Your Turn: Vatican Pomp and (This) Circumstance

I was struck by the contrast of the innocent bare feet and the surrounding security apparatus. Both old (plumed helmets) and current (VERY thick limo door) and particularly the posture and grip taken by the gentleman holding the door for Mrs. Obama.

Hello iconic photograph! Gave me a chuckle.

I can only imagine what this must be like for the girls. Forget about the white house – if you’re an 8 year old girl and you have to spend your summer vacation going to Russia and sitting still while Daddy talks to other grown ups must be booooring.

Prolly Sasha! What a kid!

Reminds me of when I learned that Amy Carter was allowed to take books to White House dinners because she was required to be there but the dinners were mind-numbingly boring for even the brightest little girl.

scanning the photo from l to r i see a sequence, propelled by the horizontal lines of the car:
the plumed hat (or is this first one a helmet? either way i think of martial pomp, power) and the black car;
the plumed hat again, now head on, with a white pair of eyes– with the car;
the white head of a man in a black suit and black sunglasses who (as with the plumed hats, but more dramatically) appears as if part of the car itself, machine-like, eyes obscured, arms rigid;
in the background, a light-skinned male head in profile — so far, i’ve seen three white men — but there, in the interruption of the lines of the car, the opening and stoppage in the car — a pair of lively, dancing feet, those of a small dark-skinned girl!
from the feet i jump to the white square (napkin? note?) — the whiteness of which contrasts with the darkness of the woman at right, whose flowing black clothes give her the car’s elegance but are more similar to the the legs in their looseness, their sense of moving in the air; the black of her clothing is a sort of interruption of the black of the car or the man’s suit, in that by virtue of its free flow i don’t think necessarily of them as representing power as the hats, car, and man do (paradoxically, from this angle she might be taken for a nun);
and then the woman is dark-skinned, the lovely colors of her face, hand (with wedding ring, not a nun after all), and (bare) legs reminding me of those dancing legs i’ve just seen in the car.
so it’s a sequence that first gives us a world of (black) objects which signify power, are official and rigid — the car, the suit, the hat — inhabited by a white male presence to whose eyes my attention is being drawn (first through their isolation, in the figure in the hat, and then by the man’s sunglasses); and then an interruption in the continuity of the car, an opening, in which we see the girl’s legs and the white napkin (almost as if taking light readings for photos?) as if to highlight the dark color of the legs; and then the woman, whose scarf, fingers, and dress build on the levity and flowing liveliness introduced by the girl’s feet.
the sequence begins and ends with costume, beginning with the old-fashioned plumed hat (isolated, without a face, so that all we really see is the headgear) and ending with the woman’s headscarf, which is not disembodied like the hat– quite the opposite.
in the woman’s scarf, fingers, and legs she is unmistakably feminine. there is a passage here from male to female, from a rigid, stuffy power apparatus to a pair of graceful bodies — and the strange, somewhat disapproving look of the white male observer in the background only adds to a sense of a dissonance, or at least contrast, between these white male and black female presences.
i’m not claiming to have discovered anything new here, i just think the composition works incredibly well as a sort of narrative sequence — it’s like a little movie — and it does so in part by exploiting these binaries.
and it is a very tricky image because the binary phenomena of “black” and “white,” as far as color goes, are pretty universally agreed upon, empirically founded ideas, based on how our eyes perceive light. whereas the binaries of blackness/whiteness or male/female can be much more loaded and potentially even offensive. but all three binaries are at work in this photo, and at what feels like a very fast pace.

I can’t help but think the woman’s left hand is “saying” something to the child’s exposed feet.

That is a very traditional outfit that Mrs. Obama is wearing– more traditional than the Vatican requires. I wonder why.

happy feet…

A small correction to the full analysis above by NS. Some orders of nuns wear rings, and on the left hand. Here in their own words. As far as Michelle’s black dress, I think we might research previous First Lady audiences with the Pope and find that they also wore all-black.

Such happy feet. I bet the lady’s face has a big smile on it.
Obama clearly is enjoying the pomp and circumstance of this life he’s won. How long will it be before Michelle realizes how deeply she longs to escape from it, and before the girls realize they never will be able to escape.
Perhaps it is the advent of the net, but I have never been aware, in my 66 years, of how much people like this have to be born to this sort of life. Certainly we’ve had showman presidents before – Kennedy immediately comes to mind. And I know that showmanship runs in that family. But one can trace the history back 3 generations now, from Honey Fitz to Caroline and Patrick.
But, as I watch the photography of this administration, I sure do wonder what imbued this family with this skill.
And how come the Bushes never learned it.

I had just mentioned to a friend that there have been a lot of pictures of Sasha skipping. And here she is, with feet skipping in air. The shoes she had on were Mary Janes, not the usual skimmers, so there was at least a bit of effort involved in this liberation.

I wonder what you might have to say about a recent controversy that was unveiled at dailykos. A few right-wing bloggers have attacked Malia Obama because of how she was dressed in rome – shorts, a t-shirt with a peace sign, and frizzy braided hair. The comments made online about her are quite horrible and mean-spirited, and are racially tinged. Thoughts?

This photo, under better resolution, clearly shows another set of smaller bared feet sitting beyond the pair at the car door. Just sayin.
I couldn’t help being a little wigged-out to see Michelle in a nun’s outfit, especially after pics of her in her stunning yellow dress.
Nice site here! Looking forward to returning soon.

I felt sorry for Michelle dressing up in that severe outfit. She did not look happy in any of the pictures I’ve seen of her as she wore that outfit. She lost the veil and jacket pdq since she wasn’t wearing them at the airport later.
I spent a few minutes wondering if I were First Lady and making a visit to the Vatican, just what I would do with the required black veil. Some interesting fashion options came out of that reverie.