Studios of Neptune
The Art and Photography
of
Samuel Howard Whitman
GI JOE
This is an old school project I'm including because our modern times might find it more salient than when I made it. Personally, the experience of being socialized into our modern western world has had little to no effect on my own identity. I look at the promoted archetypes as absurd and comical representations of manhood. The comedy of course can never take away from the awareness of the very real danger within the mentalities. Physical power and the ability to threaten is represented in these dolls alongside the joy of childhood imagination. I find that dangerous. Forming an identity that functions properly is different for each soul and here I play with the idea that these dolls are a contemporary boy version of barbie. That concept doesn't always include sexuality but for most people, it does. And that's not to say that a child will play exactly as directed by advertisement but we don't know our children until they know themselves and any small choice a parent makes may last. This project is me tempering everything I conceived of the toy I was given during puberty, not just what I kept to know as me. ​​
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The not so subtle conflation of attractiveness and displays of power live in a world view that is at odds with who I am. When I was young, I had no room in my soul, on a spiritual level, to respect the vast numbers of people who have invested their personal foundation in this way of thinking. Seeking to flaunt power displays weakness of character in all the social contexts I recognized. Even now, the only way I can see to justify these feelings is to presume there is an enemy. It's the assumption that strikes me as the important factor because it describes a known evil. And i will admit that a conscious decision to protect from evil is virtuous. The problem is clearly that searching for an evil to fight gives permission to inflict harm on others and frame it as protection, thus letting that evil live. In our modern era, with the profound capacity to globalize trade peacefully, it is no longer justifiable to ask any of our people to die for any cause. And it is certainly immoral to allow for evil to live through our countrymen under the guise of patriotism.
