Bears repeating!
Also, let’s stick closely to topic, it really helps preventing tangents and drama.
Also, let’s stick closely to topic, it really helps preventing tangents and drama.
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What do y'all think about the Balenciaga SS23 & Adidas collab "teddy" controversy?
- Thread starter MooMooVT
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My comments relate to passing judgement of people who choose to use the B items. Not the campaign, which most of us reasonably minded people agree is abhorrent.
I'm of Chinese ethnicity. In 2020 or 2021 I purchased my first D&G rtw piece. A friend pointed out a racist campaign that I was not aware about. At first I felt immense guilt, but I wasn't aware at the time and I know I do not support racism. I ultimately decided it was not going to stop me from wearing it nor would I bin it.
If someone were to judge me for wearing it, same as if someone were to judge someone for shopping at B or wearing B (be it new or older items), it's a reflection on them, not the wearer. It seems nowadays it's so common to openly past judgement with so much confidence and conviction on so many matters without hesitation.
My closing line applied to life in general... If people kept their thoughts to themselves at times, they'd appear more intelligent.
I'm of Chinese ethnicity. In 2020 or 2021 I purchased my first D&G rtw piece. A friend pointed out a racist campaign that I was not aware about. At first I felt immense guilt, but I wasn't aware at the time and I know I do not support racism. I ultimately decided it was not going to stop me from wearing it nor would I bin it.
If someone were to judge me for wearing it, same as if someone were to judge someone for shopping at B or wearing B (be it new or older items), it's a reflection on them, not the wearer. It seems nowadays it's so common to openly past judgement with so much confidence and conviction on so many matters without hesitation.
My closing line applied to life in general... If people kept their thoughts to themselves at times, they'd appear more intelligent.
It's disgusting but I'll continue to wear what I bought. I like it and they already got the money. Wont be buying anything in the future though.
OP’s question was reasonable - most people are scrutinizing every detail in this campaign and rightfully so. There is nothing “random” about any of the items or placements. This was a well planned, twisted idea by those involved.
Obviously you are blissfully unaware that Baal is actually a Canaanite deity. Whom children were ritualistically sacrificed to. Dare I mention one of Balenciaga’s lead designers had her Instagram exposed - showing Satanic, sacrificial and images with children implying violence(bloody beds, tape, distress). But yeah. Guess Balenciaga just accidentally misspelled their brand name.. opps! Another innocent coincidence.
And how dare anyone find any of this disturbing.. shame on you for making that assumption!!
I found a clearer picture. Maybe it’s just a bear with a big tail?
Interesting food for thought. I was initially made uncomfortable by the image. When I learned about Demna and the other person, and I heard about their social media, I think that’s what drove it over the pale For me. The pedophile codes sent me even further beyond bc I think even if a Demna thought, hey let’s push the boundaries here, the imagery is deliberate and horrible. But that’s just my opinion and yeah, I agree Dildo or the tail of a toy. . . And I agree about pizzagate, conspiracy, qanon, is BS. If people are indignant that your opinion is different, they don’t belong on a public thread engaging in civil discourse. IMO only of course
IMO it’s okay to disagree with posts, but it’s not okay to focus into personal attack that’s rude. We will just know who to blame when the thread is shut down: the members who prove that TPF should come with a users manual on how to behave.
(And, as I said, I also have public interest bona fides from defending abused and neglected children, although i did not have multiple clients confessing to me that their parents engaged in present day ritual sacrifice of children as mentioned on this thread. Of course if I did, and if I were a mandated reporter, I would have done so and thereby played a tiny role in exposing the wide network of devil worshiping child killers.
ETA: when I returned to TPF after a long hiatus, I found out about the ignore button for the very first time.
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Well said!!! Thank you for adding your thoughts!OP’s question was reasonable - most people are scrutinizing every detail in this campaign and rightfully so. There is nothing “random” about any of the items or placements. This was a well planned, twisted idea by those involved.
Obviously you are blissfully unaware that Baal is actually a Canaanite deity. Whom children were ritualistically sacrificed to. Dare I mention one of Balenciaga’s lead designers had her Instagram exposed - showing Satanic, sacrificial and images with children implying violence(bloody beds, tape, distress). But yeah. Guess Balenciaga just accidentally misspelled their brand name.. opps! Another innocent coincidence.
And how dare anyone find any of this disturbing.. shame on you for making that assumption!!
One doesn't need to interpret it. It's very obvious. Not caring about the controversy is one thing but to actually mocking it....(?)
I think you are their perfect customer! Rock on!
I saw a stuffed animal tail and couldn’t figure out the question until I read your post lol
I have decided that this is my last post on this thread and I need not comment much further.
