Consuming Difference?

taken from: http://jrsrules.blogspot.com/

JJJJound is a photo blog that I found a while ago where this guy from Montreal just posts pictures of things he likes and thinks are cool. His images mainly consist of naked women, leather goods, models, skaters, and mostly European things...but among these he also likes to put in imagery of the gangster lifestyle plus Michael Jordan pics. When I was reading the David Crockett article, especially the part about "Black Style, Vernacular and the Cool Pose," I thought about the images on this blog. I didn't really like the Crockett article or find his arguments very compelling, but I think there is something to say about the use of black images and whatever cultural capital these images hold.

I know there was another post about tourism in South Central (by Katherine?) who wrote that "by marking the other as primitive, dangerous, and exciting the other becomes fetishized as a reparation to the sterility that is whiteness" and this can definitely be seen in the blog. The author of the blog publishes these photos he finds to show the world that he is cool and hip and gains some kind of cultural capital. All the images from this blog are fetishes of the blogs author, and that seems to be similar to what Crockett tries to describe in advertisements featuring Blackness but the consequences of this fetishization is unclear. Is it something even worth discussing? Is consuming these images somehow problematic?

While the form of consumption that goes on in gang tourism is very problematic and full of many issues concerning class differences and status , I don't really see any of the same issues from the examples Crockett gives. The example of the mom in McDonalds using Black vernacular English when she says "good" instead of "well"...Maybe someone in class can tell me the significance of ads like those.