The Water Babies - Charles Kingsley
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things
We murder to dissect.
William Wordsworth
For interminable weeks Australia has been seized by the dilemma of whether or not it is acceptable to photograph naked children for the purposes of high art. The only respite for the socially conscious media watcher is to be briefly drawn into fretting about the likelihood that the world will run out of food, water and petrol before it runs out of air. So much for fruitful contemplation. I now feel compelled to contribute to this ‘debate’, and I use the term loosely as the arguments for and against so far put forward make me suspect both sides have assembled think tanks composed entirely of ornamental budgies to formulate their theses. Anyone would think this was a hard question.
A little background for those living in blissful ignorance beyond these shores. Last month an exhibition opened in Sydney of the work of renowned (here at least) photographer Bill Henson. Some, but not all, of the pieces are nude photographs of children under sixteen. These are interspersed with landscapes - a critical factor in the semantics that followed. Crucially, a photograph of a naked thirteen-year-old girl was used on the invitation and poster, rendering it the predominant image of the exhibition, not to mention drawing notoriety to the show. New South Wales police, in an ill-advised and ham-fisted raid, impounded the works, declaring they were ‘pornography’. Authorities duly judged that they were nothing of the kind and the exhibition proceeded. Since then a media battle has raged drawing in no lesser luminaries than the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (a practising Christian) in defence of the rights of children to be heard and not seen and gob-for-hire Cate Blanchett (a practising tosser) in defence of really famous people being allowed to do what they like. With the cream of the intelligentsia on the case, you’d be forgiven for thinking that at least some thought-spiking statements might result. Unfortunately not.
Those against the photos being exhibited couldn’t overcome their disgust for long enough to form a sentence. A spokesperson for some family-focused lobby group, a woman with the highly lampoonable name of Hetty (Het-up-Hetty leaps to mind), popped up every five minutes blathering about some ‘process’ that ought to be ‘gone through’ and the Prime Minister pulled
yuck faces. Not what you’d call decisive action in defence of child protection. The libertine pro view is naturally premised on the right to free expression and the perceived threat to it by the imposition of censorship. Most sections of the media supported this view being, theoretically at least, in the freedom of expression business. There seemed to be a great deal of collusion in the orchestrated response between self-interested parties which suggests that everyone involved at least had some awareness that the situation was sensitive enough to require skillful management. Women artists who had photographed their own little girls naked were recruited to face down the challenge to responsible parenting and to prevent the rather uncomfortable picture of a sleazy looking, middle-aged bloke standing in front of a naked thirteen-year-old for hours on end instructing her to smile and place her limbs in certain configurations forming too fixed an image in the nation’s collective psyche.
In the latest salvo, a photograph of a naked girl aged six, taken by her artist mother, has appeared on the cover of
Art Monthly, a partly government funded magazine. A cock-snooking act if ever there was one, and one that is as petulant as it is manipulative. Defiantly, the girl who is now eleven, appeared on the doorstep with her art critic father this week. He wore a clownish shirt and comic bow-tie – presumably to underscore the Bohemian and anti-corporate credentials of the family. Both were anxious that the public understand the little girl had given her ‘consent’ at the time and stands by that consent now. There is a huge question mark in my mind over how far a girl of six or eleven or even thirteen might feel at liberty to make objective choices in the face of the stated desires of parents whom she is anxious to please. I’m guessing little girls don’t normally skip into the family living room squealing, ‘I wanna be papped in the buff, Mum.’
