Ok so it's not necessarily cinema, but it's Sunday night, and it does feature the man who has quickly become France's most prominent actor of African descent (thanks to his role in this year's international monster hit Intouchables) – a man who moved to Hollywood this year, and recently signed with CAA, intent on making his mark in the USA as well.
While that hasn't quite yet become a reality, Omar Sy continues to be something of a splash in Europe, posing for a Vogue Germany photoshoot with one of Hollywood's most-talked about young actresses in Jessica Chastain (she's in the Oscar mix for her work in the also much-talked about Zero Dark Dirty).
I'd be lying if I said that our ongoing debates and discussions on this site about depictions of interracial pairings in media (especially American media – BM/WM versus BW/WM) was of no influence in me posting this, because it was.
It also made me remember the Vogue (USA edition) cover of a few years ago that featured Lebron James and supermodel Gisele Bundchen (see it below) and all the controversy that it stirred up, with comparisons being made to King Kong and the fair damsel in distress, calling it racially insensitive.
Although these images of Omar and Jessica aren't exactly telling the same story, nor are they taken in the same context.
But it further got me wondering how often we see images like these (even though they are manufactured) in a major international publication like Vogue magazine (I don't read it regularly, and a Google search didn't tell me much), and whether these images still surprise some people (whether they should even still surprise in 2012/2013), and whether they will fly without any *controversy,* or debates about any racial subtext, here in the USA (they were published in Germany).
When you look at these images, especially in a major publication like Vogue, are you one of those who still pauses long enough to ponder any of it, or do you just gloss over it, because, ultimately, it's really not that big of a deal anymore?
Here are the rest of the photos, which are courtesy of FashnBerry:
