":"2010-01-21T03:32:10","modified_gmt":"2010-01-21T08:32:10","slug":"athletes-and-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/03\/14\/athletes-and-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Race and the King Kong Motif"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/blogger2wp\/lebron-.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177637367310716274\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/blogger2wp\/2lebron-.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is a cover of <em>Vogue<\/em> featuring LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen. Notice the postures: LeBron as the hulking, angry black man, and Gisele as arm candy. Apparently this issue has a whole section on &#8220;the World&#8217;s Top Models and Star Athletes.&#8221; Hmmm, I wonder what the gender breakdown is?<\/p>\n<p>Notice also the way in which the image reproduces the famous King Kong imagery:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/06\/race-king-kong.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1501 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/06\/race-king-kong.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"334\" height=\"450\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/video.msn.com\/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&amp;brand=msnbc&amp;vid=b8530243-fa58-40f3-87fc-3a6e8e11761c\">Here<\/a> is a link to an MSNBC segment on the cover.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Carmela Z. for sending this image along!<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000\"><strong>NEW (Jan &#8217;10)!<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span> Ruth D&#8217;R. and a\u00a0reader-who-wishes-to-remain-anonymous sent us this\u00a0(highly photoshopped) photo\u00a0of Kanye West and Lady Gaga, one of the images in her\u00a0&#8220;Fame Monster&#8221; CD liner notes.\u00a0 Some argue that it, too, reproduces the racialized King Kong imagery in which a black man (threatens to) ravage a white woman:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-18436\" title=\"lady-gaga-kanye-west\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/03\/lady-gaga-kanye-west.jpg\" alt=\"lady-gaga-kanye-west\" width=\"436\" height=\"568\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Some may think that this is a reach.\u00a0 But I think her nudity, plus the symbols of primitivity (the plants, the erupting volcano, and even the khakis) clearly invoke animalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a cover of Vogue featuring LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen. Notice the postures: LeBron as the hulking, angry black man, and Gisele as arm candy. Apparently this issue has a whole section on &#8220;the World&#8217;s Top Models and Star Athletes.&#8221; Hmmm, I wonder what the gender breakdown is? Notice also the way in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[155,218,55,2090,285,1760,1757,108],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-bodies","tag-gender","tag-gender-violence","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9415,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions\/9415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}