viz.

Photo by Marcio Madeira for men.style.com; first spotted at Boing Boing

So I'm not surprised to see that this particular aesthetic has made its way onto the runways and into the designs of John Galliano; I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner (maybe it has? anyone?). What's interesting to me is the particular form these designs take, with their unmistakably medieval inflection: these designs are as much about the Inquisition as they are about Guantanamo. Is this trenchant (or maybe obvious) political critique, drawing a connection between the draconian measures of the Bush administration (so barbaric! so medieval!)? Or does it go too far, making light of serious infractions by implicitly connecting Lynndie England with court jesters and clowns?

A colleague passed along these photos to me and (jokingly) asked if I am planning on having a chapter on torture and fashion in my dissertation (I'm writing about torture in Renaissance drama). Short answer: no. Longer-than-necessary answer: I am definitely interested in the relationship between torture as political practice and aesthetic responses to it (either by the creators or consumers of popular culture), as I mentioned in a comment to an earlier post (scroll down). Thanks to the Abu Ghraib photos, for example, black hoods have started appearing in lots of movies. (Maybe I just notice them more, but probably not.) I'm interested in what it means for a culture to take up these images and play with them, and I mean "play" in its sillier as well as its serious senses. Is that tendency--for lack of a better word--gross, something like a pornography of suffering (and certainly the question of pornography arises here, although in this case it's the male body that gets fetishized)? Or is it some kind of defense/distancing mechanism? (In my work, for example, this relates to old questions about the purpose or function of tragic drama. Everyone agrees that it makes you feel better, but they disagree about why: is it because it helps keep the real thing at bay, or are people getting off on it? Simply put: why on earth do people watch movies like Hostel?)

I guess this also goes back to my earlier question/post about fashion (I'm being pretty self-referential tonight): can it, or rather will it, ever be taken seriously as political language and critique? Are these designs intended to be taken that way (and how much does intention matter)? If not, aren't they just sort of creepy? Or is it just about provocation and attention (and a boost in sales)?

Related note: this is sort of related to questions about how the new movie Cloverfield somewhat blithely portrays the destruction of lower Manhattan (see this review for more on this point). I haven't seen the movie myself, so I'm curious if anyone who has seen it has an opinion on this?