![\"Bill](\"\/blogpics\/billhenson.jpg\")
Every time I’ve started to blog on this story it’s escalated, and now it’s just crazy.<\/p>\nEvery time I’ve started to blog on this story it’s escalated, and now it’s just crazy.<\/p>\n
Police have seized artworks and are expected to lay child pornography charges against photographer artist Bill Henson and the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Sydney. This is because Henson’s works included several photographs of 12 year old girls in the nude.<\/p>\n
In yesterday’s SMH<\/a>, the artist explained his work:<\/p>\n “I’ve worked with people this age for many, many years,” he says. “They seem to be the most effective vehicle for expressing the things that interest me about humanity and vulnerability and our sense of ourselves living inside our bodies. Kids of this age, they seem to, as all those cliches go, be half in childhood, half in the adult world,” Henson says. “They’re at a point where there is an exponential change, both psychological and physically, taking place and this all kind of creates a floating world of expectation and uncertainty.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The exhibition didn’t get a chance to open. Yesterday a conservative columnist wrote about how awful the whole thing was and how it was sexualising young girls. Then “a member of the public” complained to the cops.<\/p>\n Things got worse. The SMH cropped their photo of Henson because it showed nipples in the background. The ABC’s Lateline held off their report on the incident by half an hour last night while the editors hurriedly put black stripes all over the images. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd happily pandered to the talkback radio audience by saying the photos were “revolting” <\/p>\n “Kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected,” he said. “For God’s sake, let’s just allow kids to be kids.”<\/p>\n I’m not familiar with Henson’s work and I haven’t seen the photos in question. But what I think Henson is trying to express with his work is that 12 year old girls aren’t “innocent kids” in the simplistic sense (I was a 12 year old girl once and believe me, no way was I sexually innocent). They’re at a cusp of flowering sexuality… and they’re also dealing with physical changes that aren’t necessarily sexual. It’s a difficult time when they’re really self conscious about their bodies.<\/p>\n Surely that’s worth capturing in art?<\/p>\n The other bizarre thing about this is that it’s not Henson that has done the sexualising here. It’s everybody else – the commentators, the media, the complaining member of the public, the police. They’ve looked at a picture of a naked 12 year old and seen it as a sexual image. Not only that, but they’ve projected all sorts of value judgements about sex and sexual images onto it. They’re the ones who are sexualising young girls, interpreting the photos as dirty pornography.<\/p>\n Think for a moment about the messages being sent to young girls here. The first is that their bodies are first and foremost sexual objects – that there is no way for a 12 year old girl to be nude without it being a sexual thing. And secondly there’s the hysteria and shame surrounding the idea of a girl that age being sexual in any way. She’s supposed to be innocent<\/em>, remember?<\/p>\n Shall I throw in the obligatory caveats here? Because anyone who defends Henson’s art will automatically be accused of defending child porn. I’m not, of course. It goes without saying the the exploitation of children for sex is a crime that deserves to be punished.<\/p>\n BUT… we’re talking about art<\/em>. And we’re talking about teenagers who, thanks to puberty, do have their own sexuality. If the girls in the photos haven’t been exploited (they agreed to be involved with their family’s permission), what exactly is the crime here?<\/p>\n This is where we get into thought crime territory (that’s twice in one week). It’s all about the dreaded “criminal intent to arouse<\/a>” a phrase coined by Tony Comstock, albeit in a very different context to this. There is the assumption that any naked (or even half naked) photo of a child will incite arousal in a pedophile, who will automatically act on it. Hence the growing paranoia about photos taken at school swimming carnivals. There is an assumption that Henson’s art will inflame evil passions and crimes will subsequently be committed.<\/p>\n Thus, censoring the exhibition is an act of “pre crime<\/a>” policework – stepping in and saving the day before anything criminal actually happens. The cops have already done a bit of pre-crime last week by raiding the home of several Islamists to “send a message”.<\/p>\n I thought we’d already got over this kind of censorship of artwork years ago. The problem is that in the 21st century, stopping child pornography is now the excuse used to justify all kinds of censorious and repressive acts. It’s a near-perfect justification because it’s one that’s very hard to argue against. <\/p>\n Hell, I hate the idea that I’m discussing the dreaded “CP” word on my blog yet again<\/em>, especially when it’s standard porn practice to not even say or type those words lest it attract the wrong kind of attention. But I refuse to be silenced. This is censorship and I hate it.<\/p>\n The art critic Peter Craven has written an opinion piece<\/a> defending the work. I’ll end with this interesting quote:<\/p>\n We are always likely to misjudge an imagination as pornographic because it presents the naked thing that might provoke an erotic response as a form of truth rather than as a sly peep show.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Edit: The curator of photography at the NSW Art Gallery has come out swinging<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Bill’s work isn’t the problem here, it’s just a convenient kind of whipping boy at this particular moment in time… To take cheap shots at artists … won’t change whatever the problems are in our social fabric.<\/p>\n “The day art museums and artists decide that the only thing they can do is react to public opinion is the day that we are in the same scenario as people were in the 1930s in Germany,” she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Edit 24 May<\/strong>: Latest report<\/a>. The charges aren’t CP related. They’re for “publishing an indecent article”. The person who complained was Hetty Johnson, a very vocal anti-child abuse campaigner. She said: “What’s happening here is that the arts community have felt that they’ve been able to get away with this under the guise of art for a number of years, and I think this is the community drawing a line in the sand and saying, ‘Enough’s enough’.”<\/p>\n The story also quotes Henson in 2006 saying: “It’s an impossibly oversimplified notion, this ‘loss of innocence’. It’s not like you cross a painted line on the floor; it’s a progression.”<\/p>\n Edit 29 May<\/strong>: I hate this, I fucking hate it, but I’m giving in. The police are now going after websites<\/a> that may have used Henson’s photographs in their reportage. I’ve now cropped the photo used on this post, removing the blurry background image of one of his photos. I’m allowing myself to be censored but there is no way on earth I want to be the subject of that kind of accusation, because it wouldn’t matter that I’m innocent, the damage would be done and my whole life would be screwed.<\/p>\n They’ve also raided numerous major galleries including the National Gallery.<\/p>\n The ABC dared to show a documentary about Henson on Tuesday night including full shots of several controversial photos. I suppose that means our public broadcaster is guilty as well. And I watched it, so that must mean I’m some sort of pervert.<\/p>\n This whole thing makes me want to move abroad.<\/p>\n I’ll say it again: what the fuck<\/em>?<\/p>\n Edit: 31 May – I’ve written more on this topic, even though I said I wouldn’t. You’ll find my further rantings in the comment section.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every time I’ve started to blog on this story it’s escalated, and now it’s just crazy. Police have seized artworks and are expected to lay child pornography charges against photographer artist Bill Henson and the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Sydney. This is because Henson’s works included several photographs of 12 year old girls in the nude. In yesterday’s SMH, the artist explained his work: “I’ve worked with people this age Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,23],"tags":[80,119,910,604,915,790],"class_list":["post-768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-sex-and-women","tag-art","tag-bill-henson","tag-censorship","tag-photography","tag-porn","tag-thought-crime"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}