Pedophilia is to now what “commos” were to the 50s. And as with the 50s, McCarthyist paranoia and obsession abounds. Only difference is, it ain’t reds being spied under the beds of the nation – it’s peds!
Any herd obsession is, naturally, fed off and promulgated by political leaders anxious to be seen to be banging the drum of the righteous and morally decent. With the Henson controversy barely into rigamortis after police charges of indecency were thrown out, we have a new pedo outrage to deal with: the latest Art Monthly Australia magazine features nude shots of a little girl snapped by her mother.
In one, at 4 years old, she is shown wearing her grandmother’s jewellery. In another, “perhaps the most provocative” according to a Sydney Morning Herald online report, she “lies back with her arms behind her head and her legs folded.” Interesting, the mindset of the reporter that is betrayed by this wording. Firstly, by whose judgment are any of the pictures “provocative”? Secondly, how can a 4 year old girl be provocative? That’s just not possible. Provocation requires wilful intent, which leaves only the photographer – the girl’s mother – as the guilty party. Her art critic husband, Robert Nelson, dispels that with his comment that the photos were instigated by his daughter and that “her mother saw nothing wrong with making them.”
The cover of the magazine shows the subject at 6 years old against a backdrop alluding to the work of Lewis Carroll. Here it is:
Is there anything remotely provocative about that picture? 20 years ago, before all this pedo obsession nonsense started, it could have featured on one of those tins of biscuits some old lady from England used to send your family for Christmas. But NOW…well, the pollies are scrabbling for front baying position as they decry this affont to public standards of decency. Hark at this…
Rudd, who led the parade of the righteous in his denunication of the Henson photographs as “absolutely revolting”, has confirmed that he really does have “issues” with kiddies in their natural state: he “can’t stand” the Art Monthly pics.
NSW’s cotcase Premier, Morris Iemma, and – not to be outdone – his Opposition number, Barry O’Farrell, find the little girl so offensive that they are calling for Art Monthly Australia to be stripped of public funding.
Needless to say, Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnson has bibbed in, claiming the pictures are an adult fantasy “manufactured by adults for the pleasure of adults, the financial benefit of adults, whatever it is. This is an adult desire being projected on to children.”
Like any over-zealous crusader, Hetty Johnson is projecting her own shit on to the pictures, and hostage to the self-righteousness that tends to accompany extreme conviction in a cause, is blind to the possibility that her perception is warping her sense of reality. She looks at the pics and sees a projection of an adult fantasy. Isn’t it possible to look at them and see a little girl in innocent pose? Who is Johnson to deny this possibility with her assertion? The sicko fantasy is coming from her (a classic symptom of the peds-under-the-bed epidemic)!
But if Johnson’s zealotry has thrown her perspective out of whack, at least her cause is a worthy one driven by belief. The protesting politicians are despicable in their disingenuousness, their outrage mere spin – the product of a cynicism that has our leadership bowing at the feet of the false god of populism, dependent on the counsel of the high priests of marketing. The conviction politician is all but extinct. Political correctness is the virus that did this rare and noble species in.
I despair at the political correctness that has the 21st Century by the lychees. My partner remarked recently that the famous Coppertone ad with the puppy tugging at the toddler’s togs, exposing her untanned derrière, could not be released today for fear of inciting the pedophilia phobics.
And right she is. In searching for the above pic, I learned that Coppertone revised the ad to show only the girl’s back. When? In the 21st century, of course. In the 20th century, the Coppertone ad was an icon of cuteness; today, it’s pedo porn.
And you know what I hate most? It’s impossible not to buy into this bad-minded shit! 20 years ago, I would have looked at that Coppertone ad and, like everyone else, seen an amusing and endearing graphic. Today, any pic of a kid undressed evokes some cognition of pedophilia.
You avert your glance from a toddler running around in naked delight at the beach lest you arouse suspicion that you are one of those peds under the bed. Teachers dare not physically comfort a child in distress for fear of bringing the Inquisition down on their heads. Fathers draw questioning stares if they are physically affectionate with their daughters. Uncles confine their expressions to the verbal.
