Balenciaga apologises for bondage bear advert involving child

@deepwatersolo I don't think that I agree that Kubrick, as a whistle-blower who was skirting dangerously close to the edge and a person of renown could not have been killed.

I don't think anybody believes that Epstein commited suicide these days, do they?

Kubrick is (was) more akin to an Epstein type figure, albeit without direct involvement in abuse, than a victim.

Oh, sorry the tape reads AALE.

wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/kim-kardashian-custom-balenciaga-tape-outfit-details-1235125419/

Leemoe true, but they often left the (alleged) victims alive - because no one believed them, anyway. I‘d assume the same would hold for Kubrick.

I remember that Regine Louf documentary by the BBC. She didn’t sound like a lunatic and some of what she said could be independently confirmed (locations, houses with complex inner structures, timelines, other testimonies), yet particularly in Belgium she was branded a lunatic. And then she was left alone.

This company looks like it is soaked and drenched in arty pomo vibes, atmosphere, ideology. These celebrate subversion, look to be 'edgy', to disrupt, to 'queer' and to undermine norms.

So many of the things noted are actually unremarkable in isolation - the artists whose books are on the desk are both well regarded and established, for example, their work doesn't cause that much of a stir. Look up the Chapman brothers Jake & Dinos for similar stuff - lots of art looks at dark, twisted, and unpleasant themes.

But this company seems to have focussed on and gathered all of these various artists, themes, symbols, provocations and edginesses and are using that as their brand. Hence the catwalk in a sea of mud, with bruised, scarred, pierced, bondage-wearing, mouth-breathing models.

Most of the time all of this 'darkness' in culture is a pose and relatively unproblematic, but it also encourages moral equivalence and and that means it's also a fertile ground of opportunities for anyone with darker motives.

You can find the images if you search. They haven’t been doctored.
Here’s a clearer one.

No ones comfortable with it, but I don’t see how people linking together themes from an advertising campaign ‘doesn’t help’
Those images were purposely put there. Why?
I think it needs to be seriously looked into, and that won’t happen if it’s allowed to slide under the radar.
How do you think it helps by you ignoring it, or dismissing it as photoshop, or whatever else you want to do/say to dismiss it, just because it makes you feel some discomfort.

My personal hypothesis about satanic rituals in the context of sexual abuse is that the scenario the victims describe will be so outlandish and bizarre that nobody will believe them. So you add some satanic/pagan symbols like BAAL and a dead chicken and whatnot to make sure that the victims of your otherwise banally sadistic abuse will never be believed.

As for the BAAL thing, I only saw it on the tape - …AAL.., actually. But considering that you otherwise read Balenciaga everywhere, it is the obvious deduction as it is all obviously carefully staged (which brings me back to Kubrick) - so why would anyone put a tape there with random words on it? But maybe there was such a tape just randomly lying around, and someone thought ‚ah, this yellow is nice‘ - what do I know.

What I do know is that carefully coded arrangements are not unheard of in the world of visual arts / cinematography.

@Justasec321
If you remove the assumption of homosexual males instead of just males in general and widen your description to include the arts as a whole then I don't think you're far wrong.

@deepwatersolo I think the only difference is that Kubrick wasn't (allegedly)whistleblowing from the perspective of a victim. (As far as I know and I'm in no way well read on this subject)

No talk yet about the massive and years long collab between Kanye West and the brand. The same West who is a porn addict, who shows video of him having sex with his ex wife to excutives at board meetings, who dressed said wife in head to toe latex made by the brand, and on, and on, and on.

They have been pushing it for years.

Fashion really suffers from having almost exclusively male gay designers at the top. That results in the vereration of extreme thin, extreme youth, normalization of porn and so on. It has been a steady, increasing problem since my time in the early 90s. There is only a hand full of women left.

I can’t comment on that Baal thing I don’t know enough.

But I do think Balenciaga are taking the inclusion of items on set seriously as they’ve mentioned suing over it.

Yes @knittingaddict I'm uncomfortable with it too.

However, if this campaign is alluding to child abuse that is about as evil an act as one can commit. Irrespective of satanism. Satanism couldn't make this any worse than it already is.

Evil is evil.

