F06 :: Feminist Film Studies

In this photograph, an eye-level, medium-level shot, LaChapelle has chosen to position his subject centrally, while making certain that every aspect of the frame is active, or balanced. That is, if one were to divide the image into quadrants, each quadrant contains an active element designed to keep the eye moving in a circular motion. Thus, the eye is drawn to the prominent watermelon, with its missing segment, the arm, which frames the head, moves to the watermelon slice, to the breasts, and back to the watermelon. The legs, as they are cut off at the bottom of the frame, function merely as a frame within the photograph for the watermelon. There is an oversaturation of color in the photograph, creating a kind of “hyperreality� (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality) befitting both the pose and the subject matter. The figure in the photograph is frozen in an exaggerated pose: smile with teeth apart, arm raised behind the head in a fan-like gesture, a piece of watermelon poised in hand. However, the subject itself is exaggerated: a nude, which appears to be hyperfeminine (elements of plastic surgery visible), overly tanned, if not actually non-white, coiffed hair, and incredibly long, pink fingernails.
Here it is key to note the context: the subject in this photograph is Amanda Lepore – a highly notorious transsexual (and a white transsexual at that). It would be easy to read this piece as an act of full-bodied minstrelsy (as I read the figure in blackface/body) invoking the vernacular of “Ain’t It Ripe?� portraiture, which focused on the youthful pickaninny and their lust for watermelon. In “Ain’t It Ripe?� it was typically a young male represented, as a precursor to the Sambo Marlon Riggs addresses in his film, Ethnic Notions (http://www.newsreel.org/transcripts/ethnicno.htm). Here, the watermelon is used to signify a “black woman’s� sexuality. Ironically, white male painters of the 1860s utilized black females in relation to (white) nudes to signify hyper-sexuality and misogyny, usually in the form of servants. However, LaChapelle, a queer artist, utilizes camp to toy and comment on racial stereotypes/objectification by utilizing a white transsexual to vogue outrageous female sexuality (the aforementioned long nails, coiffed hair), still rooted in the pleasing glee of bodily enjoyment – namely food and sex. Watermelon, of course, has particular racial and sexual connotations itself, namely “ripeness� as feminine, sexual. There is little argument that Amanda Lepore is representing former white male dominance, though it could be argued that there might still be a danger in masculinity (even queer, as LaChapelle and Lepore qualify) camping the sexualization of the Other, or if it is really serving to question the stereotype (and its embedded meaning) of black femininity/sexuality, even as it is used politically as camp. However, I personally feel that Lepore is not necessarily approaching the female body as “Other.� This “performance (as it is an act of posing)� I think is also calling attention to the absurd mutability of racial and sexual iconographies. Interesting to note, this photograph is characterized (according to the art site I found it on) as a “nude� rather than a “portrait� despite the fact that Amanda Lepore, as a subject, is the title of the piece.