When I saw the image of German shoe manufacturer Adidas' latest effort at teen exploitation; a shoe featuring a plastic shackle attaching the shoe to the ankle, the last thing I thought of was slavery and the first thing I thought of was the 'jailbird chic' culture that has our young and would-be young folks pretending to the lofty cultural and social status of convict. In fact I had to smile a bit since a gang of tragically hip home burglars was finally apprehended in my neighborhood after having performed over 50 burglaries in the last year -- unable to run from police because of their fashionably laceless shoes and hugely oversized shorts which made it impossible to run and to hold the pillowcases of loot and their pants at the same time. At least they were properly attired for the next stage of their careers.
Slavery was however, the first thing some thought about. The Rev. Jesse Jackson expressed his own outrage yesterday:
"The attempt to commercialize and make popular more than 200 years of human degradation, where blacks were considered three-fifths human by our Constitution is offensive, appalling and insensitive,"
The idea that racists would wear such things on their own feet, or worse, would force reluctant black teens to wear expensive shoes in shame seems far-fetched enough to suggest that life for some people is a continuous Rorschach test where every blot looks the same; where the shackled briefcases you might see in the financial district, being accompanied by a Brinks guard or two can only remind us of the anti-bellum South.
Of course it's all too fashionable to get neck and face tattoos and affect the garb and gaudy patter of convicts and ex-convicts and soon-to-be convicts -- as though the human degradation of our exploding prison system, choked as it disproportionately is with minorities, wasn't also offensive but it's self inflicted, self perpetuated and popular and has been for a long time. Addidas, it seems to me, is trying like everyone else to cash in on fashion, exploit extant popular culture and is not commercializing or popularizing a longing for slavery as much as trying to make a buck out of being outrageous in already outrageous times.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteYes, I think the whole "prison culture" thing has gotten way out of hand – now it's de rigueur not only to dress like the underclass but to dress like a criminal/criminalized underclass. The wonderful world of fashion never sleeps, never stops recycling the mind-forg'd manacles of post-industrial capitalist dreckh. "Mad Men" indeed.
Is there anything more shameful than making a fashion statement out of the misery of others? And an ugly fashion statement at that, with a generous topping of you-won't-believe-how-expensive-this-ridiculous-and-offensive-shit-is? The "droopy-pants" fad, by the way, comes to depressingly unoriginal teens near you via the penal system, but not, as some would have it, from the alleged practice of incarcerated gays signaling their, uh, easy availability to all comers. Snopes.com debunks that snarky meme, pointing out that the bagginess stems from the fact that prison clothing is often just not sized very accurately, or is in short supply, etc. So inmates often wind up with stuff that doesn't fit them, and of course belts aren't allowed for obvious reasons, so….
Of course, it needs only cursory mention that where fashion leads, television stomps up and down with its jackboots and goes cock-a-doodle-doo. What about all those cable shows choking the airwaves (or whatever they are) absolutely dedicated to all things prison? Are millions of people actually watching such offal? Taking pleasure in the fact that American prisons are supposedly dens of iniquity for the perpetration of continuous race-gang violence, homosexual rape and general depravity that trains those sentenced to become hardened "crimos" if they weren't already?
What the hell kind of people take pleasure in such a vile spectacle? Hell, what kind of people BOAST about it every chance they get and evidently think things ought to be still worse?
All this ranting has made me so mad I've got to stop so I can pull up my extra-extra-EXTRA large supermax-style dino dungarees. For the thirtieth time today, and it isn't even ten a.m. yet. If a stegosaurus sets out after me, I'm toast.
Whenever I see a facial tattoo, I'm always appalled by the message actually being passed by that particular fashion.
ReplyDeleteThat particular message being "my career plans involve either crime or minimum wage."
We bring our own experiences and history to our responses to issues, events, and yes, even a new shoe fashion. I understand Jackson's response. Intentional or not, the shoes suggest ankle shackles, worn by slaves and currently worn by inmates who are disproportionately African-American.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that Addidas conceived of this shoe style to invoke visions of slavery, nonetheless the ankle chains connect with images of oppression for many of us. It is not necessary to share those visions but part of fully appreciating diversity is recognizing that we share reality, but all of our realities are not the same.
