When Does Art Become Offensive? D&G 2018 Shanghai Fashion Show
For as long as the fashion industry can remember, the Dolce and Gabanna duo has constantly found themselves in predicaments with the public. In 2007, Dolce and Gabanna came under fire for an advertising image that depicted three men surrounding a half-naked man stooping over a beautiful, well-dressed woman clad in stilettos in missionary position. Many organizations criticized the two artists for promoting "gang rape" and "misogyny." In 2017, Dolce and Gabanna voiced their support for the First Lady of the United States Melania Trump. This deed incited demands for a boycott of the brand from Trump critics, which the pair facetiously retaliated with a "#BoycottDolceandGabbana" campaign, which included a "#BoycottDolceandGabbana" shirt. Earlier this year, Stefano Gabbana publicly insulted Selena Gomez on social media by calling her "really ugly." This move led many celebrity fashion stylists to stop dressing their clients in Dolce and Gabbana attire.
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| 2007 Controversial Advertisement |
Last week, D&G was dealt a catastrophic blow by the Chinese Communist Party. The Milan-based fashion house released a supposedly-racist advertisement, which featured a Chinese model eating an extremely large cannoli (possibly a phallic symbolism) with a pair of chopsticks. This video prompted widespread outrage from the Chinese government and citizens and resulted in the Chinese Communist Party's scrutiny of the brand, which ultimately led to the cancellation of the company's long-awaited The Great Show in Shanghai and additional severe consequences. The CCP believed that the brand was mocking the Chinese's usage of chopsticks to eat Western cuisine. This creates a big problem for the company as the Chinese market accounted for nearly a third of worldwide spending on luxury goods in 2017 (Crazy Rich Asians? It's an actual thing.), according to renowned consulting firm Bain & Co.
More importantly, this incident brings attention to the debate between art being elegant and offensive.
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In my opinion, art is art. Oftentimes, art is inspired by stereotypes. Obviously, both stupid art and insightful art exist, it is just a matter of perspective. As a Chinese-American, I was not offended by D&G's advertising campaign. In fact, I found the advertisement to be funny. Eating spaghetti with chopsticks? Yes, please. The advantages granted by chopsticks greatly exceed the usefulness of using a fork. What can a fork do? Cut apart the skinny noodles and inefficiently scoop up bits and pieces of meat? Chopsticks grant your wrists the privilege of having more angles with which you can grab the noodles and pieces of meat, proving to be the technologically-advanced tool for dining.
To my fellow Chinese peoples, should you be offended? I do not believe so. The campaign was a comical exposé on a stereotype of our people, which we did not consciously realize. If anything, we should be offended that Dolce and Gabanna chose an average-looking model to represent our people. Nonetheless, we should continue to admire the works of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabanna. Let us not forget that they created Light Blue, the third-best men's cologne, following Tom Ford's cocaine-scented Tuscan Leather and Paco Rabanne's cinnamon 1 Million.
Good job writing this blog post! It was clearly well researched and brought a humorous twist at the end. To me I think that while sometimes interpretations can be taken a little far, there was still la boundary that was pushed here. In the first DG advertisement you bringup while I don't think it's necesarily promoting gang rape I do think that there was a boundarythat was pushed here a little. To me it was promoting ideas of each sex that I personally consider to be kind of toxic, but this is an issue that relates mroe to the entire fashion industry, not just Dolce and Gabbana.
ReplyDeleteThis blog post is very insightful, I agree people have a variety of different opinions when it comes to how things are interpreted, and the matter of perspective is definitely the biggest factor regarding whether offense is taken or not. But, Dolce and Gabbana does have a reputation for the brand's unapologetic maximalist ways. Boycotting this company is acceptable in my opinion. The fact that Melania Trump is a supporter of the brand, that alone sets a base for the way people may look at it. Of course, given how controversial anything Trump-related is at the moment, this advertisement was bound to be considered racist. So it is not surprising that people took a racist opinion on the advertisement that was released considering Trumps reputation of racist remarks.
ReplyDeleteI've also been following this case a little because I originally also thought it was rich Chinese people being melodramatic. But then I realized that a lot of outrage wasn't about the advertisement itself, it was about the comments that followed made by Gabbana (private comments leaked onto Instagram) that called China a "country of shit" and essentially said that Chinese people "ate dogs". So ahh.... then again, the video itself has been overemphasized by the media. But I think that's largely why people are angry, not because of the video itself, which was just strangely sexual, but that it was backed by a racist attitude which wasn't all that funny.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theverge.com/2018/11/22/18108070/instagram-china-racist-dolce-and-gabbana-comments-firestorm
I don't know if this is offensive or just kind of messed up. I just don't understand why the advertisers thought that this set up was the best way to sell a product. This makes me think about the documentary we watched, "The Mask We Live In," and their section on the porn industry. These men are so used to it that they don't see what's so wrong about the photos.
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