Bill Henson image from the Robert Miller Gallery.
Writing in the Australian Review of Public Affairs, Kylie Valentine proves that it is possible to say something new about the Bill Henson controversy. It struck me that one huge absence in all the debate that swirled around Henson’s images of adolescents was any contribution from the subjects themselves. Lots of adults jumped into the breach to fill this void, speculating about how the models would feel about being the subjects of this sort of art, or how they might feel at a later date. It was an entirely defensible position, of course, for the photographer’s subjects to maintain silence on grounds of privacy, and it’s worth noting that a number of Henson’s former models did speak out, though their voices seemed to be almost entirely ignored in the “debate” that took place.
Valentine picks up on this theme, and argues:
Increased participation by children in public debates about the representation of adolescents such as Henson’s would produce new knowledge. Such participation would also be likely to add to the complexity of these questions. A straightforward response to this complexity, apparently advocated by those who have spoken out so far to defend children’s welfare, is a blanket prohibition on representations that could be perceived or used as sexualised. In contrast, the participation of children would add new voices to the debate. It would also produce more and different representations of children in response to the adult-produced images of Henson and others, just as feminism has produced an extraordinary range of representations of women. One response advocates, in the name of protection, banishing children from the arena of public visibility. The other, which is far messier and unknown, would make children publicly visible and active in new ways. It would take, it seems to me, an extraordinarily cynical view of participation to argue that the former has greater emancipatory potential.
Her article is well worth a read. She quite correctly argues that the Henson controversy raises much broader – and arguably more challenging – issues about childhood and adolescence than the ones which seemed to dominate the public discussion around Henson’s photos.
Finally, we get to the whole point of the Bill Henson saga. It’s about the children. I was surprised that no-one made the connection between the Henson saga and the recent debates about under-age models on catwalks and in magazines. We (as a community) were able to debate that and come to a fairly quick decision about what is acceptable and what is not. New rules and standards have come into play there.
Why is it so different for art? Yes, I know that art and fashion are not the same thing. But the children are.
During the Henson debate quite a few people I know asked their teenagers what they thought of the photos and I heard that all the teenagers thought they were pervy. Random sample, but that was it.
Yes I’m sure they did. So what?
Attaboy, you tell those uppity teenagers to go to their rooms.
Did you actually read the post, or is this just some kind of aggro boy blogger attack on Suz about what constitutes an ‘argument’?
I did read the post PC. I also read the article it quotes. In fact I believe I linked to it weeks ago. I’m sick to death of this special pleading:
We are the great unwashed ignorant fuckheads that constitute the majority of the human race and therefore we have the right to tell people who’ve got a brain and cultivate taste what they’re entitled to think, what is right, what constitutes art.
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So some people asked some teenagers who said it was ‘purvey’. First class insight there. If I had ten cents for every time I’d heard some ignoramus airing her/his toilet-clogged mind I’d buy Jamaica. As I said: so what.
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That’s elitist I hear people say. Damn straight!
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Incidentally my gender is immaterial and criticizing teenagers doesn’t make one a hater of youth. There’s no argument being made because it ain’t worth making it. This whole ‘affair’ boils down to some jerks with fucked up ideas about sex attempting to railroad our lives with their neurotic misery. I’m sick to death of it. Don’t like it? Don’t look. Go over to Bolt’s place and he’ll show you some naff tulip pastels. But if there’s no evidence or even a whisper of children being exploited then that’s probably because they’re not being exploited. Ergo it’s not your business – go away.
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To which they’ll always reply but I asked a bunch of boneheads and they said it was ‘pervy’ and there’s more boneheads then you weird people who use your brains for something besides changing channels so we’re right and you’re wrong.
Adrien, I was under the impression that the post says this is an as-yet-mostly-unexplored area of discussion about turning objects into subjects and giving a voice to the demographic being represented and used in Henson’s work. Suz was addressing this. It’s a completely separate question from your preoccupations above, which ignore the appropriation and power-imbalance issues and simply continue the argument that’s being going on for weeks.
Alrighty PC I’ll attempt to give a more pertinent and nuanced view on the subject.
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Ms Valentine’s discourse is a consideration of ‘rights packages’ and conceptions of rights as exemplified in the Henson affair. Essentially there are two notions of ‘rights’ which come in to conflict. On the one hand you have to advocacy that ‘children’ are more capable of agency then given credit for. On the other hand as minors they are legally incapable of consent. The latter over-rides the former (which is actually not a right at all) and it is on this basis that the anti-Henson howlers have gone to war. To wit:
At least one. In fact there were a whole battalion of puritans who howled for blood on the basis that it had to be pornography. They used the ‘won’t somebody please think of the children’ hysteria to do so. It’s a peerless road to the moral high ground. You stake a claim to be the defender of defenceless innocents and on that basis you can accuse an artist, an audience, a gallery and various state instutions of being producers/consumers of child pornography.
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To be so is quite rightly a serious offense. Yet the only thing these people had in evidence was: it makes me feel icky, it’s pervy, of course it’s pornography! Hang ‘im high!
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Contrary to Valentine’s assertion thus:
I’m afraid I have to say that she is being unfairly balanced. On the arts side there was a great deal of considered and reasoned debate and I’m sorry on the Paul of Tarsus side there was hysterical claptrap that threw banket accusations of nefarious criminal activity on the basis of their own discomfort re the subject matter.
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And what was their back-up? Lots of people are like me (ie they’re equally fucked up).
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Sorry but it seems to me that reason doesn’t work. I say claim our own moral high ground and shoot these people down as what they are. Hysterical puritans who hate the body, can’t hack their own sexualities and want everyone in the world to be as miserable as they are. And they are willing to send people to jail to do it!
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Some teenagers think it’s icky? Oh says I: so what? Some kids think it’s a good idea to sexually assault a mentally handicapped girl, film it and sell DVDs. Some kids think that makes good viewing Saturday night. Some parents don’t see the problem. I’d like to see these wowsers take that problem on. That is a real problem. Until then, or until such time as they can construct a reasoned argument – they can go fuck themselves.
up until this thread adrian, i thought you added some interesting perspective to the Henson debate here on LP.
Now you’re sliding into silkworm territory
I think it is a shame that the side of the children in this debate was hijacked somewhat Hetty Johnson et al. but I think labelling all those who stick up for the children as hysterical puritans is just as silly as labelling those who support Hanson as perverts.
It is possible to engage this debate without the hysterics that has passed for discussion on both sides. There are precedents for this debate:
Zippora Seven and those topless photos;
Monika Jagaciak and Australian Fashion Week;
Maddison Gabriel and Gold Coast Fashion Week.
I don’t have to believe that Hanson or his supporters are perverts to want the interests of the children protected. I don’t have to be a puritan to suggest that the standards being made to apply to the fashion industry may also be appropriate for the art industry as well.
For what it’s worth, my take on Hason’s statements in interviews recorded before the controversy seem to indicate that he knew he was pushing the boundaries here. That doesn’t make him a pervert, and some of the reaction was definitely OTT, but it seems community standards are shifting somewhat and there needs to be some accounting.
Well I got myself into a something of a brawl re Henson at a conference “Sexual Abuse in Religious Contexts” (RANZCP organised) on the weekend. The point was made frequently by child protection advocates that Henson is exploitative, breeching child labour laws, child protection laws, and parental guidelines for safeguarding children. Again and again, I was told that no child could make a reasonable decision as to the consequences of posing for Henson.
But what was really interesting was the response to the suggestion that attacking Henson is symbolic at its worst, and our failure to enpower children at the very least by following the NZ example and removing the parental right to assault a child by virtue of it being called parental discipline, something that would be a much more significant gain both societally and for children was met with scorn. Because, apparently, children can’t make decisions, reasoned ones, about themselves.
There was no interest in giving kids the skills to be better able to make those decisions (assuming as they were that they can’t), but a rather odd insistence that it could only have meaning if moderated by an adult. There was, according to the argument, no point in asking the kids what they thought about Henson, because they were undoubtedly think the wrong thing anyway. Which was then followed up by statements that Henson was sleezy because some kids had said he was.
It was all rather strange. Especially in light of the FACT that children are more likely to be sexually abused if they have poor skills as to self-determination and self-identity.
Thanks for that Bernice. I think Valentine raises some very important issues about the balance between “protection” and “rights” and I’m also concerned that some of those who campaign for the former seem to have little or no understanding of the latter.
Seems to me like the whole BH debate/debacle has constantly been reflexively framed in terms of positive and negative freedoms – freedom to, and freedom from, as people say. And everyone, myself included, gets set up in their comfy freedom from/to possie and takes potshots at the other side. Actually really hard to construct sophisticated arguments that cross the threshold…or if it’s not, a lot of people ain’t trying very hard.
If you look at the work of some child protection researchers, the debate about empowering children is very much alive. They are the ones pointing to the way in which both Docs regulations and the rebuttable presumption of shared custody put parents’ rights above the wishes and wellbeing of the children, the way that childrens’ testimony is deemed very unreliable and how these things combined lead to children being put back into dangerous situations on a daily basis. Professor Freda Briggs is one of the signatories to the letter on the consent issues of the Henson case, she is also at the forefront of a campaign to outlaw corporal discipline. If you do some googling of Chris Goddard and Prof Briggs especially, you will see that they are by no means advocating adult protection of passive children and are very much concerned with acknowledging their agency and empowering children as a one of the most important ways of preventing abuse. Prof Briggs has written papers on just that issue.
It is simply not true to say that people working and researching from a child protection perspective are not engaging with the question of children’s own agency as it is acknowledged as an essential part of abuse prevention.
Su, you’re not reading what I said very carefully, and projecting onto what I wrote something that is not contained in it. I said, and I was deliberately precise – “some of those who campaign for the former” – I’m not talking about researchers but the likes of Hetty Johnson. I hope that’s clear now.
I was not responding to you but to the idea that there is a lack of interest in giving children skills to make decisions for themselves. That is not the case as anyone who has any knowledge of child protection, rather than a passing and completely abstract notion of what it entails, would know.
Briggs & Goddard do bring that into their work, and their arguments re Henson are inclusive of that but the people I was arguing with weren’t Briggs & Goddard. Much lower in the food chain. People who are likely to have children as clients.
su, are you saying that Bernice’s account of that conference is wrong? Your last paragraph says “It’s simply not true that…” and then at 15 you suggest that a claim in line with that made by Bernice is not compatible with someone having “any knowledge of child protection.” It doesn’t seem to give much credence to Bernice’s tale, nor does it constitute a direct rebuttal.
Fwiw, I think that this “kids can’t consent” thing is being stretched by Henson’s attackers. This kind of blanket strong position really is just a shorthand. Kids can give consent, but they can easily be manipulated into giving it by better informed and socially capable adults. For the issue of having sex and medical procedures, the law likes to err on the side of the absolute for safety’s sake, but clearly in reality children can give consent. The notion that there is no 14 year old on the planet who ever gave proper consent to have sex or a medical procedure is just ridiculous. The notion that legally such “proper” consent can’t be confirmed easily is so obvious as to require the blanket consideration used in child protection. Extending this strict rule beyond sex and medicine seems to me to be a very dangerous precedent, since consent is very hard to pin down, and what is required for informed consent in, say, nude photography hasn’t exactly been clarified in the present debate, has it?
Also I have noticed that this case set a precedent. A week later some cops raided that other obscene art show to check the content, and no-one blinked an eyelid. That disturbs me a lot.
And rest easy Adrien, we know now that the police only received 3 complaints from the great unwashed masses about the Henson exhibition – I wonder who made them? I don’t think the hoi polloi who thought the pictures were pervy really thought they were bad.
No I am not saying Bernice’s account is wrong. I am reassuring people that contrary to implication, children’s agency is considered in child protection work. I am offering an alternative account, not a rebuttal.
The whole idea of aspects of Life Education (in this state) and other forms of early education about body and sexuality is to empower children to recognize what is healthy sexuality and to foster an ability to say no to people who press them to behave in ways that may harm them. These early forms of education are an essential part of abuse prevention and are all about enhancing children’s agency. It is worrisome that child protection workers would dismiss the issue of corporal punishment as it is a key one and widely recognized as an essential tool, not only in abuse prevention but in changing attitudes to children and childhood generally.
I think that the consent issue arises because of a need for broad guidelines. Even if one believes (as I do) that it is possible for someone like Henson to work in a fashion that acknowledges and mitigates against the power imbalance and is not exploitative, society needs broad guidelines about which kinds of adult-minor interactions represent areas of potential harm. Children and adolescents can and do consent to activities because they have very poor self-protective behaviours which is why the issue of consent in a circumstance that bears a superficial resemblance to situations of harm is so fraught.
Henson has been vindicated. There is no reason at all to believe that he has done anything wrong. The debate is now about how do we set guidelines for when parents and children can consent, given a) the fact that children will consent to things that cause them harm and b) the difference between a harmless and a harmful circumstance can be subtle and reside entirely in the subjectivities of adult and minor?
I have to clarify this – I was arguing with individuals in a group setting – they were NOT speakers at the conference. Their opinions do not reflect the conference organisers, the speakers, nor I’m sure RANZCP. But it does puzzle me that people working in child services seemed to dismiss the NZ legislation.
It interests me that a discussion about ‘consent’ always seems to be about sexual consent. There are numerous other ways in which the issue of consent is pertinent, to both adults and children. Here, I’m talking about sleazy tabloid shows which really exploit and humiliate their televisual fodder. And there’s not that much they can do about it. No-one has the pockets to go up against the owners of television stations.
I see su. But I would think the only people who came out of this incident in clear need of guidelines are the people doing the scaremongering, who (Hetty Johnson possibly as an exception) were using children’s images to proselytize their anti-pc ideas, probably against the interests of the (completely voiceless) children involved. It’s noteworthy that they ignored the children who did try to speak up about their experiences, they didn’t do anything to hide the identity of their alleged “victims”, and they hyper-sexualised the girls and ignored the boys.
I think it’s Miranda and her mates who need guidelines, not the rest of us. Henson seems to have been working just fine. Though I suppose fine arts courses could cover this sort of thing – I wonder if your average fine arts degree includes any kind of discussion of these issues? (I assume it does, and I’m sure that Miranda Devine would whinge about how that’s wasting time with art criticism when they should be learning to draw fruit or something).
If ever there was an argument for oppression of the free press, Miranda Devine makes it every time she takes a breath.
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Moderator note: disemvoweled as continual morphing of one’s posting ID in an attempt to sockpuppet/evade bans is explicitly against the LP comments policy.
I was surprised that no-one made the connection between the Henson saga and the recent debates about under-age models on catwalks and in magazines.
That is completely untrue.
Re: 22 – and writing unintelligibly is not against your comments policy?
Aside from being from a problem poster, I have absolutely no idea what s/he has said. Although I’ve noticed in the past that others have responded to this person. Is it only garbled on my screen???
On the topic, yet more interesting layers of complexity. The whole question of adolescent consent, subjectivity and skills in self-awareness is, it seems, far too complex for a black and white legal system, let alone our mass media.
Also Bernice, why were people talking about Henson at a conference on “sexual abuse in religious contexts”? Shouldn’t they have been focussed on the log in their own eye?
Re 22…my best guess (you can tell I’m procrastinating!)
[text deleted by moderator]
[Moderator note: please don't re-emvowel text that moderators have disemvoweled ~tigtog]
Consent, in my opinion, is a complete non-issue in the Bill Henson case, or at best, it’s an issue for examining much later, when we have agreed on what the models in the pictures are doing. We still have not done this. I do not believe the pictures are pornographic and I’ve carefully explained why not.
To jump straight to calling it an issue of consent is to jump straight, as others have said, to equating posing for a photograph without your clothes on, with something like having sex or having cosmetic surgery.
It helps nobody, least of all actual victims of sexual abuse, to elide the large and knobbly distinction between ‘consent’ in the legal sense, and having the foresight and self-possession – the agency – to be able to decide whether you will one day regret your present day decision to do a particular act.
I will also point out again that since no model has come forward to say otherwise it is extremely unlikely that modelling for Bill Henson has caused any person to feel even this mild sort of regret over his or her decision.
CRUSADER: Well, it’s all about the welfare of the children.
CHILDREN: But we’re fine.
CRUSADER: No you’re not. And you’re far too young to be able to have an opinion on the matter anyway.
Not really as consent is also involved in the protection of privacy. You have to give consent for personal information to be shared between various disability service agencies for example.
Another example of a thing that modelling for a picture is not like.
Because a photograph is not information which can be used to identify a person in real life? It is not information that could potentially jeopardize their right to privacy? And as others have pointed out, there are well known examples of adults attempting to prevent publication of naked images taken when they were minors. That did not sound like ‘mild’ regret to me.
You can allow that 13 year olds can make informed decisions while still having some precautionary measures to ensure that they do not suffer long term consequences for decisions made at a time of limited experience.
Not sure about these assertions.
1. It isn’t possible to ensure immunity from all consequences of any actions, whether long term or not. Every action, no matter how apparently trivial, carries the risk of unforeseen consequences.
2. “Some precautionary measures” begs closer attention. Are there any specific precautionary measures that may guard against some foreseeable unwelcome consequences arising from a 13 y-o girl consenting to be photographed in poses and in settings that excite adverse comment and/or prurience? One “precautionary measure” may be to ban all photography of 13 y-os. But presumably all would agree that this amounts to an overreaction.
But the question is, what measures may be deemed to be proportionate?
And more to the point, can the law ever adequately define “proportionate measures”?
su everything you said would apply to my feelings about the yr 9 class photo. Except for the naked part. All the same, I’d like to see all existing prints burned.
It has just struck me that there is a paradox in the thorny issue of consent. Like the age of consent, some things are legal (or at least less problematic)for teenagers to do to each other but become very problematic when done to them by adults. Besides sex stuff, for example, Henson’s photos versus the type of photos and videos teens take of each other at parties. It seems to me that some behaviours aren’t considered to be a problem when teens participate amongst themselves, but become extremely contentious when adults are involved.
I was thinking about the revocable consent idea, Katz. It could be applied just to reproductions of the image for eg and so not affect gallery shows.
I guess it depends whether you see nudity as a special case or not, Laura.
My own poll so far is one “kids should be kids” and two “are you kidding, you should see what they post on myspace”.
Sorry! Just enjoying the mental stimulation. Ah well…
No worries, Nick. I didn’t originally make it clear that the disemvowelment was by a moderator. I’m sure that if I had that then you probably wouldn’t have posted any reemvoweling.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/04/2382151.htm
Just thought I’d add this link cause its in the news again.
Curiously from a distance, Henson could be mistaken for Shakespear in this shot.
The first paragraph in that story is a corker!
OK, as someone who defended Henson on the basis of principle regarding the earlier controversy, and wasn’t particularly concerned about photos recently auctioned either, I have to say that this story (if confirmed) is a real worry: I find this alleged behaviour indefensible.
It’s one thing to take photos of the children of family friends who have grown up around artworks and who appreciate and like the concepts etc of Henson’s photography – to go talent-spotting amongst kids without that acquaintanceship-background and groom them as photographic subjects would very much cross the line of Something That I Do Not Like.
Yep, I agree it’s inappropriate and troubling. It does reinforce the need for appropriate protocols to be developed on working with models and subjects under 18.
Kim and TicTog -
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How the bloody hell else do you get subjects? You’re now making the same errors the religious right make all the time confusing sexual activity with artistic activity. The same ettiquette, the same reflection applies whether Henson asks friends or gives a card to someone he sees on the street.
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Kate Moss was spotted at the age of 14 at an airport. Perhaps you should ring the authoroties obviously she’s a victim of abuse…
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Oh that someone would abuse me in like fashion.
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In public policy we do not write laws on the basis of ’something I don’t like’. We write them on the basis of the public interest. After the Henson brouhaha, the authorities and the various dirty minds who besmirched this artist as a pornographer not one single person could be found to tell tales of depravity. Indeed they all defended him.
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Oscar Wilde said it best (of course):
Adrien, I don’t think wandering round playgrounds is how you get subjects! It’s just not what a school is for, among other things.
And I don’t think there have to be any implications of depravity or whatever from this. Quite the contrary. But it’s just dumb.
Adrian, does the phrase in loco parentis mean anything to you?
Suppose my kids were being babysat, and the babysitter decided to invite Kyle Sandilands over to my house to check out my kids prodigious singing ability without my knowledge or permission.
I reckon i’d be highly pissed off.
Providing a talent pool for a nude photographic artist is in no way the business of any school, and if the principal actively encouraged this to occur, without parental knowledge, i’d think they had legal ground to sue the board or education dept for breach of duty.
Kim it’s not dumb. It’s one of the ways that casting agents find child actors for film and tv. Most child actors with agents are very white, Anglo and conventionally good-looking (strange about that). If someone wants to work with someone outside of that, looking around schools, playgrounds, malls, etc is one of the ways it’s done. And it works, luckily for those kids who aren’t conventionally beautiful and might want to be films.
According to the ABC news Henson got permission from the school principal to look for subjects. You could argue that he/she shouldn’t have given that permission without consulting all the parents. But apart from that, where’s the problem?
“Providing a talent pool for a nude photographic artist is in no way the business of any school,”
So, if it wasn’t a ‘nude photographic business’. I assume you’d have no problem?
I’m still waiting for the ex-models to start appearing in the media and sying they’ve been damaged by Henson.
I’m with Fine. The fundamental problem here is the behaviour of the school principal, not Henson.
While one might hope that Henson would be more circumspect, surely in this instance the onus of care and responsibility lies with the principal.
Don’t be absurd Fine.
I have a problem with Mars Confectionary hawking their products to schools as so called Fundraisers. Ha!
In the schools defense, at least they raise the issue in advance at the monthly P&C, and let the parents know these wretched things are being sent home in advance.
Fine have you wandered around any school playgrounds lately?
Even i as a parent have to present at the front desk, sign in and obtain a visitors badge, just to help paint the musical backdrop or assist with reading.
While I agree with TFA that it’s more the fault of the principal rather than Henson, Fine, I don’t think the casting analogy works. I’m aware of that, and the fact that some have sought to justify this as part of an “industrial process” (!) by which I imagine “industry practice” is actually meant. Though it’s an interesting slip. I don’t think schools are or ought to be the appropriate site for the recruitment of children for commercial activity of any sort. They just shouldn’t. The fact that people might have to look elsewhere for children is just bad luck.
I’m not – note, not – going with all this stuff assimilating Henson’s activities to pedophiles prowling or whatevs. But, really, using schools to seek to source subjects for images like his is just dumb. He should have seen this sort of reaction coming a mile off.
I see this is purely a commercial issue, primary schools are not a suitable place for commercialisation of children, applies equally to Maccas as it does to Henson.
Fresh thread Kim?
If he really is this naive, and is not able to distinguish or maintain appropriate boundaries around sourcing models, why are we prepared so gushingly prepared to accept that he is suddenly so exemplary and professional in the process of creating the work?
I think Rudd’s role in this debate warrants closer scrutiny too: no sign of the former diplomat to be found.
The entire principle of politicians not commenting on the behaviour of private individuals – especially when there’s a possibility of legal proceedings – seems to have gone right out the window.
Another thread some time, perhaps.
Kim, why don’t you think the casting analogy works? Because that’s basically what he’s doing. And Kim, I do release you’re criticising hin without relating his work to paedaphilia.
sublime cowgirl you used the word ‘nude’. I responded to that. I wondered why you thought that was important. You could have written ‘his photographic business’.
I understand how you’d have a problem with Mars Confectionary, but how does that show that Henson has poor judgment. He got permission from the principal, what else should he do?
And guess what, I’ve even made corporates for Mars Confectionary at a school, using schoolkids as extras. And of course, their parents had to sign a release form. There’s work I’m prouder of, but we all have to make a living.
And so yes, I have wandered around schoolyards in the interest of using them as a location, with the principal’s permission.
Sorry, sublime cowgirl, I forgot to answer your question. I really can’t remember whether I had to sign in or not. Do we know if Henson had to sign in? If he didn’t, isn’t that a fault of school governance rather than henson’s? I really have no idea how he showed poor judgement. Was he supposed to insist that he sign himself in?
Of course, there’s an argument that schools shouldn’t be used for any sort of commercial arrangement. But that’s a completely different issue than whether Henson was wrong to source subjects from schoolyards. Why conflate them?
Phil, if you’d like a fresh thread, do feel free to write the post. I’m still suffering from a blog version of post-traumatic stress disorder when it comes to these issues!
Fine, I suspect there’s not too much difference between us on this except that I think that Hanson should have anticipated how this might look given all the hysteria about schools and sexual predation that erupts at a drop of a hat, and I really don’t think schools should be a space for any sort of commercial activity and/or recruitment. I realise the horse has long ago bolted on that, and maybe that should be taken into account wrt Henson.
SC, I don’t resile from what I said before about my confidence in Henson’s integrity with regard to his practice when working with his subjects. I don’t think naivete and unprofessionalism are to be equated.
Anyway, I really don’t want to comment further on this if it ends up circling back to the same old same old it was framed in last time around.
That’s fair enough, Kim. It just irks me when people use this as a stick to beat Henson.
“I see this is purely a commercial issue, primary schools are not a suitable place for commercialisation of children.”
No buying chips from the tuck shop, then.
As Fine says, the commercial question is a separate issue. Let’s say, hypothetically, that Henson was a struggling artist with no commercial success, and that he was doing what he wanted to do purely for the sake of his artistic drive. You’d have no problem then — Kim, Phil, sublimest cowgirl?
If it would be OK — and in fact I agree with Adrien and Fine that it is OK — then exactly what difference does it make that Henson is commercially successful (in addition to being a brilliant and unique artist)?
Like I said, Paulus, I have no desire to discuss this further, so I’ll leave others to answer your question.
Before I run away, this article should be read. David Marr seeks to correct misapprehensions about what Henson was doing at the school:
http://news.theage.com.au/national/henson-scouted-school-for-child-models-20081004-4tnh.html
Fine of course its important information.
I think the school admin and parent body could be expected to a have a reasonable understanding of the implication and intent of Mars Confectionary interests in their school, and the populations of children contained within.
Therefore the principal could probably weight up the risk / cost / benefit equation to the school community without the likelyhood of any informed or serious objection on the part of the parent body.
In the same way, the full oeuvre of the artist would need to have been known by the school principal in order for an informed decision to be made on the school communities behalf. If it were withheld by Henson its naive or manipulative. If it was known by the Principal it was poor judgement on his behalf and quite inappropriate on Hensons behalf to presume that this was prudent or acceptabe professional practice given the controversy he admits his work attracts.
Poor form all round.
I have to say your answer leaves none the wiser sc. I’m completely bemused. When I made my corporate about Mars Confectionary, I had no idea who the principal talked to before he gave permission. He gave it the day I visited him, so I suspect the weighing up of costs/benefits was fairly rudimentary. Not my problem in any case.
Are you actually saying that Henson should have insisted that the principal consult widely before he said yes? FFS, why? If he’s given permission by the principal, it’s not his problem.
Why are you implying that Henson would have been dishonest about his work? Is there any evidence of this? Or are you just having a dig?
Really, you are clutching at straws. It’s such a fuss about nothing.
What is ‘making a corporate’?
Sorry, Helen. It’s a form of commercial film for a company to promote their product to audiences. Like a long form ad. So, this was a film made to convince schools to use Mars Confectionary as a fund-raising tool. Of course, Mars would make a decent whack of money out of schools doing so.
If this Henson is walking around school playgrounds at lunch hour, looking for nude models, then he HAS got a problem, and it is all his.
The principal of the school would also have a problem.
If it was my school where it was done, and the parents found out, Henson would have the opportunity to go on to become a famous wheelchair bound artist.
The principal would likewise be taking food through a straw for a long time.
Primary schools are NOT a smorgasbord for procurers of nude models, and it is not within the authority of the school principal to make it so.
Any parents who perpetrated such brutality would/should afterwards be put away for a long time for assault and battery occasioning grievous bodily harm. Macho posturing about committing violence is not only immoral but also stupid.
I think your imagination is running away with you, SATP. These are your words, and only yours, out of your very own head. Hmm.
Didn’t you read the link Kim posted at #57, which described in detail exactly what it was that Henson was doing? Or don’t you care whether your information is actually accurate or not?
As for your threats of violence, perhaps you should be a bit careful about what you say in a public forum.
The problem is PC that SATP has given a succinct but precise account of what Henson was doing, according to Marr’s account.
According to Marr Henson, with the permission of the school principal, and accompanied by the principal, did walk around on school grounds. His purpose was to look at children so as to identify potential subjects for his photographic studies. He would then, according to Marr, approach their parents for permission to photograph them for his artistic purposes.
A part of his photographic repetoire is studies of nude or semi-nude prepubescent or pubescent children.
So “walking around school playgrounds at lunch hour, looking for nude models” is a fair characterisation.
A GRAND UNIFYING THEORY OF POST-MODERN LIBERALISM
I am splitting my sides laughing at the Ironies of post-modern History. Especially when it makes fools of elites, whether financial or cultural. THe Henson case is unusually comic as it is an entirely self-inflicted wound. But it serves as an example of how out of touch our elites are from ordinary human values.
Post-modern liberals, whether of the New Right- or or New Left- variety, seem to think that society is their play thing which they can freely shape independent of underlying realities. Ideology cannot trump ontology. Especially when large personal and professional values are at stake.
I’m thinking about trophy children and helicopter parents who dont want their kids to be perved at by wankers. Also self-funded retirees and first home buyers who dont want their life prospects fouled by money-changers.
Ideologists on the po-mo liberal New Right insist the Class War is over. Financial innovators laissez-faire attutudes towards sound credit practice threaten peoples pensions and houses. The Masters of the Universe shoot themselves in the foot with their “irrational exuberance”.
Now the govt. has to clean up the mess. Jesus had the right idea. Take the whip to these people and run ‘em out of the Big End of Town.
Ideologists on the po-mo liberal New Left insist the Culture War is over. Cultural innovators laìssez-faire attiude towards family values threaten peoples neighbourhoods and schools. And yet here we have the Style Councilors shooting themselves in the foot bragging about their “boundary transgressions”.
Parents are unimpressed. I can see another raft of child protection regulation in the offing, rather cramping the style of artists trawling school zones for a bit of kiddie trade. Serves him right!
In both cases the po-mo liberals forget, ingnore, or deride the fact that underlying real social values are threatened by their reckless social experimentation.
The liberation narrative of the past generation has gradually turned into a farce, as its several political forms have become caricatures of freedom. One by one their liberal charade is exposed as a sham.
A return to proper prudential practice is indicated. Respect for traditional, rather than fashionable, values. Observance of conservatism, rather than constructivism, in form. A more corporal, as opposed to liberal, mode of association.
Revenge of the geezers as Warren Buffet might say.
I believe SATP has no sproglets yet, fortunately, it appears, for the school system. Violence by entitled parents against teachers is already a problem and we’ve just seen the mentality in action.
SHORTER STROCCHI:
Why there still is a Culture War (and Class War) is because middle class parents (“working families”) have heavily invested their valuable eggs in only a few baskets. They have, or aspire, to houses in leafy suburbs, trophy children in private schools, savings in super funds etc.
They do not want po-mo liberationists, whether cultural or financial, running amok with their life plans. Too much sub-cultural perversity and multi-cultural diversity dissipates residential and intellectual capital.
Therefore we have totally boring, conservative men thrown up as major (and minor – Bob Brown fer crissake!) party leaders. You can bet your bottom dollar that if Turnbull wants to become PM he will, like Hawke, take a pledge of abstinence to his favoured perversions and diversions.
The material fact in this beat-up is that nowhere in these stories is there any indication about when Henson’s survey of kiddie talent occurred.
Henson’s playground excursion may well have taken place 20 years ago.
So when Senator Bill Heffernan, in the midst of yet another orgasm of self-righteousness, shrieks for a sacking, he may in fact be demanding that some ex-chalkie dotard be hoiked out of a care facility for the terminally bewildered and reinstated to the service for a day in order that he/she may be well and properly dismissed from the the teaching profession.
Between the lure of cheap populism and knowing all the material facts, of course, there is no contest for media tarts like Heffernan.
On the other hand, David Marr could be subjected to extraordinary rendition to some fetid Third World dungeon until he fesses up that the events of which he wrote took place — gasp — as recently as fifteen years ago!
Tigtog, As difficult as it may be for you to grasp, what I posted is exactly what would happen to anyone who trawled the schoolyard to procure nude models.
Some parents have a very black & white attitude toward that sort of thing, and have a very medieval approach to dealing with it.
Deal with it.
Pavlov’s Cat, for your clarification, I will clarify my position on this “public” forum:
I would happily thump the hell out of any person who trawled for nude models in a schoolyard my kids were in, and likewise for the principal who allowed/encouraged it. I’ll say it again, I would belt them up. That is, incapacitate them with physical violence.
Come and get me.
“The material fact in this beat-up is that nowhere in these stories is there any indication about when Henson’s survey of kiddie talent occurred.”
It was last year at St Kilda Primary apparently.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/brumby-to-probe-hensons-school-visit-20081004-4txt.html
Very sensible attitide, SATP. So tough and scary. Shows the mentality of the anti-Henson brigade.
I fail to see how Henson did anything wrong. He went on a casting call with the permission of the principal and then contacted the parents involved to get permission.
Katz, I think it was fairly recently. The Age reported today that the schoo was St. Kilda Park Primary and the principal is now at a different school. But that had nothing to do with the Henson stuff.
Im still waiting to hear any models, or parents thereof, come forward and complain. Strange, how there’s a silence. Could it be because no-one involved is actually upset?
Geoff, St. Kilda Park Primary, is a differnt school to St. Kilda Primary.
SHORTER, SHORTER STROCCHI:
The saga of post-modern liberalism.
For the neo-elites, in their salad days at college, the tacit philosophy was “believing is seeing”. “Anything goes” so long as conventional wisdom is debunked and polite society is outraged.
Until one day the neo-elites find themselves with the whip in their hand and no old fogies better left to upstage. That left the way open for them to turn on the populace with their McMansioned abodes, TAFEd minds and shock-jocked souls.
Greater fools and ignorant red-necks they! But only for a while. When deviancy is the norm, then the norm gets nasty. The populace now and again rouses itself from its nostalgic slumbers and launches a counter-revolution.
On that day Main Street knocks back Wall Street in Congress and Hansons stamp out Hensons in the school yard.
One day one hopes that a pervert like Koons, who embodies post-modernism in all its forms, will suffer a ritual Bonfire of Vanities, Insanities and Iniquities.
Fine, are you suggesting there is something wrong with a mentality of belting up active nonces?
One guaranteed outcome: A rather effective deterrence message sent to others, and a fairly slim chance the actual offenders will repeat.
Message to the pro-Henson:Not eveybody is a pants-wetting sook, quite a few parents have a very cro-magnon attitude toward people who mentally undress their kids.
“Fine, are you suggesting there is something wrong with a mentality of belting up active nonces?”
Gosh, I don’t know steve at a the pub. Beating up people, not bothering with mere legalities or weird concepts of justice, presumption of innocence? Nah, don’t just beat em up – be a real man -hang em high!
Just noting that Jack Strocchi’s comments where he inserts this into his favoured grand narrative have belatedly appeared at 66, 68 and 74.
Yes, I think that’s correct, with an emphasis on the word “mentality.”
Another guaranteed outcome SATP is a charge of assault/assault occasioning actual bodily harm, whatever. Unless of course you’re arguing some vigilante law like “witch hunting” circa the middle ages?
[Perhaps SATP's pub exists in a time warp in the 19th century in the 'wild west'???]
It would appear that while some school protocols may not have been adhered to, there is no evidence that Henson has broken any law, past or present. (OTOH, by comparison, examples as above get uncomfortably close to the law which prohibits incitement.)
Peter Kemp, if you think that beating someone up necessarily results in a charge of assualt then you ain’t been around. Supplementary: If you think that being charged with beating someone up & hospitalising them (in front of plenty of witnesses) is necessarily going to result in a conviction, or any meaningful punishment, then you ain’t been around.
That aside, you could try cruising primary school playgrounds (announce that you are looking for kids to photograph naked) and see how many schools you notch up before a group of fathers make you an offer you can’t refuse. (Think bikies without the tattoos or leather jackets)
Be sure to note just how unconcerned these fathers are about the prospect of an assault charge.
Er… and hope like heck it is fathers who collar you, mothers (numbers permitting) will do far more lasting physical damage.
To keep the test impartial, pick an area where there is not a hope in hell that anybody is likely to own a Bill Henson type artwork.
You think I am kidding?
Or do you know I am right, and you feel that denying violence will make it go away?
Violence makes me sick, just to think about it. However, that doesn’t make it go away.
Summary: Henson, likeminded types, and errant school principals would be well advised to ensure their actions remain clandestine.
It ain’t always the law which delivers the most robust penalty.
Yeah, SATP, I particularly noticed that @ #70 and #75.
Don’t feed, etc.
Schools are always serving as agents and facilitators for work experience and charitable activities such as community service and fundraising doorknocking activities, etc.
Sometimes these activities are justified on the basis that they provide vocational opportunities for students. Others are justified on the basis that the activities are socially valuable.
All of them share the same quality of the school being an agent of exposing the students to situations and persons over which they exercise only indirect control.
Henson, it seems, was offering an opportunity to the parents of the boy in question. Just like all those other institutions mentioned above, Henson approached the executive officer of the school for permission, which was granted.
To be consistent, the following should also apply to prospective employers and social service organisations;
And still more when students are outside the care of teachers (as when they are doing work experience or they are tin-rattling door-to-door.
That is, unless you argue that Henson had some immoral or malicious purpose not shared by employers or charity organisations.
If you do care to argue that line, and you have some money, I’m sure that Henson’s lawyers would be happy to explain the law of defamation to you.
I don’t think so, Peter, from the response of those Queensland communities earlier this year when the Queensland police tried to place the paedophile Dennis Ferguson in their midst under 24 hour police protection and surveillance. Their reaction was pretty nasty vigilante behaviour.
And they’re not guaranteed to be the brightest sparks in the world. I can remember a case a few years back in Britain where in one community a paediatrician got roughed up because the mob couldn’t see the distinction in Greek between child doctor and child molester. I’m not sure that all of them would draw a distinction between Ferguson and Bill Henson.
Attempts to create moral equivalence between prospective employers/charity organisations and Henson will fall on one major hurdle:
…Henson wanted to take photos of the kids with their genitals swingin’ in the breeze.
But wait!
http://www.theage.com.au/national/brumby-to-probe-hensons-school-visit-20081004-4txt.html?page=2
SATP appears to have the bravura of the indigent.
Katz the activities you speak of are usually reserved for High Schools.
Virtually all Primary schools have a policy against children fundraising door to door without an accompanying adult these days.
I imagine Micheal Jackson would have a very hard time being allowed onto Primary school property to scout for musical talent, even though we all know he is a legally innocent man and could likely obtain blue card. The problem rests in the gray areas, of perception and appropriateness, not necessarily reality, and a wise Principal would understand this.
Henson may be, and by all accounts is, a genuine professional, but that doesnt mean we should just give him a free pass, and I actually question the wisdom of those of the arts community who were so quick to speak out in his defense without possibly knowing every intimate detail of his life. Has no one in that group ever wrestled with a ‘boundary’?
I’ve personally worked with and know far too many teachers, labor Party leaders, church pastors, local councillors, and similar to be naive about potential opportunistic or emotionally entangled crossing of boundaries, and unless Henson is a eunich i’d find it difficult to think he hasn’t had to intellectually process this issue at very least.
And i dont see a lot of intellectual honesty or sophistication in his defenders acknowledgement of this quandry, which leaves me concerned at the way he is alternately seen as a innocent saint, or perverted pederast, neither of which seem
particularly helpful.
But these St Kilda Park Primary School events occurred before the moral panic in Sydney. What perceptions should this principal have had about Henson?
Back to you, if you were the Principal, how would you manage it?
Pre-moral panic clairvoyance and vicarious voyeurism, obviously Katz
I would have done what the principal did:
Monitored Henson’s access to the students and facilitated his contacts with the chosen models’ parents. I would not have allowed photos not authorised by the parents.
The son of an acquaintance of mine got a gig on a prominent Australian soapie in exactly that way.
sc, now you’re taking the line the reality doesn’t matter?
Oh, well that makes sense. The reality is that Henson has never been charged with anything, much less been found guilty. Not one model or parent of the 100s he’s photographed over the years has come forward with a complaint. Yet that doesn’t matter?
And what’s with the ‘maybe a genuine professional’? Do you think there’s some doubt. It seems you like to imply something quite nasty about him without actually stating what it is.
It’s a fairly pointless debate. You just dont like what he does. Fair enough. Just work with the kids and parents that do like what he does.
Actually Fine the reality is that most teachers will never breach a childs trust, but still school protocol /policy assumes that this could happen in rare cases and therefore all teachers are expected not to foster intimate one on one realtionships with kids, stay alone in classes with children, or transport them alone in their cars. Its about perception and risk management, even though it unfairly applies to the overwhelming majority of appropriate adults.
Man decisions in contemporary school life are based upon what is perceived to be appropriate rather than what actually occurs in reality.
I think this rather disturbing image puts the whole Henson controversy-in-a-teacup into perspective (although the inference that BMW drivers like under-age but sexually experienced girls is rather amusing).
Adrian, does the phrase in loco parentis mean anything to you?
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No.
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the reality is that most teachers will never breach a childs trust,
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No.
Steve – Henson wanted to take photos of the kids with their genitals swingin’ in the breeze.
.
Again this misrepresentation of Henson’s work as pornographic. His work doesn’t focus on genitalia. That people find it pornographic says heaps about them.
Adrien @95. But it is sexual or eroticised representation of the adolescent physical form through the medium of photography. Isn’t that how most people, for and agin’ would read his work?
If Henson’s photos – and they do nothing for me – were more sensual and celebratory he might attract less attention and hostility. There is something predatory about his rather lifeless photos and it does raise the more interesting questions for me: who is the target audience for his work and what is there to like about it?
who is the target audience for his work and what is there to like about it?
.
Fine artists don’t typically think in terms of target audiences. I found his work when I was 14. It spoke to me of what I was going thru. It disturbs, it addresses sexuality but it’s not pornographic – designed to arouse. It’s designed to disturb.
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Again the argument is: I don’t like it so, despite the total lack of complaint of his models, I think it should be banned, or he should go to jail. Shades of Cromwell.
.
Oliver’s army is here to stay
Oliver’s army are on their way
And I would rather be anywhere else
Than here today
.
The facts of paedophilia is that it is most successful in highly sexually repressed circumstances – that is in environments of high religious orthodoxy. The more a kid knows about sex the less likely s/he is to be molested. Henson’s activity is not sexual. And this bullshit is being perpetrated by people who advocate the exact same kinds of moral environments that lead to sexual crime.
.
But of course, typically, facts are inadmissable as far as they’re concerned. Dogma does just fine. Like the Christain Brother who admonished me for reading Lolita when I ws 13 and yet always found himself parading about at shower time. All the shower stalls in the entire school had the doors removed. Why was that?
.
But that’s clean right? Whereas Nabakov is dirty. Bullshit!!
Ah yes: young heavily-groomed teenage girl as used car, a metaphor we all know and love. David, that is really vile. That actually made me feel a bit sick.
But IIRC, when this controversy first came up, the comparison was made with advertising practice, and all the companies who were inappropriately sexualising underage girls (and, less often, boys) in advertising in order to make squillions were somehow strangely exempted from the politicians’, and most of the public’s, cries of outrage.
Who would have thought.
Well, I don’t believe that Henson )or any artist today) is so careless about audience. He’s gotta make a living regardless of his artistic proclivities. And he’s not gonna get an income from adolescents. People can read all sorts of things into any form of art drawing from the well of their own experiences and perspective. Thing is, I do find odd his photos – call them art if you will – where he skewers adolescents like pinned butterflies under glass – and I’d really like to know from adults why they like his work and why.
Jinmaro –
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Well, I don’t believe that Henson )or any artist today) is so careless about audience. He’s gotta make a living regardless of his artistic proclivities.
.
To expand my point. In the Cultural Industries there’s two basic marketing modes.
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The most common, say in the making of TV shows or Hollyowood blockbusters is to start with the market and tailor films to it. Hence studio policies viz genre. At the moment there’s heaps of Superhero movies yes? The second which is used throughout the fine art world and certain film industries (eg France) is to allow artists to do their work whatever it is and market that. The audience in this case is seeking after art as opposed to product. The fact that the work is being produced as relatively unfettered expression is a factor in the marketing.
.
Naturally these aren’t pure strategies. In Henson’s case he has a style and its popular. He didn’t start out seeking after a marketable style. That’s not how its done.
_
People can read all sorts of things into any form of art drawing from the well of their own experiences and perspective.
.
Yes Charles Manson thought the Beatles wanted him to kill folks. Do you hold the Beatles responsible? Is there any case of Henson’s work inspiring bad behaviour? Again if you don;t like it, don;t look at it. Easy.
_
…and I’d really like to know from adults why they like his work and why.
.
Because it is beautiful.
But IIRC, when this controversy first came up, the comparison was made with advertising practice, and all the companies who were inappropriately sexualising underage girls (and, less often, boys) in advertising in order to make squillions were somehow strangely exempted from the politicians’, and most of the public’s, cries of outrage.
_
Mmm yes. Interestin’ that one.
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As Bill Hicks said: Supreme Court says pornography is anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thoughts. No artistic merit, causes sexual thoughts. Hmmm . . . sounds like every commercial on TV doesn’t it?
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Why am I on moderation? Jeez.
I actually like much of his art photographs.
My concern lies around process, protocol and context, amongst other things.
You’re not in moderation, Adrien, but the “m” word – and another word you’ve used – are.
Well, with respect, “it is beautiful” doesn’t really cut through or explain anything. I’m surprised at such inarticulateness when there is obviously passion at work here in Hanson’s defence.
Hanson’s work is ho-hum for me – neither beautiful nor ugly – but it would be interesting and perhaps in the poor man’s favour if people who like his work could explain for the plebs, moral panic merchants, etc., why it is valuable, socially insightful, or beautiful.
How about this, e.g.? Hanson’s art shows that human beings are multiple amphibians living in many double worlds and leading many double lives and one of these is undoubtedly being a being unavoidably ultra conscious of its materiality and physicality that simultaneously has to function and perform publicly in a world where such fundamental characteristics are a source of shame and thus denied and suppressed.
95 Adrien Oct 5th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Something can be one thing and another thing at the same time.
Henson’s work is both artistic and erotic. The idea is for the art to appeal to the intellect whilst the erotic appeals to the instinct.
It is artistic because it is beautifully composed and skillfully executed.
It is erotic because it focuses on naked people who are selected for their beauty and latent sexuality.
If these people were adults there would be no problem. Unfortunately they are children. We ordinary folk have a problem with that.
THere is a well understood long-established social taboo prohibiting the exploitation of childrens sexual aspects. Anyone who dabbles in this area deserves ostracism or worse.
Most post-modern era families have only one shared trophy child. They get kind of uncomfortable when the “controlling male gaze” is turned on their precious.
That Henson trawls through schools looking for fresh meat and thinks that this is perfectly okay and defensible form of procurement just proves what I have been saying for most of this decade: the Left-liberal cultural elites are completely out of touch with mainstream normal values.
Cultural elites, whether professional or political, appear to be tone deaf to this reality. That they can turn a blind eye to the blatant exploitation of child sexuality under the guise of art “says heaps about their” fall from social grace.
No doubt they will change their mind once they get “mugged by reality”. Either when their kid gets photograhped by some perv in a park or when some alienated Taxi Driver decides to clean up the galleries.
“Some day a real rain is gonna come and wash away all the scum“.
Travis Bickle
Nothing quite like “we ordinary
volkfolk” and a little book/art burning to sort out thedegenerate“scum” eh Jack?Jack S, it’s more accurately economic rather than cultural elites that are responsible for promoting and benefiting from the sexual exploitation of women and children, either today or in the past. Bill Henson is a pretty soft target and surely a minor if not inconsequential and probable unwitting player in this domain.
The international growth in the sexual trafficking of women and children which is an apparent consequence of the increasing demand of economic elites for the provision of paid sex warrants far more scrutiny and analysis than this diversionary provincial beat-up.
Adrien wrote: “The facts of paedophilia is that it is most successful in highly sexually repressed circumstances – that is in environments of high religious orthodoxy.”
Rubbish.
Nor would the Romans agree with you or in fact any age before the last couple of relatively irreligious decades in the West where the term paedophilia has reached a crescendo and been used, to great effect, as massive diversion.
The very recent paedophilia panic is a defensive cultural artefact of dominant heterosexual masculinity in mortal battle against the feminist critique of normal, everyday, familial, predatory, oppressive, sexually abusive masculinity. Its aim is to divert attention away from feminism’s expose of the predominantly heterosexual exploitation and abuse of women and children by constructing a bogeyman of outsider perverse sexual predator that is predominantly homosexual.
Quite a con.
106 Peter Kemp. Oct 5th, 2008 at 8:17 p
Modernist liberals such as the “degenerate artists” went out on a limb to support civilized values. Post-modernist liberals, such as Peter Kemp, follow fashion to subvert them.
The notion that Bill Henson’s photos are bravely avante-gardish on a par with the extraordinary genius of:
Max Beckmann
Marc Chagall
Otto Dix
Max Ernst
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Piet Mondrian
Emil Nolde
Kurt Schwitters
is completely ludicrous. I have many times visited galleries featuring these artists in Europe. And I have followed Hensons career since 2005. There is no comparison.
