It looks like incorrigible perv Terry Richardson is trying self-inoculate (literally) against feminist ire in a 46-second video of himself bending over for Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr. Kerr, who is a certified health professional, administers a Vitamin B12 shot right on Terry’s prostrate dumptruck. The fashion photographer then falls into a narcotic reverie where he and another dude dance around in citrus-colored unitards.
Richardson is aiming at detournement, or as we say in American, the old sex politics switcharoo. Here, Terry is the vulnerable, passive object. Miranda is the active subject, armed with the phallic, penetrative apparatus. Right? Wrong. Richardson – who’s no stranger to the whole “camera-as-phallus” idea – has used ersatz feminist theory in defense of his exploitative work before. In a 2004 interview, he said, “A lot of it starts with me saying to a girl, ‘Do you want to do nudes?’ And they're like, ‘I don’t want to be naked.’ So I say, ‘I’ll be naked and you take the pictures. You can have the camera. You can have the phallus.’” I don’t think this is what quite what feminist film critic Laura Mulvey had in mind when she penned “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” On a separate note, Kerr’s bra is quite nice.
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