I am a contemporary artist and fashion designer and I do like the driving concept behind Balenciaga's brilliant dissection of American culture (at least a fringe element) through the ad. It is pretty postmodern and works well as an anti-ad ad.
Unfortunately, the ad which is directed more at an European audience who understands irony and sociopolitical commentary failed terribly with an American audience. We just don't have any understanding of subtle satire/subversion/dark humor; but in case, at this point, I feel that I am going to be speaking to deaf ears and I will remain to support Demna as much as I can.
They have nothing to apologize at this point. In any case, Balenciaga should think hard and just makes ads specifically for Americans and then ads for the rest of the world. That will solve the problem. (Look at the news coverage for this flap up; we aren't getting much out of American news coverage).
Their most brilliant idea: "Supporting Balenciaga’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection, the ‘Garde-Robe’ campaign, which featured the likes of Bella Hadid and Nicole Kidman, saw Balenciaga opt for an “office” theme that displayed a host of legal documents across the set, with a page from a Supreme Court ruling of United States v. Williams being spotted. The document included several references to child pornography, with the case ultimately deeming the promotion of child pornography illegal and not protected under freedom of speech."
If there is any other fashion news which has such intellectual depth like Balenciaga, please tell me. Anyways I'm finally out of this room.
EDIT: In order to understand what the ad is really about, you must look at Bliss Foster's video about the ad regarding clones. It's a very cynical look at our world today where celebrity is all about cloning. Like Kim is a clone of Kanye, etc.
I will end this on a quote by Jean BAUDRILLARD about cloning and sexuality: "What, if not a death drive, would push sexed beings to regress to a form of reproduction prior to sexuation (besides, isn't it this form of scissiparity, this reproduction and proliferation through pure contiguity that is for us, in the depths of our imaginary, death and the death drive - what denies sexuality and wants to annihilate it, sexuality being the carrier of life, that is to say of a critical and mortal form of reproduction?) and that, at the same time, would push them metaphysically to deny all alterity, all alteration of the Same in order to aim solely for the perpetuation of an identity, a transparency of the genetic inscription no longer even subject to the vicissitudes of procreation?"
SECOND POSTSCRIPT: Regarding the ruling, we have https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2008/06/what-were-they.html
Balenciaga ads tend to be very hypertextual and refer one to another. Basically the child ad is a commentary on that ruling shown in another ad. In any case, from the article we quote "The Court's ratification of a flat ban on child pornography had a relatively minimal impact on the First Amendment. Admittedly, the ruling did cause serious problems for some photographers, ranging from parents taking innocuous photos of their children to fine art photographers whose works included nude photos of children (among the more well-known examples are David Hamilton, Jock Sturges, and Sally Mann). But on the whole, it was relatively easy to draw a bright line between legal and illegal images, and law enforcement made substantial progress in fighting child pornography.
Most of those gains, however, have been wiped out by computers, the Internet, and digital cameras, all of which have made the production and distribution of child pornography vastly easier and far more difficult to combat. These new technologies have also blurred the previously bright line between legal and illegal images: many websites feature very young-looking but still adult models; some individuals use software to blend two or more legal images into composite child pornography; and others use animation software to create completely artificial (but increasingly realistic) child pornography images."
Demna is just brilliant. He understands the pulse of our digital age where children are being exploited. He is a refugee and knows that the current situation in the Ukraine is where we are seeing violence against children happen again and again. (https://thehill.com/policy/internat...n-have-been-raped-tortured-by-russian-forces/)
Once again, we tend to be complaining about an ad and Demna is pointing out that we are all armchair hypocrites for raising arms about child exploitation while ignoring where the real violence against children is happening.
I am a contemporary artist and fashion designer and I do like the driving concept behind Balenciaga's brilliant dissection of American culture (at least a fringe element) through the ad. It is pretty postmodern and works well as an anti-ad ad.
Unfortunately, the ad which is directed more at an European audience who understands irony and sociopolitical commentary failed terribly with an American audience. We just don't have any understanding of subtle satire/subversion/dark humor; but in case, at this point, I feel that I am going to be speaking to deaf ears and I will remain to support Demna as much as I can.
They have nothing to apologize at this point. In any case, Balenciaga should think hard and just makes ads specifically for Americans and then ads for the rest of the world. That will solve the problem. (Look at the news coverage for this flap up; we aren't getting much out of American news coverage).
