A casual glance around the Internet might indicate that the recent controversy over an episode of America's Next Top Model may already be dying down. But here in Canada, a group called CFAN, a feminist student group at the University of Regina, has started up a letter-writing campaign over the issue. The episode in question involved having the models posed as crime scene victims; the resulting photos, removed from the context of the show, arguably fetishize and glamourize violence against women.
I saw the episode in question when it aired on CityTV, and I've seen the photos from the shoot that are now posted on the Internet. Obviously, as a feminist, I am disturbed by images that appear to make murdering women sexy. But I've got to come down on the other side of my sisters on this one. To me, this is one of those instances where the meaning of the image is directly influenced by the context in which it is delivered. In other words, those crime scene photos on their own are disturbing and disgusting, but in the context of a show like ANTM, their potent charge is reduced.
As dedicated ANTM watchers know, the show is, at its heart, pure camp. From Jay Manuel's blinding white teeth and bad dye job to Nigel Barker's English accent, ANTM frequently serves as a send-up of itself. The way the contestants imitate — or even borderline mock — Tyra and her breathless proclamation of "You're still in the running towards becoming America's next top model," shows that. You don't need Janice Dickinson on the show to add the element of over-the-top absurdity. Tyra's wigs do that job (not to mention the fact that none of the winners has actually gone on to become, well, a top model, thereby undermining the very point of the show itself). And of course, who doesn't adore Miss J, the gender-bending court jester, probably one of the most quietly subversive "characters" on television today? This near-carnivalesque atmosphere of exaggerated femininity, self-mockery, and ridiculousness permeates the show.
In the context of Twiggy, Nigel, Tyra, and Miss J poring over the crime scene photos and saying things like, "Oooh, I love how her hand looks in this shot," the shock of the image becomes another banal facet of the modeling world. The photos become absorbed as simply another ingredient in the comedy that is ANTM. That a shoot like that happened in the first place demonstrates the attitude of the modeling world — not ANTM specifically — towards women.
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Article comments
1 - sean Paul Mahoney
Great article! I loved the comment about Tyra's wigs.
When this episode aired in the US there was a minor hub-bub about it. Ever since her screaming fit epsiode a few "cycles" back Tyra likes one episode every year to be watercooler fodder. This photo shooot wreaks of publicity stunt for a show that's nearly run out of tricks.
And the whole murder fashion shoot, like it or loathe it, is old hat. Acclaimed photographer Helmut Newton did this way back in the 1970's and the photos were featured in the movie "The Eyes of Laura Mars". To fashion fans, it seems a little tired and unoriginal at this stage of the game.These uninspired photoshoots could be the reason that Jay Manuel was not asked back for next season.
But let's face it this show has little or nothing to do with fashion any more. It's more like America's Next Top SpokesModel.For a show about fashion I'll watch Project Runway. In the meantime, ANTM provides campy time killing entertainment.
2 - alec
My problem with this critique is not the idea that ANTM glamorizes violence against women, but violence against anyone. It's boring, trite, and very 1960's to compartmentalize an issue (ie we only care about violence when it involves female). Would the critics even bat an eyelash if this was America's Next Top Male Model, and it had them in a photo shoot involving being victims of crime? Further, do you really think that someone who actively watches this show cares about these issues one way or another? Because my guess is that the venn-diagram circles of ANTM watchers with enlightened and well informed human beings probably don't intersect.
PS. I was already castrated by tone-deaf liberals too, Tyra!
3 - not a necrophiliac
I am proud to report I have NEVER seen an episode of the mindmush aka America's Top ______ , erm, um, whatchamacallit? However; this article touches on a trend I've noticed in show's like CSI's (all of them, Las Vegas, Miami, and New York) where not only victims, but even grosser, dead bodies are displayed in 'sexually provocative' manners - at the scenes, but worse, in the morgue! Camera shots lingering on the cleavages of what are essentially corpses, already laid out on the slabs for example, and so forth. Disgusting? You betcha. Glamorizing violence against women isn't new, and sadly, neither is necrophilia, but please, not in my livingroom!