By the way, neck and facial tattoos are a form of self-expression and do not signal gang membership nor minimal education nor a life of crime. Successful, intelligent, law-abiding people get facial and neck tattoos. Funny thing, I don't think that anyone who works on Wall Street sports a facial or neck tattoo, although there are plenty of them that should be in prison.
There should be laws of Semiotics as there are of thermodynamics and if there are not, I'll propose that the first one should be that symbols do not exist independently and the second one is that symbols, like time and velocity, are different in every frame of reference. I've seen swastikas in Buddhist temples.
ReplyDeleteSlave shackles connect the ankles to each other or to fixed objects, not to $400 shoes, something shackled slaves are not likely ever to have had. Couriers who carry valuables shackle those valuables to themselves. That, I'm sure was the statement the Adidas people were trying to make with their hideously overpriced sneakers
( made with quasi-slave labor:) they are valuable and the cool, street corner kids you want to be like will want to steal them from you.
Sometimes a shoe is just a shoe of course, and an ink blot is just an ink blot. I see bigotry where others do not and vice versa. . . but you know, these things weren't designed to be bought by Klan members or worn by racists or to offend anyone. The Aryan Nation animals wear boots anyway, not sneakers -- and of course tend to have lots of neck and face tatoos.
Yes, surely people who do not actually belong to the huge prison or gangster or criminal class, do indeed choose to "express" themselves with artificial tribal identification or solidarity -- that's what I'm talking about and I'm asking why so many people act just the same way if it's really self expression and not mass delusion or a commercially created bit of profitable tribalism. Was it really self expression when I wore my hair long and when the coffee houses of America were filled with identically dressed beatniks all talking the same way, was that really about self expression or that some old need to belong to an outsider tribe that isn't really outside anything?
The "in" group of outsiders today seems to me to be far more extreme than before in American history and to be disturbingly fond of pimps and prostitutes and addicts and petty criminals and whether or not those who buy the products and tokens of identification -- those who do the dance and speak the jargon may be upstanding people, but I want to know why they do what they do because we need to be one nation, not 20. Our survival is at stake.
What does it mean if I choose to express myself by wearing a ski mask into a bank or airport terminal because I think it's cool -- and is the bank guard a racist if he makes assumptions about me? How bizarre does free expression have to be before we begin to ask what it means? Could it be that we paint ourselves blue because someone has a lot of blue paint to sell?
If our kids would rather look, talk and act like Mike Tyson than Neil Degrasse-Tyson, I think it needs to be explored, not dismissed as a random and meaningless fashion phenomenon -- and I think we can't just dismiss such a tidal change in our culture by calling it self expression. There are reasons for it and I don't think they are healthy reasons. There are tremendous consequences for the future of all of us.
I don't know one way or t'other about the "racist" angle -- I very much doubt that there was a conscious attempt to promote such an angle, but of course people sometimes end up promoting racially insensitive or damaging foolishness without recognizing what they're doing. In other words, they're oblivious to the perceptions of others, which could be the case with shackle-clothing.
ReplyDeleteEither way, to me the main thing is that "rebellion" is a commodity in our commodity culture. Reminds me of the old joke about two identical-looking hippie dudes standing next to each other:
1st Dude: "Hey, man, look at me -- I'm a nonconformist!"
2nd Dude: "Yeah, man -- me too!"
Most of what we try to pass off as originality is no such thing. Indeed (said the professorial dinosaur), "absolute originality" or a demand for uniqueness of expression seems to be fairly new, dating only to the Romantic era. I think the whole "beaucoup de tattoos" trend is unfortunate and the last thing that would ever occur to me about a heavily betatted individual is, "Dammmn, that person is original!" I'm suspicious of the originality of people who feel it's necessary to use their physical appearance to show me just how original they are. But what the hey? It's their choice.
Now as for me, "I swear by the blackest brook of hell, / I am no pickpurse of another's wit." Okay, I stole that from Sir Philip Sidney....
Neither I nor Jesse Jackson used the term "racism." Jackson said that the use of the shackles on the shoes is "offensive, appalling and insensitive." I agree with that. Symbols don't have isolated meaning but we do project our life experiences onto symbols. I've read that the swatiska is a benign symbol in other cultures but that doesn't mean that I would expect all Jews to embrace my displaying it on a flag in my front yard, declaring that it wasn't supposed to symbolize the Nazi one.
