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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Do you like working for Tina Brown? [Toscani is creative director for Brown's Talk magazine.]
I love it. You know, they say that I'm a male chauvinist. I'm working with one of the most difficult women in the world and we get along fantastically. Great woman. Great woman.
So, what about these claims that you're a male chauvinist?
I think that most women are dumb -- not because they are dumb but because they play dumb. They should be home taking care of their children, educating society. Society is missing the mother, the education of the mother. They'd rather check their office instead of checking their children's school bag.
It's very important. We are missing a whole foundation of mothers in society. Women are giving up an incredible responsibility to become what? Managers? Now women become generals, they go to the army, they are policemen. Fuck! It's too much! I mean, women in uniform? I had incredible respect for women because they didn't go to work. Now they even go to war, they bomb, they kill. Women didn't do that in the past. Now they do. Well, great, fantastic, my compliments. You've joined the group of idiots called men.
So feminism is a disappointment?
It's totally wrong. Now women want the same bullshit as men. It's wrong, all wrong.
I've worked for women's magazines. They make me laugh. If I was a woman, I'd be embarrassed to be treated like that. Look at Vogue, and [Harper's] Bazaar, and those kinds of fashion magazines. Basically women are stupid because they think they can become more beautiful by copying those kinds of idiotic images.
But as a photographer you worked for these magazines and produced these same images.
Of course. That's the reason why I say that. Everybody is afraid to be rejected. Because if they are what they are, they're probably going to be rejected. If they have a nose that doesn't conform to fashion magazines, if they're a little fatter than the models in magazines, they're afraid that they're going to be rejected. It goes on like that. So stupid people see beauty only in beautiful things. It's an old dada expression.
You've spoken out against what you call the "monoculture." Isn't Benetton part of that monoculture as well?
Yeah, sure. But I try my best to expose that monoculture by doing the opposite. My magazine called Colors shows the differences in the world, the rest of the world. Because there is always the rest of the world that people don't want to look at. I try to speak a language that people say is against the interest of the company. There was an article in the French daily Le Monde [as well as an article by Jerry Della Femina in the Wall Street Journal] that said that if I continue doing that, Benetton is going to disappear. I don't think so. On the contrary, people are much smarter than advertising people and consumption pushers think they are. People are not just consumers.
You've compared your relationship with Benetton founder Luciano Benetton to the pope and Michelangelo. Tell me about your relationship with Mr. Benetton.
He's the pope. It's true. There's a relationship there -- we're friends. We've been working together for 18 years. We don't have to check each other out. I know he's a good man, a good owner. I know what he does, that he does quality. He doesn't pollute as much as an entrepreneur in car manufacturing.
What he does is simple. It's first-degree industrialism. Pure cotton, pure wool. He doesn't speculate by producing in the Far East like certain American companies, because it's cheaper than in the United States. At Benetton, everything is produced in Italy for Italy and for rich foreign countries. What is produced in Turkey or China or Brazil is produced on location for the local market. You also give local people the opportunity to work, produce and consume the goods that they produce. So I think on that level the company is the best company in the world. I've checked these things out. I'm very concerned about these kinds of things, and that's the primary reason why I work. And of course the company has the kind of politics that gives me the possibility to do what I want.
Has Mr. Benetton ever responded to one of your campaign ideas by saying, "No, now you're going too far"?
No, never. Going too far compared to what? I don't understand that. There's no such thing as going too far. If you are intelligent, you can go as far you can want. There is no such thing as going too far. I hope we're going very far, even further. Going too far ...