Journalist David Marr who is usually sensible, came out with the fundamentally flawed justification that there is a tradition in art of depicting naked children that must be preserved. Sure there is. Naked children symbolise innocence. But the exploitation of that nakedness surely epitomises the converse – theft of innocence, or at the very least appropriation of it. David Marr might also like to consider that we no longer send children up chimneys and down mines with the canaries. When he talked about the history of child nakedness in art, he was drawing on a tradition that exists mostly in painting, drawing and sculpture. It’s true that a child’s identity might be revealed in any of these media. The distinction is that a photograph, by its nature, depicts a real event, i.e. that a real child stood naked in front of an adult at his or her bidding. A sculpture, painting or drawing can be reproduced from memory and is not actual proof that a real child ever performed this function. This is why men don’t wank all over
The Water Babies. When police stormed the Bill Henson exhibition with a view to prosecution under arcane and complex pornography laws, they were on the wrong track. In any case, pornography laws vary from state to state. The pertinent issue is whether or not society undertakes to use the law to protect the privacy of children, not whether or not an image of a single child naked can be considered pornographic. Of course it can’t. But it
is exploitation and, in the present climate of paranoia over child safety, a complete anomaly.
Even so, the main focus of child protection activity in the current social climate where no one appears to believe it’s a bad thing to commodify and fetishise children’s bodies for commercial gain, is on safeguarding the privacy of individual children and inhibiting the abilities of those who might exploit them to access their personal details – and this should include what they look like under their clothes. This is where it all gets a bit murky. Passionate art experts have lined up to explain to us plebs that it’s all a question of ‘context’. Okay, I’ll play. Apparently, if you intersperse nude photographs of children with sultry sunsets and moody trees, they become .. er.. something entirely different. As of today’s date, no one has come forward to amplify what it is exactly they
do become. It's important to maintain an open mind but not so open that your brains fall out.
As many of you know, Pants doesn’t normally have much patience with rules that are difficult to follow by virtue of being encumbered with lots of unqualifiable exceptions. The art world appears to be suggesting it’s okay for
some people to take photos of naked children but not others. So what I’m hearing is that a prominent artist who happens to be a middle-aged bloke apparently operates with an entirely different set of motivations and values than any other man with a camera and access to naked children. Well, he might do. Who’s to say? Also, it’s apparently okay for
some people in
some places to view photographs of naked children and not others. That context argument again. It’s okay if it’s in an art gallery because paedophiles do not go to art galleries. Art historian Betty Churcher also helpfully explains that paedophiles don’t buy
Art Monthly. Presumably she has ways of knowing this for certain. She might try phoning around some public libraries to see how many of their copies have been found in the men’s toilets with sticky pages. You think I’m kidding? Ask a librarian.
Consider the irony of parents freaking out if their children get so much as a suspicious SMS message and then blithely strolling through a gallery viewing photos of girls the same age or younger than their own children in the altogether. These might be the same parents who wouldn’t let their daughters have slutty Bratz dolls. I’m not pro-censorship but I question the frankly patrician assertion that a right exists for adults to view naked images of real, individual children. And you know I'm not in favour of extending further privileges to the already over-priveleged. It is the duty of art to challenge convention but this does not entitle artists to claim liberties that potentially threaten the liberties of others.
In this freakishly self-conscious age can anyone anticipate how the children whose images are appearing today for adult consumption, no matter what the context, might feel about it in a few years time? What if one of these girls decides she wants a public life in the future? Is it worth the risk to her self-image when there are a million other ways to symbolically represent innocence in art? How can we sanction exposure of some children's bodies to potentially a world audience on their behalf on the one hand and pixellate the faces of fully clothed others on the pretext of preserving their privacy? And, given that in most other situations, children are over-protected to the point of stifling their freedom of movement, why make this absurdly unnecessary exception for no other reason than to appease a powerful artistic lobby just because they happen to be banging the freedom of expression drum very loudly?
In a bizarre television discussion on the public broadcaster SBS recently, remarkable for its singular inability to find anyone with anything vaguely succinct to say on the matter, a still unnamed adult woman, who’d been photographed naked as a child appeared. Her mother was asked why the family had chosen to suppress her name even now and she said they didn’t want ‘creeps’ finding out who she was. This betrayed an awareness that the images were likely to have salacious appeal to at least some. My question is how does one separate the creeps from the dotes? Instead of working ourselves into a lather trying to anticipate the predilections of paedophiles or even plain old garden variety 'creeps' why not just leave them kids alone?
There are an awful lot of questions here. Please feel free to address any or all of them. I honestly would like to have a decent exchange on this.