Their most brilliant idea: "Supporting Balenciaga’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection, the ‘Garde-Robe’ campaign, which featured the likes of Bella Hadid and Nicole Kidman, saw Balenciaga opt for an “office” theme that displayed a host of legal documents across the set, with a page from a Supreme Court ruling of United States v. Williams being spotted. The document included several references to child pornography, with the case ultimately deeming the promotion of child pornography illegal and not protected under freedom of speech."
If there is any other fashion news which has such intellectual depth like Balenciaga, please tell me. Anyways I'm finally out of this room.
EDIT: In order to understand what the ad is really about, you must look at Bliss Foster's video about the ad regarding clones. It's a very cynical look at our world today where celebrity is all about cloning. Like Kim is a clone of Kanye, etc.
I will end this on a quote by Jean BAUDRILLARD about cloning and sexuality: "What, if not a death drive, would push sexed beings to regress to a form of reproduction prior to sexuation (besides, isn't it this form of scissiparity, this reproduction and proliferation through pure contiguity that is for us, in the depths of our imaginary, death and the death drive - what denies sexuality and wants to annihilate it, sexuality being the carrier of life, that is to say of a critical and mortal form of reproduction?) and that, at the same time, would push them metaphysically to deny all alterity, all alteration of the Same in order to aim solely for the perpetuation of an identity, a transparency of the genetic inscription no longer even subject to the vicissitudes of procreation?"
SECOND POSTSCRIPT: Regarding the ruling, we have https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2008/06/what-were-they.html
Balenciaga ads tend to be very hypertextual and refer one to another. Basically the child ad is a commentary on that ruling shown in another ad. In any case, from the article we quote "The Court's ratification of a flat ban on child pornography had a relatively minimal impact on the First Amendment. Admittedly, the ruling did cause serious problems for some photographers, ranging from parents taking innocuous photos of their children to fine art photographers whose works included nude photos of children (among the more well-known examples are David Hamilton, Jock Sturges, and Sally Mann). But on the whole, it was relatively easy to draw a bright line between legal and illegal images, and law enforcement made substantial progress in fighting child pornography.
Most of those gains, however, have been wiped out by computers, the Internet, and digital cameras, all of which have made the production and distribution of child pornography vastly easier and far more difficult to combat. These new technologies have also blurred the previously bright line between legal and illegal images: many websites feature very young-looking but still adult models; some individuals use software to blend two or more legal images into composite child pornography; and others use animation software to create completely artificial (but increasingly realistic) child pornography images."
Demna is just brilliant. He understands the pulse of our digital age where children are being exploited. He is a refugee and knows that the current situation in the Ukraine is where we are seeing violence against children happen again and again. (https://thehill.com/policy/internat...n-have-been-raped-tortured-by-russian-forces/)
Once again, we tend to be complaining about an ad and Demna is pointing out that we are all armchair hypocrites for raising arms about child exploitation while ignoring where the real violence against children is happening.
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I’d honestly not thought much of the ad when I first saw it and just figured it was more of the poor taste envelope pushing nonsense that a lot of brands are doing now.
I worked on the law enforcement side of child human trafficking for many many years and never encountered any of the cabal-pizzagate-etc stuff that is apparently symbolized in the ad. Most of the stuff I saw was kids and families and people in poverty, not the Jeffrey Epstein idea of trafficking that the media has focused on a lot over the last few years. We looked for diamond tattoos and pimps names written on necks, not rabbits or bears. I’m also probably horribly desensitized to a lot of stuff in this realm.
Regardless, the ad was clearly offensive and upsetting to a lot of people and IMO Balenciaga hasn’t done a great job of handling it from that aspect. I’ve never been a Bal fan either way, tbh I’ve always found the brand a bit gauche recently anyway, so I guess they’ve lost a customer they never would have had to begin with.
I worked on the law enforcement side of child human trafficking for many many years and never encountered any of the cabal-pizzagate-etc stuff that is apparently symbolized in the ad. Most of the stuff I saw was kids and families and people in poverty, not the Jeffrey Epstein idea of trafficking that the media has focused on a lot over the last few years. We looked for diamond tattoos and pimps names written on necks, not rabbits or bears. I’m also probably horribly desensitized to a lot of stuff in this realm.
Regardless, the ad was clearly offensive and upsetting to a lot of people and IMO Balenciaga hasn’t done a great job of handling it from that aspect. I’ve never been a Bal fan either way, tbh I’ve always found the brand a bit gauche recently anyway, so I guess they’ve lost a customer they never would have had to begin with.
You said it would be your last post but I would like to hear what you believed the intended message of the ad to be. Mostly because I can’t figure it out and just saw it as cheap, low effort shock value-type stuff. I’d like to see it from another perspective if I was able to better understand what their point was.