Leeomoe there were such rumors around his death, but I‘ve also heard his closest collaborators denied anything was missing in the film and they finished it with his vision in mind.
Funny enough, his Obituary was written in a really similar manner as the one for the deceased or maybe killed woman in the film. (Kubrick had a fake newspaper printed for this film with some easter eggs and he discussed/adapted that Obituary text in a hundred discussions, according to the journalist tasked to write it. Even though you‘ll see the paper only very briefly in the film.) It might have been a final joke of him, to ask for a similar text in case of his death, whenever that might be.

Even if Kubrick was right on the money with what he told Kidman, I can‘t see why anyone would have seen the need to kill him. Such rumors had been around before, plus actual people who described how they had been victimized by powerful people (e.g. Regine Louf, Paul Bonacci…). It usually ends with most people disbelieving them and the rest being called nutters. Kubrick hardly revealed more than those (alleged) victims.

I'm saying that what is wrong with this companies advertising campaign is glaringly obvious. I'm not sure how much the forensic examination of online photos by members of the public really helps.

At the very least this company set out to deliberately shock in a way which cannot be allowed to happen. Not when children are involved.

I suppose I'm most uncomfortable with the Baal theories which tip dangerously into Satanic abuse territory.

You can still find the images and a much larger and more comprehensive discussion, albeit heavily weighted towards discussion of US political opinion, or indeed lack of it on reddit.

Yeh it’s not really.

But name aside, the court documents? Why are they there do you think.

I can't find a decent photo that allows me to confirm any of this for myself. There are photos with squares drawn on them which apparently show something. I can't see for myself and seeing is important.

For instance what is the certificate in the name of JPF for? I can't tell. Anyone know?

The name isn't odd. It's incredibly common.

The name is a bit odd, I can’t see why that coincidence would be there. Some of the other stuff I have looked at

Why do you think the court papers were in another shoot? What would be the rationale for that in your view

Not to really veer off on to a tangent but isn't it true that Kubrick met his demise shortly after premiering Eyes wide shut?
And apparently there was almost half an hour of that film then cut from the final edit, never to be viewed publicly again.

Somebody seems to have taken advantage of his death to have performed some damage control.

How that relates to Balenciaga, if at all I have no idea but it does serve to illustrate these themes have appeared ostensibly as 'art' prior to the present debacle.

John Phillip Fisher has to be an incredibly common name.

I'm very uncomfortable with the conspiracy theory stuff on here. Obviously the ads are weird and inappropriate and may have more to them. Children shouldn't be involved in this. Picking apart the photos to find evidence of a sex cult is how things get out of hand. To be honest I can't even see half the stuff that people are pointing too. I'm not taking the word of someone online that there are pictures of Baal there.

There is enough common everyday child abuse happening in the world. It rarely, if ever looks like some on here are suggesting.

Pizzagate started because people just had to have a high powered sex abuse scandal to talk about. The way those emails were interpreted was just plain nuts and turned out to have no basis in reality.

😧

Or maybe those responsible were bribed by someone who wants to destroy the brand or buy it up at a low price… Maybe it is just that banal…

What a strange coincidence that Kubrick cast Nicole Kidman of all people to the movie „eyes wide shut“, considering her father‘s past (which wasn‘t known at that point for all I know).
The film ends with the couple (Kidman and Cruise) and their small daughter in a toy store. While the couple has some intense discussion und the girl wanders off, in the direction of some guy (or was it two) who was/were also present at a party the Cruise-character attended due to his dealings with some upper class client, a Journey that has had him participate in a black mass. The girl doesn‘t reappear, the film simply ends. But it is so subtile, you‘ll normally miss it.

Kidman once stated that Kubrick at that movie set told her that the world is run by high-powered paedophiles. True or not, it makes sense that this is what Kubrick wanted to allude to in this film.

Those pictures are like someone tried to pull off a Kubrick - just in photos and less subtile).

(Tangent: in the movie ‚the shining‘ Kubrick with his typical coded style quite clearly alludes to the father (Nickolson) regularly sexually abusing his son. Kubrick films do have such disturbing themes if one looks carefully).

Clearly the people involved in this campaign have an evil intent.

Odd that Nicole Kidman has recently been signed as a face of Balenciaga given her father's paedophilic past.

All roads leading to somewhere I don't think most of us want to go to. I do hope that as a society we don't manage to sleepwalk in to something abominable

Yes there's a theme. They can't possibly get away with blaming the photographer.

I wonder if he's thinking bloody hell, if I start saying it can't be me, because look you've done exactly the same using these photographers, then other people won't hire him because he's a blabbermouth, then his career is fucked whatever he does.