Back in 2008 a censorship controversy erupted over Bill Henson’s photographs of nude teenage girls. Police raided the gallery and shut down the exhibition, the Prime Minister called the images “disgusting” and a lynch mob mentality generally prevailed. Eventually the images were classified “G” (suitable for children) by the censors.
Since that time the art world has become increasingly paranoid about censorship and have been self-censoring images of children, including closing down an exhibition because it included a painting of a young boy without a shirt (mischievously called “above the waist nudity” by the religious nutjobs who support censorship).
Now the issue is in the papers again. A right-wing Christian senator (due to lose his seat in a few months) has chaired an inquiry into the Australian classification system and accepted submissions calling for art to be classified and possibly blacklisted if it contains nudity. The are also calls for films with full-frontal nudity to be banned. The Australian Christian Lobby have said “there are dangers to children everywhere” posed by images and bemoaning the fact that “it will be argued that adults should be able to see whatever they want, even claiming photos of naked children have artistic merit.”
(Yeah, like photos of your children in the bath. Or images like this one of Mary breastfeeding a naked Jesus.)
Naturally, the art community isn’t impressed.
Some shuddered at the thought of bureaucrats or religious groups controlling what art lovers could see. And others feared it would have a chilling effect on boundary-pushing art.
Welcome to my world, I thought.
In my original blog post on Henson I wrote my defence of his work from the position of “Come ON, people. It’s ART!”
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The post incited a lot of comments including criticism from Tony Comstock who pointed out the flawed logic in my post (and I’m grateful for it). He wrote:
If you want controversial work to be protected because it’s “art”, then you are opening the door for controversial work to be supressed because it’s “not art”.
His comment is ringing true at the moment because I’m seeing all sorts of people up in arms about the idea of censoring art (and rightly so). Unfortunately it’s often couched in terms of “But you can’t censor us, it’s ART! Not porn!”
The subtext is obvious: art is good, porn is bad. Some censorship is OK… as long as it’s not of MY work. Because what I do isn’t nasty pornography! I am tasteful and intellectual and upstanding and I make ART, not PORN.
This page on the ABC website says:
We live in a time in history when more than ever before, all sorts of images are available to us. Some are beautiful. Some will make you smile. Some are confronting. Others are downright disgusting.
So how do you make that judgement about what is just a naked body – and what is pornographic? Is it about context? Is about whether or not you can see genitalia? Is it about positions, facial expressions, intent? And who do you trust to make those decisions for you?
Notice how that paragraph automatically makes a number of assumptions, mainly that pornography is inherently bad, that someone ought to be making decisions for you about what you can see.
This kind of porn/art dichotomy is ultimately harmful to the cause of free speech. It goes against the old saying, attributed to Voltaire, of “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
I’m writing this post to make an appeal to artists and people who enjoy art. My appeal goes like this:
Thank you for being appalled at the idea of censorship. You are, quite rightly, upset at the idea that some government body would want to ban artwork or prevent you from seeing something, thus taking away your own agency to make decisions about what content or media you wish to consume. You want to change this. You want to fight it. Great.
In this fight you have a lot of allies. For a start, you have the adult industry – we dirty pornographers – who have been struggling against Australia’s censorship regime for decades.
You also have hundreds of thousands of gamers, people who love computer games but who are prevented from accessing adult games by the classification system.
We’ll be there, defending the right of artists to express themselves without government intervention. Because we hate the idea that the government is telling adults what they can and can’t see.
Now, you might not like porn or play computer games but the fact is that we’re your allies. We’re all in this together.
So please remember that what you are fighting for isn’t just about art. It’s about freedom of speech and freedom of expression. It’s also about the right of adults to make their own decisions about what they can see, read and hear.
And after we’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with you and protested against the censorship of art, please return the favour. Stop creating the porn/art divide. Help fight against the censorship of porn and games, even if you don’t approve of them. Write letters, send in submissions to inquiries, comment on news sites, join the Sex Party. Don’t turn away.
Because if you don’t stand up for speech you don’t agree with, you open the door for the kind of censorship the art community is facing today.