Collectively, we see children through the depraved eyes of the pedo. In this, we are a dirty-minded society. We have been robbed of an innocence that was ours only a few years back, and can never return to that retrospectively precious state. Adam and Eve had a far better deal – the fruit that has taken our innocence was rotten.
In the area of freedom of expression, we have devolved as a society. And since that basic freedom is one of the foundation stones of the democracy we pride so dear that we send our youth to battle under its banner on foreign shores, we must fight to retain it. Not to do so is to demean the lives lost in its defence. And to reduce to mere rhetorical bluster and hypocrisy our claims to a superior system that we wave like national flags as we denounce terrorist states and bomb the crap out of places like Iraq.
Overstating the case? Perhaps. But if you’ll swallow it from the likes of Rudd, Iemma, O’Farrell and the rest of the pedo McCarthyists, why not from me? At least I have a point to make that I genuinely and profoundly believe in.
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I’d been wondering how to account for our devolution from a sociological perspective. You’re right when you say “Collectively, we see children through the depraved eyes of the pedo.” How did this happen?
There was a documentary shown recently on pay TV about pre-science (I guess pre-enlightenment) crime. In one case that stood out for me a male youth was found dead with his pants down around his ankles just outside of town. Today we’d assume he was raped and murdered by someone in the town. At the time the devil was blamed. People then did not acknowledge that people did such things – the devil or witches were blamed.
Come the 20th century we had the holocaust to teach us what ordinary people are capable of, confirmed by some controversial experiments in psychology. We also have plenty of “Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer” type docos and Silence of the Lambs. We teach kids that dangerous strangers don’t necessarily wear black capes or have tell tale warts on their noses – that ordinary people are dangerous.
Knowing more and understanding better appears to have its disadvantages to the point where, as you say, we can barely trust ourselves let alone anyone else.
Bummer
Yes, Lyn, it’s a dilemma.
With your pre-enlightenment example in mind, we’ve moved from not seeing what is there to seeing what is not there. Both dysfunctional states of being. Would that the pendulum swings back to the middle…
are you sick ?
No, quite well thanks. How about you?
“”…he “can’t stand” the Art Monthly pics.
NSW’s cotcase Premier, Morris Iemma, and – not to be outdone – his Opposition number, Barry O’Farrell, find the little girl so offensive that they are calling for Art Monthly Australia to be stripped of public funding.””
But in the minds and tastes of sicko liberals, Serano’s “Piss Christ” and another Dada Era artist whose name escapes me canned his own fecal matter and passed this off as art. The Liberal homosexual Art and Art gallery community just was overwhelmed at how artistic and creative these were. No – these artists suck!
Here Lyn, is where the collective ego — not the conscious individual mind — releases its venom from its vantage point of being too frightened or fearful of its own security it has no integrity whatsoever to not acknowledge that it has been handed a load of crap and is very accepting of mediocrity. It all begins in the creative arts and academic arenas – I am Professor of Studio Art and am witness to the discourse that stems from mediocrity in the arts. And the standing ovations that it receives!
So too is the “collective sociological ego” so immature that as a child it must loudly clamor for position, for recognition and for attention and especially for inclusion into the club of the diseased but once in position there are aagain too fearful to tell idiots such as those that criticize the Art Monthly works who fully embrace the shit that has been pawned off at them and us as the audience – such as Basquiat, Koons, Damien Hurst, as art.
Again to restate:
“”we’ve moved from not seeing what is there to seeing what is not there…” Both dysfunctional…places from whence to open ones flapping liberal and politically full of crap opinions. You see, when the day is over and we all shut the front doors, no one gives a shit! Anyone who continues to create a stir OVER A aRT Magazine cover or bottle of Sun Tan Oil simply has no life to speak of, is ungratified and no doubt unfulfilled. TO state that funding should be taken away for that front cover but to support the crappy artists that I named to go into history as great? They are Liberal and therefore sick and deluded!!!!