Elizabeth Daigh - Hooks

In Hooks article, the first sentence "within current debates about race and difference, mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgment of racial different" really stood out to me.While reading this essay I immediately thought of fashion. I think that everywhere in fashion designers are using "the other" race to make them different or more exotic from the other. I really like what Cuckoo says about America's Next Top Model, as "the other" is very prevalent in the show. On the runway designers are always using black people to make the clothes appear a different way and show them in a different light. It changes the appeal and make the clothes seem as though they are different- it makes them more appealing. At the same, I also think that high fashion magazines will use African setting with white women to advertise. In a controversial Vogue spread it was telling how "cultured" Keira Knightly was. The picture of her with Masaai Tribes in Tanzania and she was modeling with them but at the same time she was wearing a 3,000 dollar dress. Another picture was of her with an elephant which had a Louis Vuiton cashmere blanket thrown over its back. To me, this seemed crazy. The idea that wealthy America's could/ would go into an extremely impoverished country and take pictures with them with all of this high class very expensive stuff. I think the quote "when race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the Other" can be applied to what I am trying to say. In the sense that Vogue used rural Tanzania as its "playground" for visual pleasure. This spread raised controversy because people thought it was crazy to go into their tribe and put all this money in front of their eye and see how we have so much technology - and I agreed. I agreed until I read an interview with my favorite photography, Peter Beard, (who has done lots of fashion Photography in Africa) and he looked at it differently. The tribes are not upset at all more so they are happy to offer their art, their land, and culture as we are embracing it by taking pictures and wanting to show it off to America society and showing it in high fashion magazines. The tribes also have no idea what an L and V all over a blanket mean. Its not like they are thinking "Oh My God how could they bring all this designer clothing in here". Peter Beard thinks of using their tribe as further embracing the art of fashion, photography, and other cultures.