Here's video of the show. The MeTwo* models appear around 0:50:
My screenshots:
When something is presented in visual form, I prefer to look and come up with my own opinion. Whatever answers exist should be there in the thing that was intended to exist in the world as a visual object. This is like being a constitutional textualist. But maybe you think the intent of those who made the thing matters, in which case, the Washington Post reports on an effort at extracting the intent** of the framers from Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele.
Michele cites an essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway, which, we're told, is "a critique of identity politics and the idea that people must fit within predefined cultural boundaries."
“Limiting fashion to something that only produces business is too easy,” Michele said of the theme, according to Reuters.Who knows what role Michele played in producing the theater of this fashion show? Does he even know the origin of this duplicate-head idea? As he speaks to reporters now, he is part of a larger performance, advertising his business and caring or pretending to care about art and politics and philosophy. In that role, whatever it really is, he steers us to an essay and offers a gentle, sweet interpretation that could be accepted at face value — yes, I should visualize my own head as a lovable baby to be cradled and protected — or felt as a nudge to see that he lying — the models are carrying heads that are not attached to their bodies and look at those operating tables... what do you think will happen there or has it already happened? Get out!
So why severed heads? According to Michele, they were about accepting one’s self and “looking after your head and thoughts.”
Here's the Wikipedia article on "A Cyborg Manifesto." Excerpt:
Haraway calls for a revision of the concept of gender, moving away from Western patriarchal essentialism and toward "the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender," stating that "Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all, even if it has profound historical breadth and depth."________________________
Haraway also calls for a reconstruction of identity, no longer dictated by naturalism and taxonomy but instead by affinity, wherein individuals can construct their own groups by choice. In this way, groups may construct a "post-modernist identity out of otherness, difference, and specificity" as a way to counter Western traditions of exclusive identification.
* My coinage.
** WaPo's headline is "Gucci models walk the runway — with replica severed heads of themselves," which presumes the head the model carries was originally attached to this model — who now has a replacement head — or to this model's identical twin. But it could represent what it obviously is, a replica head which was never severed from anything at all. We could see it as nothing but a 3-D selfie! It's not dripping blood, like the Trump mask Kathy Griffin grimly displayed.
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55 comments:
I wish I too could so easily duplicate my most valuable asset.
It's a narciccessory.
Do you notice the clothes? Or do you notice the heads? From the perspective of noticing the show, it works fine. But from the perspective of noticing whatever Gucci is peddling with this show, it’s a flop.
I wonder if they sell a carrying case for those, or at least a belt clip. I need both hands free to carry firewood.
"I'm gonna go grab a coffee, just talk to my head for a minute."
Daniel Pearl was unavailable for comment.
"Patriarchal essentialism" isn't "western".
Good Lord what an ignorant idea.
As for carrying heads, thats pretty dumb too, depending on the purpose.
Big Mike is right, the dumb wipes out the impression of the clothes.
But it does get people talking about the show and the designer. Often this sort of stuff is not really meant for a general audience but to "break in" with certain people. Create name recognition.
Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment
That right there is a big part of your innate gender difference. No functional male would ever think of sex as having a sometimes aspect to it.
They did a pretty good job of replicating the models faces apparently.
And the clothes, and models, look like they are meant to represent hapless Eloi.
The fashion industry is controlled by gay men with the purpose of making women look unattractive to straight men.
Mission Accomplished.
The model's head is the only part the fashion designer doesn't really need*.
(*unless they are selling hats).
The rest of the body merely functions as an animated clothes-hanger.
The model may view her second head as the most valuable part, which is sad on many levels:
Her head has nothing valuable to the clothing industry;
The head is blind, eyes not moving, and mute, no words to speak;
Her head is merely an accessory, like -- say -- a Gucci handbag.
And did she really choose the head? Or was it simply discarded by the 'surgeons' from the second body, like an unneeded appendix tossed away into a bio-waste can?
Perhaps the body is all any others wanted from her: a conveyance of ephemeral fashion trends and sexual use with no identity or choice.
As such, her body will eventually be discarded, too, to be replaced by a younger, fresher body: she has a short shelf-life as a commodity.
And she will be left to carry her head as Yorick's skull, pondering her existence, and if she ever had any meaning at all.
The Germans have a word for this.
Do women LIKE fellows that look, and present, like that?
Or for that matter, gay men?
Just noticing the sexlessness, or rather the apparent impotence, of the males. Not a hint of a spark of, well, anything. Bland and useless, not even prey animals. More like creatures in a feedlot.
am I really the only one whose first thought was "huh, I haven't heard of an ISIS beheading in a while, weren't those in fashion for a time"?
I call for a revision of the concept of Haraway.
"cant you see im reading big words"
Two heads are better than one.
It's a Doll Revolution.
Creepy.
Just noticing the sexlessness, or rather the apparent impotence, of the males. Not a hint of a spark of, well, anything. Bland and useless, not even prey animals. More like creatures in a feedlot.
The women too. But you're not supposed to notice the models -- just the clothes. The models are moving clothes displayers, that's it. Some I couldn't even decide if they were male or female.
Having two carry replica heads was a good idea, I guess: Buzz! I wonder if the two models got to keep their replicas. Or if the guy (?) carrying a dragon got to keep that?
Can we go back to the days when designers made clothes, models with nice figures, well-coiffed hair, and pretty make-up wore them on the runway, and we got to see the clothes?
