Cover Art
There's been some eye-rolling around the blogosphere over the cover of TNHR's latest issue. Some people wonder whether it's a marketing ploy, à la Fence, and at least one person ventriloquized our motivation as "It's hip, it's hot, it's Brokeback, baby." I posted a response elsewhere, and I'm pasting my comments here for anyone else who's curious.
"[The cover] wasn't a cynical decision, and I'm disappointed if it came off that way. We chose the image well before Brokeback hit, and we had no idea it might be perceived as faddish. Do remember we're not really 'selling' anything in that we're a free, online journal.
If people find the cover boring, I suppose part of me is pleased. We weren't going for hip or provocative. Rather, we'd hoped to do our (admittedly minor) bit to say that these kinds of images belong in the mainstream—that they shouldn't be relegated to the closet, no matter how spacious that closet has become. And I particularly liked that these two men look like real men instead of Abercrombie models. I think there’s something to the theory that culture doesn’t merely express, but creates desire, and I would have been much less interested in doing the gay equivalent of Fence’s teenage cleavage."
Comments
I LOVE the cover. I think it accomplishes exactly what you set out to do; it's tasteful, beautiful, romantic, and compelling. It makes me want to read the pieces inside.
Good work.
Posted by: Jess | February 22, 2006 07:32 PM
I think the cover is great as well. And it saddens me that we still haven't gotten to the point where we can't see these kinds of images without thinking that there must be some sort of ploy behind it.
Posted by: Kevin Andre Elliott | February 23, 2006 02:48 PM
I think it's a great cover.
Posted by: Lyle Daggett | February 23, 2006 11:16 PM
Thanks, guys!
Posted by: Ginger | February 24, 2006 10:35 AM
Ginger, thanks for both the cover and your responses. That heterosexist audiences would relegate this cover into a lump-gay-sum category of "Brokeback" is just evidence of our culture's inability to allow for a multiplicity of queer representation. Because of Brokeback Mountain, we are now restricted to reducing all "straight-appearing" male-male desire as being entirely derivative of a single moment.
It would be equally appropriate, then, to reduce all photographs of heterosexual couples kissing as "so Doisineau" or something similar. What an outrage that even now, in the wake of a stirring and important film like Brokeback, there are people at work in our culture who seek to reduce and demolish any kind of variation in the representations of queer desire.
Shoot, I'm all fired up now.
Posted by: Charlie | February 24, 2006 10:52 AM
I posted a comment on another blog about the cover. I really do prefer the first cover of NHR, as artwork and as magazine cover. I don't think that Brokeback was even mentioned till later in the comments, nor do I think the cover was some sort of ploy. What classifies a comment such as mine heterosexist? I'm really curious....
Posted by: pamela | February 24, 2006 02:05 PM
Pamela, I can't speak for Charlie, but I don't read his comment as responding to anything you said. Nor was my comment directed at anything other than the suggestion that we were trying to 'cash in' via our selection of artwork.
Posted by: Ginger | February 24, 2006 05:11 PM
Pamela, I was responding more to the attitude than the comment, and, in particular, the connection between Brokeback Mountain and the image of two men kissing, which is entirely reductionist--and, in my opinion, a heterosexist perspective that doesn't allow for more than 1 simultaneous representation of queer desire.
Posted by: Charlie | February 26, 2006 10:52 AM