Looks like King Kong to me.
I don’t know that that’s necessarily a bad thing - doesn’t it play into the image Mr. James has cultivated? Isn’t he trying to be a badass of some sort (I quit following the game after Michael Jordan retired)?
In other words, is it BAD to be portrayed as King Kong if you’re a wealthy, powerful, successful King Kong?
Or is it all a bunch of monkey business?
Annie Leibovitz shot that, btw.
It’s ignorant commentary from ignorant people.
For starters, Lebron James has been known as “King James” since his high school days. So any King Kong comparison would stem from that, not any kind of racial “black men = gorillas” angle.
Two, Lebron James has always tried to be portrayed as an exciting, dynamic person/player in every advertisement he has appeared in. He’s always screaming, running, jumping… doing something.
Third, Lebron James is routinely known around the league and among fans as one of the good guys. The only people that would view him as a “dangerous black man” are those who know nothing about him.
It’s baseless and if I were James I’d be pretty damn insulted.
In the Chicago Tribune story linked in the OP, there is one of those little unscientific ‘click and give us your opinion’ polls. I laughed to see that the majority ‘didn’t care’, and the second highest vote ‘liked the cover.’ If I were Lebron James, I’d be pretty pissed off that someone looked at me and immediately thought, “Hey, he looks like King Kong.”
Well, poops, this isn’t at all the context I imagined. I thought LeBron James was a rabblerouser.
If he’s one of the gentlemen of the game, then I’d imagine the whole question is rather insulting. Which explains why nobody else opened a thread on the topic already.
That chickie in the picture is part of the message, she reminds me of Jessica whatsername (I’m a bit young for Fay Wray).
Jessica Rabbit?
If I was searching for insult from that Vogue cover, it would be that the story they are illustrating is “The World’s Best Bodies,” and in Anna Wintour’s World, that means men who are athletes and women who are fashion models. Not, god forbid, athletes.
I’d have dropped dead if she had one of the Williams sisters posing with Lebron.
I can’t think of any image from King Kong that really resembles that photo. I can see why people might say it’s playing to stereotypes, with a very powerful-looking black man screaming (“acting like an animal”) and grabbing a white woman, but King Kong specifically? I don’t see it.
Imagine the basketball as a barrel.
Sir, either I’m being whooshed, or your princess is in another castle.
What I’m trying to say is that whoever created that title “King Kong” was probably thinking both of King Kong and Nintendo’s Donkey Kong. They’re both giant gorillas, after all, who like young, shapely women. It’s just that one prefers curves to pixels.
In my mind, it seems easy to amalgamate both of those images together to create a more heavily reinforced impression of “Kong” in general.
Actually, if one looks closely at the photo, there is no “grabbing” at all. He is not even resting his palm lightly on her hip, but has his hand closed (but not in a fist) so that he is not in any way holding or restraining her.
(I appreciate the contrast between his screaming ferocity and her playful insouciance (does she look frightened?), but let’s hot add things to the photo that are clearly not there.)
This is an ESPN article on it from a few days back, with a King Kong image in it.
Personally, I DO think that the image was meant to invoke King Kong.
I don’t really have a problem with it. I’m so far past the idea of the black man as savage beast, that I’m not concerned if someone decides to play it up. I don’t think Annie Leibowitz is trying to say “black people are apes.”
I don’t think I’d take it as a King Kong thing first. If I was to take it as a stereotyoe of anything, it would be male vs. female. That the person playing the role of the stereotypical male is black wouldn’t enter into it.
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous kerfluffles of which I’ve ever had the displeasure of having to be aware.
People have seriously got to get off this stupid whiny pussy bullshit right NOW, or we’ll never get past the 1930s (1850s? 1700s?).
Nobody would’ve even noticed if some stupid wuss hadn’t pointed it out.
People suck.
I think he looks like Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong is badass and really hard to beat. I think LeBron James is badass and really hard to beat. They’re also both hominids (er, one being a digital representation of a hominid). That’s where the similarities end.
What’s so bad about that?
Nobody would have noticed? Seriously?
What do you think the artist intended to convey with that pose? It’s ostensibly about physique, but they’re not standing next to each other smiling at the camera in “Under Armour” to show off their bodies.
He is hunched over with his arm dangling, and a screech on his face.
Now, I might think it is dumb to make an issue out of it, but you can’t deny that the artist was going for a “beauty and the beast” look.
Or possibly those who’ve seen him play basketball.
Count me in the “this controversy is silly” category.
This is an outrage. We must protect the honor of our white women from the hordes of rampaging black apes clutching basketballs and listening to so-called “rap” groups like “Public Enemy.”
I don’t know squat about basketball, but I’m a BIG King Kong fan, and that cover immediately made me think of that film. And I hadn’t heard about this controversy until I saw it posted here.
On the other hand, I don’t think the photographer, Le Bron, or the magazine intended any sort of racial or racist subtext. And, for the record, people have been trying to put a racial/racist subtext on King Kong for over 40 years. Some critics claim that it’s an allegory of the enslavement of blacks. That would come (probabl;y DID come – most of them were still alive in the 60s) as a shock to the filmmakers.
I don’t know, gotta ask Leibowitz, I reckon. But I was commenting on the reaction to the pic, not the pic itself. I think that if someone has the reaction of “Black Man/White Woman/Menacing Look/Arm Around Waist=King Kong=Hey, they’re calling black people apes” is an utterly ridiculous stretch, and seems like a kind of soft racism to me.
ETA: I don’t mean that the if the image invokes King Kong to you, then you’re a racist, just that leaping from there to jumping around screaming “OMG, they’re offending the negroes!!!” might be, in a fashion.