The U.S vogue cover of African-American NBA basketball player, Lebron James and supermodel, Gisele Bündchen was founded to be controversial in 2008. The photo depicts Lebron James aggressively throwing down his basketball and holding Gisele Bündchen. The photo was seen to be controversial because of the King Kong reference being made of the iconic scene of king kong, the gorilla holding a woman at the top of a building and beating his chest. In this instance, the 2008 U.S Vogue cover reflected the iconic scene. However, many took offense to the image because of the racial connotations of historically depicting black people as animals, more specifically gorillas, monkeys and chimpanzees.
The historical racial connection to these animals was used to dehumanize Black people and further make them feel inferior, primitive and ugly. The mentality of dehumanizing black people and reducing them to an animal was used to systematically oppress them while promoting white supremacy. The 2008 Vogue cover was interpreted by many to covertly make people have the associations of Black people to be animalistic, aggressive and ape-like creatures.
In result, the 2008 April Vogue cover was founded to be one of the lowest April issues sold since 2001.There was not a statement issue made by Vogue editor, Anna Wintour, regarding the cover. Nor did they revoke the cover from stands. In regards to ethics, I would have handled the controversial cover by issuing a statement to the public acknowledging why the photo is problematic and apologize. I would have also notified the public to let them know that at the point where the cover is already out you can’t revoke it because of the amount of time and money it took to for the issue to come out. Lastly, I would take measures to prevent this from happening again by having more diversity on the team and to also run more effective focus groups for covers.
My ethics map focus on Trust, Believe and Succeed. I believe that if you trust your work and believe in your work, it will become something special. You can succeed at any task you put your mind to if you really work for it. You should sets standards for yourself and work for them and try not to step out of the box.
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