We Want Media

Last week The Village Voice ran this cover for its annual Pazz and Jop music critics' poll for 2006. David O'Keefe's illustration depicts an old decrepit Dylan running over TV On The Radio's Kyp Malone in his scooter. This is in reference to Dylan's Modern Times beating TV On The Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain for the number one spot in this year’s poll.

Wednesday, the Village Voice ran a letter from TV On The Radio’s saxophonist/flutist Martin Perna which you can find here. Perna’s outraged critique of O’Keefe’s drawing goes so far as to deem the whole paper racist. Perna wrote: “That this picture could be drawn and not questioned or vetoed by any of the people who saw it prior to publication shows the level of ignorance and racism that persists in leftist institutions like the Voice that continue to posture as hip and progressive.”

Woah.

Now I consider myself pretty sensitive to race issues, even in this “post-Chapelle” era, but I’m going to have to disagree with Perna on this one. Whatever horrible image was brought to Perna’s mind when he saw this illustration of his bandmate being run over was an association he conjured up himself and was in no way implied by O’Keefe. If we replace Kyp’s image with that of anyone else on this list (Jenny Lewis, Bruce Springsteen, Justin Timberlake, etc.) suddenly the image is totally kosher. Shouldn’t we be more concerned with the representation of Dylan who is clearly the victim in this drawing?