YouTube, the first start-up to sell for a over a billion dollars to Google, and the subject of numerous copyright lawsuits, is the amalgamation of nostalgic video (eg, Super8 home videos from the 50s-60s) and a library of Congress that one could access for looking up random videos and commercials from a previous era that would otherwise never be seen by the internet generation.
YouTube is a mismash of home videos about people's pets and family, karoke fan machine for their favourite songs, advertisement dream come true for feature film studios, and a place where psychology graduate students pretend to be porn stars making commentary on gender studies. Sometimes YouTube provides insight into other cultures- recording the civil unrest in which uploaders make strikingly beautiful and poetic commentary about the social uprising of their people.
YouTube can also take down people's careers. It has become a political vehicle to take down competitors. Politicians caught on camera for making offhand remarks often lose their candidacy for making politically incorrect remarks. Hidden videos can elicit rage in the public eye, and often lead to dismissal. YouTube is our BigBrother. We must be careful to edit what we say- even when amongst our friends, because what we say can be taken out of context and used against us in a court of law.
This is what happened to the fashion designer John Galliano.
John Galliano is likely to be the most talented designer of the 21st century. His attention to texture, fabrics, exquisite detail and his affinity towards femininity, masculinity, and homage to certain eras are unparalleled. John Galliano was often the reason why there had been a return to haute couture. He took no short cuts, he celebrated the male and female form especially in his ready-to-wear. Fashion editors loved him for a reason.
A cross-cultural product of different nations, the Gibraltor-born John Galliano was the son of a plumber whose parents immigrated to England. He was bullied as a teenager for being gay. Still, his mother loved him dearly and she sent him to the best public schools a working class family could afford. He was awarded best British designer two years in a row (and four years total in the current span of his career). He declared bankruptcy shortly after he put all his life savings into his first collection in 1990. Six years later, he became the head designer for Christian Dior, started his own label and was known around the world for his beautiful attention to detail. Surely his rise to the top had numerous obstacles in his path, but there he was, making beautiful designs, mocking his own style, being a character in his own play, a celebration of time, ethnicity, glamour, poverty, beauty, war, peace, rock and roll, theatricality, to film, to love, to eras gone by.
I remember when I saw my first John Galliano design. It was a wedding dress in the style of Audrey Hepburn's in Roman Holiday. I was flabbergasted. This would continue into 2007 and beyond with his Spring Haute Couture collection I found simply breathtaking. At a time when most designers took short-cuts, utilised cheap fabrics and appealed to consumerism, John Galliano's clothes were made to last and to remember what it was like to be passionate about something; to remember our collective histories, to value well-made, well-thought out designs instead of regressing to factory-made, badly stitched, cheap designs that may appeal to stock holders for short-term profit. John Galliano made designs for the long-term and he changed 21st century fashion. John Galliano is to fashion what Steve Jobs was to Apple.
When I first learned of John Galliano's faux pas of anti-semitic comments in the media- I was horrified. I imagined a terrible, abusive man ranting and raving, shouting out comments- however, when I actually saw the supposed anti-semitic video of him in a café, my mind was changed.
What this 10 second video seemed like to me was a John Galliano playing contrarian to a rude Italian couple sitting next to him in a café. Perhaps they had been making obnoxious commentary about him, perhaps they didn't recognise him as being the son of a plumber who went onto become a global fashion icon- the commentators of the video seemed like Italian assholes- making fun of him, asking him if he had blond hair and blue eyes?
John Galliano- never raising his voice, is pretending to be a character to disarm his detractors- quietly, and without intent- he says- "I love Hitler" in farcical display. His designs say otherwise in the span of his career. He loved the downtrodden, the societal misfits, he often made fun of the aristocracy, not in a mean way, but in a way for the fashion world to poke fun at themselves. He loved playing roles- and when I saw this video- I only saw a man defending himself against a couple mocking him. I saw in his eyes, the boy who had been bullied in his youth, who had chosen to play war with words instead of through violence. Perhaps he had chosen the wrong words, but John Galliano was definitely not anti-semitic.
This YouTube video- which was the subject of speculation amongst tabloid media, together with Natalie Portman's statement condemning him had lead to his dismissal at the House of Dior. The coverage in tabloid media gave me a different impression of the YouTube video. I expected a loud-mouthed ranting bigot, but when seeing the video with my own eyes, I only saw a bullied man being targeted by a couple who intended to humiliate him. Perhaps if the talented, Harvard educated Miss Natalie Portman saw the actual video instead of reading the reports about the video she would've said the same. Instead the two-time Academy award winning actress whose 2010 film Black Swan borrowed significantly from the 2009 film Ne Te Retourne Pas directed by Marina de Van, and the 1966 Ingmar Bergman film Persona, had quickly taken to criticising John Galliano without perhaps seeing the entirety of YouTube video, she would've understood that he was defending himself verbally from a couple who were attempting to humiliate him. The tabloid coverage of him intended to humiliate him, like the Italian couple who sat there next to him in the café attempting to egg him on in the most rancorous fashion.
I have this to say- if John Galliano once again begins his own label and if his company ever went public, I would be an avid investor in his IPO.
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