Someone on Twitter has suggested sending Senator Guy Barnett hundreds of photos of Renaissance nudes to make a point about the stupidity of his anti-nudity stance. I like the idea but I doubt it will make much difference. The man is a dyed-in-the-wool religious conservative who probably believes that seeing nudity is harmful to children. He’s also a fan of using child pornography and “protecting the children” as an excuse for curtailing the rights of adults to freedom of speech.
He’s not the only one. Modern day prudes like Melinda Tankard Reist and “Young Media Australia” are also pushing for censorship in their crusade to “protect children”. The Australian Christian Lobby have their tentacles everywhere in government. They too are waging a moral battle to “save the children”.
Don’t be fooled. This isn’t about protecting kids at all. It’s really a campaign to inflict a certain religious moral agenda onto adult Australians. This “morality” is ultimately anti-sex, anti-reproductive rights and anti-feminist. It’s about returning Australia to a repressive time when information about sex was hidden, when children were seen and not heard, when women knew their place and had no access to contraception or safe termination.
These people want censorship because they fear sex. They think images of nudity or sexuality are inherently corrupting. They believe that repressing sexuality will somehow create a better world. They have no peer-reviewed scientific evidence to back up their claims of “harm”. All they have are religosity and an unshakeable belief that they are righteous. They are the Western version of the Taliban.
We have to stand up to them.
Here’s hoping that this latest censorship assault on the art world will be a quickening for some people, in the same way that the gamers have become organised. And I’m hoping that those who love the arts remember what’s happening here next time they ban an erotic film like Matinee or LA Zombie or Ashley and Kisha.
* The top image is by Rodney Pople. He painted this image of himself being beheaded by his children as a comment on the censorship of art.
* The bottom image is Caravaggio’s “Triumph of Eros” which would undoubtedly be blacklisted.
* Wikimedia Commons has a lovely collection of nude boys in art, there’s plenty of images to help to fire up the moral panic.
I am in full agreeance with all you have said & am composing a letter of protest to my local MP & local Govt representatives. You are right, we cannot stand by & allow these fanatical bigoted religious zealots impinge upon & dictate our civil liberties. As an artist(including photography), a gamer & an intelligent consenting adult I agree that united we must stand.
Fundamentalism must be resisted where ever we find it-we’d be fools to think it only exists in other countries.
Power to you sister!
Alex Hiscock.
Good, I’ll support this censorship if we can start with the Bible. All those filthy stories on incest, murder and other immoral behaviour. It’s going to hurt my children.
Leave art alone. It is art, Painting’s, still pictures
etc unless it is trully over the top it is art.
Yeah those Hebrews had very wicked ways didn’t they!
I was asked to witness in front of this committee. There’s no chance of this committee reporting anything good. They weren’t interested in anything I had to say, but were very interested in hearing the ACL and giving media bodies a hard time. There’s really only 2 senators involved. Guy Barnett and Trish Crossin. Crossin is very go with the flow, but is slightly on the side of the freedom of expression. Barnett is as you’ve described, but he’s reasonable compared to Julian McGauran. Barnett was pulling him in line on some of his rants. I’d heard the stories, but wow, to see it in person. Partly it was that so many conservative types submitted. It could have done with more freedom supporting people submitting something, anything for balance. The ALRC review is all the more important now.
@Earth – The Bible has been classified. One religious group apparently sought classification of a particular translation some time ago for their own purposes, and it was rated Restricted (Mature). As it’s a publication, that doesn’t really limit it in any way. But yeah, Australia doesn’t think the Bible is suitable for people under 15, while most of Henson’s works are okay for all children.
You’re amazing, hands down. I’m a philosophy major, but I come from a conservative family, and my first year of uni blew my mind wide open about how NOT black and white censorship issues are. I tried to subscribe to your blog, but I can only get the partial feed- do you have a full feed available?
Censorship in one realm inevitably spills over into other spheres – everybody THINKS they know the difference between ‘art’ and ‘porn’, but just try to precisely define it. In my experience, those who are interested in suppressing one area of expression are unlikely to stop at that – they ultimately want to control ALL ideas, and therein lies the danger…