When I see those images, I think of Princess Langwidere, the minor antagonist in Ozma of Oz, who had seven different heads that she wore on different days. When Dorothy Gale showed up she proposed to expropriate Dorothy's head as well, as a new ornament to her collection.
There is art and then there is this kind of crap. People who get sucked into it are naive non-seers of the unclothed emperor.
Think how incredibly awash in money and leisure we must be, that anyone staged this and, more astoundingly, bothered to analyze it.
Western patriarchal essentialism and toward "the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender,"
I wasn’t aware it was only the West that was Patriarchal.
Did someone ever ask that nincompoop how the rest of the world views gender or organized their society around it?
As a means to get pictures of unattractive people wearing unattractive and ill-fitting attire published on hundreds of websites with the Gucci name prominent the "severed head" trope works brilliantly. As Oscar Wilde dryly noted, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
This week on the Althouse blog the dominating subjects were trolls and trolling. The fake head and the lame artsy-fartsy justification offered by Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele is trolling of the first order.
"the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender"
Is it really necessary to point out the dismal history of attempts to realize utopian dreams, that attempts to create a "heaven on earth" all too often create the opposite instead?
So, yes, severed heads seem appropriate. Because by now we should understand that when shouts of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" are heard in the public square it won't be long before the guillotines are seen there as well, and begin doing their deadly work.
On the matter of the "explanation", it has become routine to assume that works of art should be explained. Perhaps I'm a fool, but a work of art that cannot speak for itself is the definition of the worst art imaginable.
Right, Qauestor. Does the Sistine Chapel require an explanation? Monet's Bain à la Grenouillère?
Someone at T-Lo joked that the heads were purses. I was quite taken with this idea. I'll sit for the casting, and then I can carry my own head around, open my mouth to retrieve my wallet, etc. Can I store my sunglasses on my own purse-ears? Carry an extra scrunchie on my purse-hair?
...wherein individuals can construct their own groups by choice....
Unless you’re conservative or Christian.
I'll pass on the Kathy Griffin Collection . . .
Ichabod Crane would run away fast. But the decapitated look is in now. Women are only body parts is the clear message.
Is this supposed to be an indicator of how weakened ISIS has become?
I wonder how this goes down with friends and family of Foley and others.
Didn't even notice the heads at first. Was more interested in where they found all the albinos.
This was no doubt inspired by the artist who painted Obama's portrait. In a prior work he portrayed a black woman holding the decapitated head of a white woman. You probably won't see any black severed heads in this fashion show.
After watching the video I'm astounded that the audience wasn't laughing hysterically. Fools, all!
Clothing-wise, thrift store rejects.
And the left blames normal people for our culture being so fucked up.
After watching the video I'm astounded that the audience wasn't laughing hysterically. Fools, all!
The only activity preferable to attending a (gawd help us) fashion show is a colonic irrigation.
There was a time when fashion models were gorgeous. Nowadays those wispy waifs just raise my gorge.
This was a tribute to the great Hollywood designer Edith Head, who also invented the sexual practice which bears her name.
I was at work earlier and couldn't post a link from my phone, so here it is:
Tear Off Your Own Head (It's a Doll Revolution)
It's a cover of an Elvis Costello song, from their 2003 album Doll Revolution.
That's the Bangles version, btw.
"When something is presented in visual form, I prefer to look and come up with my own opinion. Whatever answers exist should be there in the thing that was intended to exist in the world as a visual object. This is like being a constitutional textualist."
This is also a foundational statement of Visual Sociology. Art even. A picture should speak for itself; if more words are needed, then anyone's two cents are as good as anyone else's view.
Two thousand years ago, the architect Vitruvius held similar ideas: visual representations should correlate with the known world. This is ridiculous and bespeaks loads about the designer.
But, then again, it's for a leather wear company.
Clothing-wise, thrift store rejects.
Never have I seen anything that ridiculous in a thrift store. Thrift stores carry clothing that someone has actually worn. Who would wear this rubbish?
Are those ski masks supposed to be a Nordic version of the niqab?
After watching the video, I just had to shake my head. All of that effort making clothing that no sane person would wear. They looked like costumes from some really bad futuristic science fiction movie, one with a Rotten Tomatoes score in the single digits. Note that the snake/snake prop was not a coral snake, but apparently a scarlet snake. "Red touch yellow, kill a fellow." Also, how much did the New York Yankees and the San Francisco Giants get for the use of their logos? Finally, the guy who came out at the end was a dead ringer for a younger Charles Manson.
It was a touching tribute to Obama portraitist Kehinde Wiley/
WTF!
Clyde observes: Finally, the guy who came out at the end was a dead ringer for a younger Charles Manson.
Yeah, the audience didn't know if he was part of the show or a mass murderer.
Actually, he looked a lot like my brother.
@Clyde, so perhaps you're thinking that it's a good thing people concentrated on the heads and not on the clothes?
Makes sense.
"Now" or "not" (headline)? Both are true, of course.
The snake was a tell, in that its coloration mimicked a dangerous poisonous snake. The red, black and yellow tells other animals to stay away, it's dangerous! I think that the outfits in this fashion show say something similar, that the wearer is "not quite right."
I think that the outfits in this fashion show say something similar, that the wearer is "not quite right."
I know I'd stay well away from those weirdos.
Some of them actually looked like crazed bag ladies.
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