Ugh.
If there ever was a big media juxtapotion of capitalist imperialism and mysogyny this has got to be the one.
This particular portrait haunts me. Not because there is anything wrong with the girl, but because there is everything wrong with making her a piece of exotica.
She may elicit comparisons with the madonnas of the Renaissance; but I feel our Afghani girl was shot to look more like a pre-Raphaelite painting [1]. Check out especially the ladies created by Dante Gabriel Rossetti [2].
With their dreams of brotherhoods, medievalist fantasies and nymph fetish, the pre-Raphaelites artists can be considered one of the most anti-women aesthetic movements of European. I would like to make the point that it is particularly mysogynist exactly because their style was meant to represent women as precious objects.
So when I look at this ironic juxtaposition at The New York Times, I read it not just as a joke. Looking at it closely it speaks volumes about the way in which Americans not only regard women but 'foreign' or colored women.
Call it the Pier 1 Imports effect.
Anything that is not the 'mainstream' American culture or looks like is treated by the purveyors of 'haute taste' as a commodity, as another tradeable piece of furniture or accessory of interior decor.
Yet, it's the copyrights over pictures like this one that trouble me the most.
This Afghani girl has become a tradeable good under copyright law. She is the "intellectual property" of a mass media company that has the rights to a lifetime and a half of profits over her face if not her body.
That is the gravest crime involved with this beautiful portrait. This girl is probably still living in poverty, yet her face is traded to anybody with the cash.
This 'preciosist' portrait evoking the masters of western art has transformed "Afghani Girl" into a virtual prostitute robbed of her earnings by a mass media pimp she probably has never and will ever even read.
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