ReplyDeleteRacism is a serious concern and it definitely exists, however, Addidas making a profit over adding an ankle shackle to its latest shoe isn't racism; it's as Jackson said, "offensive, appalling and insensitive."
That doesn't mean that everyone will see it the same way. However, I do and I won't be dismissed as if I'm overly sensitive. As for me, what I clearly said was, "I don't think that Addidas conceived of this shoe style to invoke visions of slavery, nonetheless the ankle chains connect with images of oppression for many of us." Didn't use the word racism and didn't allege that anyone is a racist.
As for the tattoos, I know lots of people with tattoos, most of them are itelligent, well educated folks who like wearing tattoos. Thought about getting one myself but I'm a diabetic and my doctor nixed the idea. I just wear fake ones on occasion. I have a lovely rose that I like to wear on my cheek, near the corner of my mouth. Judging a book by its cover is a dangerous game.
Ah, tattoes. Very cool. Have seven myself. Was going to do the whole Medieval Scene, dragpns, castles, knights, wizards, and all. Wife nixed my plans.
DeleteGuess I know who really wears the pants in the Rational Nation household! :)
RN,
DeleteI'll bet you don't have tattoo tears recording how many people you've killed or a swastika on your neck or a clock with no hands on your forehead to show you've done time or the number 311 on your face to show you're a Klansman. I'll bet your pants cover your shorts and you don't show up at work with a tank top that says Fuck You on it. I don't need a translator to understand your posts either. I'm talking about extremism, not about style.
Sheria,
I'm not judging a book by it's cover, but judging American civilization by its obvious self-loathing. I don't think those government and regulation and tax hating teabaggers are any more offensive than people who are irate at being asked to wear shirts and shoes in church or at the best restaurant in town. The continued coarsening of most every aspect of American life disgusts me on a daily basis. It's not just cover art, I read it on on every page.
Just as an aside, I'd like to mention that most of the gun owners I know - in fact all of them, are educated, mostly affluent, law abiding and decent, but to insinuate otherwise is one of the most common judgements of self-styled liberals. I'm just sayin'
A rose is a rose is a rose but gang symbols on the face are not about esthetics. Most of the obvious statements, like facial hardware, split tongues and filed teeth are part of a lust for tokens of primitive tribalism that does not serve the interests of a nation or of a civilized society or of its individuals well.
Jesse Jackson? Sorry, but when I see him walking down 5th avenue whipping himself bloody and crying mea maxima culpa for calling me a 'hymie' I'll give a shit about his "feelings."
Addidas certainly wasn't making an attempt to "commercialize and make popular more than 200 years of human degradation" any more than Jackson is. It's just more hyperbole and not any different than me claiming that a rose tattoo is an insensitive reference to the tattoos European Jews were forced to get or that the Florida State football team is all abut commercializing and exploiting the Seminoles.
It's absurd and if he can be allowed to attempt to restore his lost relevance in this way, I can certainly be justified in being outraged every time somebody uses the word "crusade" or indeed displays the symbol that has presided over the ritual murders and kidnappings, torture, deportation and general slaughter of millions and millions of innocent people over the last 1800 years or so. I choose instead to recognize that people see it with different eyes and with different meaning than Tomas de Torquemada.
Although I do not see a crucifix or a swastika with different vision, both can be symbols of horror or of something entirely different and both frames of reference are worthy of the benefit of some doubt and recognition of intent. I'm only asking that those who are offended at shackles be a little more tolerant and accept that symbolism has no independent existence and that symbolism is only in the eye of the beholder. Nature provides no symbols, people do.
If you think the thick sludge of semiotic batter so much of our nation is rolled in like catfish ready to fry is about a general freedom of expression and esthetics and not about identifying with a criminal, sociopathic underclass, that's fine, but I equate it with growing ignorance, superstition and hostility toward decency, education and civilized values. I don't buy into any denial that our youth culture, which is often a harbinger of increasingly juvenile adult culture, is obsessed with criminality, with the low life and hostile toward the kind of pride and ambition and respect for education that marks other cultures who incidentally seem to be doing rather well.
And beyond that, what the Dinosaur said. Dinosaurs don't need to pretend to be cheap hoodlums or any other dinner entre'