dong20 said "It's surely quite obvious what the image is representing."
Umm, no. It's not obvious at all. Your strong liberal side controlling your thoughts too much on this.
It was obvious
to me, and I'm only empowered to speak for myself. You should remember that before deciding for me, what is controlling
my thoughts.
One thing I've noticed about your posts is that you often like to start off by presenting both sides of a debate. One might thnik you were a moderate from reading the beginning of your posts. Or that you are one willing to objectively consider the evidence. Yet your opinions are clearly really liberal.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, and I dislike labels, but to me, it's called being able to see more than one viewpoint in any given situation. To recognise and accept that from
their perspective a person's opinion will appear valid - even if
I don't agree with it or it's just plain wrong. In this case I stated that people will see what
they want, and others won't see what's actually there. Your comments exemplify this quite well, IMO.
Also, I sometimes like to play devils advocate, and I've found arguing for 'other side' can be an effective of testing the validity of one's
actual opinion.
I'm not surprised the politically correct brigade sees this as King Kong roaring while holding a white woman. The basketball player himself says he had decided to show emotion (he is in sports ya know). Somehow it sort of reminds me of religious folks seeing Jesus's face in a cornflake.
Neither am I, but recognising this
doesn't mean I agree with that interpretation. I didn't state
my view, I offered the subject up for discussion with a little 'prod'. You put
your spin on my words. That's your prerogative of course, but it
doesn't make you correct.
The image represents pinnacles of physicality needed in their professions. The man is posed aggressively because he's representing the 'aggression' and physical prowess required of a professional sportsman. The woman is relaxed and smiling because she's representing the epitome of feminine beauty and elegance of models - note her blowing hair, open smile and 'bouncy' stance. It's a stylised image, of
course it is.
In other words; they represent 'black and white' - the extremes of a physical spectrum, not the 'grey' that most of us occupy.
Anyway, that's what I saw. I didn't seearacist parody of 'beauty and the beast' that some others evidently did - my first impression was reinforced when I read the cover story info on the cover.
It's meant to be powerful because it represents people who
are powerful in very different ways. IMO, a use of colour doesn't
in itself imply a racist agenda. Nevertheless, people who choose to, will find and assign one anyway, as I stated already.
Naturally, one
could look deeper and 'see' an unspoken commentary on 'good and evil', the 'taboo' of interracial sex, ethnic imbalances in professions etc. Yes, the gender roles
are 'stereotypical', but it's a woman's magazine and how many ~seven foot tall female baseball players
are there? But this wouldn't be
my first impression, and a magazine cover is all about first impressions, right? Assigning motive where it
doesn't belong
could say more about the assigner than the assignee.
Let's also recall that KK
loved Faye. All this seems quite obvious, at least to me. I won't presume to speak for
you.:tongue:
