imomus | Yes, Kate Moss is not black.

Below, on the left, you can see an image of Kate Moss as a black woman. Nick Knight took the picture, Val Garland did the make-up, and it was commissioned by Giorgio Armani, who was guest-editing a section of the Independent newspaper dedicated to the fight against AIDS in Africa. The supplement ran on September 21st, and half of the profits went to African AIDS charities.

The reaction was swift, and almost entirely negative. "Racist" Kate Moss was "in blackface", said Visual Editors. Some commenters threatened to boycott Armani, others contented themselves with noting that real black women tend to be fatter than Kate Moss, who could, incidentally, "go back to her crack house". Most people agreed with an article that ran in the Independent's main rival, The Guardian, which asked why the model couldn't have been black.

"What exactly is this picture of Moss-as-African-woman supposed to portray?" asked Hannah Pool, the Guardian journalist. "I suppose it is meant to be subversive, but what does it say about race today when a quality newspaper decides that its readers will only relate to Africa through a blacked-up white model rather than a real-life black woman? What does it say about the fight against HIV/Aids if that is the only way to make us care? And, as a black woman (born that way), what does this trick say about me?"

"Next time a photograph of an African woman is needed," Pool concludes, "they should call on Iman. Or me."

Since the reaction to this image was so overwhelmingly negative, I thought I'd try to put a rather different point of view, because this touches on a lot of subjects I feel quite strongly about. I actually think the condemnation of this image is quite misguided and wrongheaded, resting as it does on a series of assumptions which I'd call rockist, simplistic, incredibly literal-minded, and unsophisticated in their understanding of the nature of representation -- and especially metonymy (the kind of imagery where one thing stands for, or represents, many).

First of all, the "why didn't they go the whole hog and employ a black person instead?" argument is like saying an impressionist shouldn't play the prime minister if the prime minister is available to do it himself, or that all drag queens should be replaced by real women.

The thing is, having someone play someone else raises a whole series of interesting juxtapositions, new meanings, involves fascinating skills and telling shortfalls. It lands us in the "uncanny valley", the place where categories fail and ostranenie takes over. When categories get mixed up, we have to question our reflexive assumptions -- and that's a good thing.

I think immediately of other representations of black people by whites. Sure, the Black and White Minstrel Show is the one all the complainants mentioned, but it isn't the only possible option. There's also Tibor Kalman's classic and brilliant image of Queen Elizabeth II as a black woman, which ran on the fourth edition of Colors magazine, back in 1993, the "What If..." issue. Or I think of the brilliant production The Wooster Group made of "The Emperor Jones", in which white actors play black people -- and yet everything is estranged and confused by brilliant kabuki songs and strange poetic alienation. Or I think of Black Like Me, in which white Texan John Howard Griffin describes six weeks disguised as a black man in the then-segregated Southern states of the US. Or the project in which Pier Fichefeux made portraits of Fabrica students of all races as if they were black.

Would Pool call Kalman, the Wooster Group, Griffin and Fichefeux casual, insensitive racists who should have used real black people? Or artistic provocateurs interested in making us see an old problem (essentially the "problem" of difference itself, or rather, "the difference that makes a difference") from a new angle?

Pool quotes academic Paul Gilroy: "The threat of being labelled politically correct creates an environment where we are scared to voice our objections." Given the context, the Kate Moss picture is "empty nihilism," he says. "Blacking up has become acceptable in the same way that pole dancing is now sold to women as an empowering thing to do," says Pool. "Both assume that the thing they are poking fun at no longer exists - ie discrimination, racism and sexism. But of course they are wrong."

This is simply not the case with the Armani image. The very last thing you do, if you want to make-believe that racism no longer exists, is black up. Blacking up is precisely what you do if you want to have a discussion about race. But identity politics does play a part in the misunderstanding of Nick Knight's image.

Basically, one of the problems of the identity politics movement of the 1970s is that it came out of the Me Generation. That's the "identity" part. You identify with others like yourself (gays, blacks, women) and militate for your own minority rights. Which is fine. But the politics that result are Me Politics. The idea emerges that it's only reasonable to represent your own wishes and needs, not those of people different from yourself. Not only do you not represent the needs of others (as traditional politics had done, sometimes patronizingly and pompously, but sometimes with genuine concern), you claim to be the only one able to represent yourself authentically. And here, of course, we encounter the spectre of rockism. If the image of a black person in the media is not represented by a real black person, say the rockists, it's not authentic, and therefore not acceptable.

But why would Iman be a better representative of Africa than Kate Moss? Aren't they both supermodel celebrities, their daily lives equally far removed from the experience of poor Africans with AIDS? What if, just experimentally, we said that anyone could represent Africa? Wouldn't it, in fact, be more useful, if the intention is to provoke concern for people unlike yourself, to show someone non-African declaring a solidarity with Africa?

We need to get beyond the lazy thinking which is the most negative legacy of identity politics. To represent the other, not just yourself, is a virtue, not a vice. Especially, obviously, when it's done with sympathy and compassion. The suppression of all imagery of black people played by other races is not the answer -- perhaps it even represents a wish to make black people invisible, or eternal victims, or segregated from the glitzy, celebrity-obsessed consumer culture we spoilt Northerners live in (which contributes, of course, to climate change that will impact Africa much more harshly than it does our own cold countries).

A white person playing a black person might actually represent respect for the other, a wish to become the other. Why then is a negative motive always assumed? Why must we boycott Armani? Would we boycott a straight actor who chose to play a gay man in a film? Is all travesty automatically "a travesty"?

And what if the metonymy involved in the Kate Moss image were not "Here is one (faux) black woman who stands for Africa" (as most commentators seem to assume) but something more like "Here is an image of the relationship between the North and the South"? In other words, what if the thing being portrayed here is our own bizarre position in relation to Africa's problems -- the fact that we consume and worship success and money while others fail and die?

What if the disturbing thing about the Kate Moss image were also the good thing about it -- that it collides tragedy and farce in a way that shows the full obscenity of a juxtaposition that exists in the real world? What if the shocking absurdity of this image were actually the most realistic thing you could show?

An image of a black person is an image of a clear, categorical identity. It's reassuring for that reason. We know what it is. An image of a half-black, half-white person is much more impure, confusing, alarming. It raises the spectre of deception, miscegenation, bastardy, and that disturbs us.

But above all, rather than an identity, what we see in a travesty image is a relationship -- the relationship between ourselves and the Other, the different. By refusing such images, we refuse to look at relationship -- in other words, our part in the problem. By insisting on the purity of identity and authenticity, we block out the more complex and complicit realities of race -- a difference that still makes a difference.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ex-mimic736.livejournal.com

FIRST!

From:

j03.livejournal.com

The paragraph on "identity politics" immediately reminded me of the problems my friend is having as a transgendered person in the gay community.

She is not seen as an "authentic" lesbian or gay person because she used to be a man.

Wondeful post!

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

Well, it's an interesting paradox: the idea of rockism is really an extension of identity politics, and yet it destroys identity politics, because while identity politics is intent on creating and working with essences, rockism as a concept questions and undermines them.

But it's more complex than that, because identity politics both reinforces essences like race by seeing them as "authentic" -- and also attempts to put them beyond discussion, by making them taboo. And what's beyond discussion is clearly beyond deconstruction.

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