The modernist artists were condemned as degenerate because they satirised pillars of the Establishment or depicted the seamy side of life. Not because they exposed naked, nubile teenagers for public tittilation.
And the notion that opponents of child sexualisation such as Hetty Johnson are on a par with Goering is weird, verging on creepy. FWIW I advocate maximum mockery and ridicule of offensive sub-cultural perversity, to head off the likely backlash as typified by Hanson and Cronulla v multi-cultural diversity.
But Left-liberals never take sound advice until repressions hit. Just as Right-liberals refuse to accept the evidence of bubbles until recessions hit.
Another sign of the grotesque moral equivalences, lost moral bearings and sheer poor taste of post-modernist liberals.
Shorter Jack: As an illiberal statist, and expert on entartete Kunst I will decide which pomo liberals have poor taste with my united grand theory of wetness.
(Shorter Shorter Jack: rambling incoherently to myself is really persuasive.)
Aunty Jack’s ramblings.
The back-story here is puzzling. It’s clear that David Marr deliberately chose to highlight Henson’s visit to St Kilda Park Primary for pre-publication excerpting – his book goes on sale today.
It’s equally clear that Marr might have been able to predict the furore that would arise from his pre-publication excerpting choice given the lingering effect of the earlier controversy super-charged with the image of Henson scouting out “the talent” on offer in a Melbourne school playground. All good for shifting copies of course but hardly the atmosphere you’d be seeking to create for the rational discussion of the issues that Marr purports to seek.
Marr says (surely a bit disingenuously), “that this sort of thing happened at all came as a surprise to me. I’d thought it must be widely known but now I see it is news to just about everyone, and disturbing news to many. But if we don’t want talent spotters in schools, let’s end the system.”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/bdavid-marrb-naked-rage-ignores-some-facts/2008/10/05/1223145173119.html
Oddly, Marr appears to blame Bill Heffernan for igniting the current public furore but it was Marr – not Heffernan – who brought the matter to public attention. Heffernan’s rage on this matter is as predictable as night following day and hardly rates in newsworthiness compared to the commentary offered by Rudd, Turnbull, Gillard, Kate Ellis et al.
Even more oddly, Marr claims to see some sort of victory for rationalism in John Brumby’s decision to hold a Departmental inquiry into the matter while omitting to mention that Brumby’s commentary on the St Kilda Park Primary incident has been at one with that offered by his federal colleagues. I think the outcome of the inquiry is pretty much pre-ordained and it’s a safe bet that the days of playground talent-spotting are over.
Marr is on the airwaves this morning reprising his earlier commentary on Henson’s work – that he finds some of it “creepy” – though he obviously wouldn’t call the cops because he finds it so, etc, etc. And Miranda Devine reveals in the SMH that Marr has given her a copy of his book with the message – “For Miranda, without whom none of this would have happened.” It’s not revealed whether similarly inscribed volumes are on the way to Hetty Johnston, Andrew Bolt, Kevin Rudd etc.
So…is this is a monumental marketing beat-up or what?
Meanwhile, if I were the beleaguered Bill Henson, I’d be pondering the old line – “with friends like these….”
Devine puts it well, for a change.
“The spin was in from the start. Far from being embattled, Henson, the Oxleys and their crowd played it.
The latest controversy is a case in point. Marr is a canny journalist and will have known the power of the primary school anecdote, the most explosive in the book, which he chose to illustrate his story about the book on Friday.
The controversy will sell more of Marr’s book; Henson will sell more photographs at higher prices. The culterati have confirmed their place at the pinnacle of sophistication, with the rednecks firmly in their place. All’s well that ends well.”
It’s not Henson that Marr has hung out to dry. It’s the school principal. The repressors are after a scalp. Henson is out of their reach and out of their league. They can’t get him but they can get the principal.
Yes, I guess it’s the principal who will suffer here. And I don’t quite believe Marr when he’s shocked that this has caused such a furore.
What shocks me is that people are shocked by this. This sort of talent-spotting happens all the time and has gone on many years.
However, Marr did confirm that the principal was with Henson at all times and that the protocol was that Henson’s phone number was passed onto the parents who’s kids he was interested in. One responded and one didn’t It seems like impeccable protocol to me. I honestly don’t understand what there is to make a fuss about.
Is it because of Henson? Or would people make a fuss if it was anyone casting?
As Spiros wrote Henson may be untouchable . So the idea this is all a marketing campaign seems about right. Classy stuff .
Of course, commercial photographers never go onto school grounds and take photographs of children, that’s totally unheard of…. http://www.goodschool.net.au/
Also, where’s the outrage over this? Far more worrying in my opinion
Trevor Cairnley has an interesting take on the issue from a Christian conservative perspective. I should state that I think Cairnley’s understanding of what’s at issue is reasonably close to the mark, but that unlike Cairnley I side with the liberals and N’s mother.
Amongst other things Cairnley states:
Yes Marr got his book out with remarkable, even indecent, haste. I expect he won’t bethe last to cash in on Henson’s succes de scandale. I am praying for at least one portrait of Henson making an appearance in next year’s Archibald – preferably Henson as Saint Sebastian, perhaps with some tasteful references to Nazi book burnings in the background.
or Henson sitting in a gutter, claiming to be looking at the stars, su?
Indeed, Dr Cat. It’s one of the nastier things I’ve seen recently. One of the young blokes at work found it, thought it was amusing and clever, and decided to share it with the rest of us. Although I took him to task (fairly gently), I don’t think he understands why I found it so confronting.
Marr will be talking about it at the Seymour in Sydney on 13 October for those interested:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2670
Miranda Devine’s piece today as counterpoint to Marr’s said something about the outrage of Hanson’s work intruding on the natural exquisite privacy of the adolescent [paraphrasing] which is an interesting comment and maybe a pointer to some of the backlash.
Her comment brought to mind a recent one of my brother who confided that he has very little notion of what is going on in the mind of his 14 year old son with whom he has an otherwise harmonious and loving relationship. I am sure he remembers feeling exactly the same way at the same age as his son does know, minus the loving supportive paternal relationship.
Hanson’s images, which capture naked or semi-naked adolescent physical forms, could evoke in many adults, particularly parents, a species of envy and associated resentment at an attempt by a stranger to plumb the forever unknowable mystery of their offspring at exactly the time when they are most impenetrable even – and perhaps most cruelly – to their nearest and dearest.
An intellectually bankrupt laundry-list of decisions. Cairnley has produced no justification for drawing his arbitrary lines where he has drawn them.
Moreover, he has argued in bad faith. As a self-confessed Christian Cairnley needs to explain his attitude to the ingrained patriarchalism that infects his sect
Are there some decisions that o one should be forced to make?
Are there some decisions that are suitable for the (male) head of the family to make that are not suitable for his spouse to make?
Cairnley should work through his own issues with his tribal sky-fetish before he preusmes to lecture sensible adults about “the lie of liberalism”.
Jonmaro –
My assertions are based on a variety of studies which show there to be a clear correllation between environments where sexuality is unmentionable and under strict controls and sexual crime. I could provide this evidence, can you provide any evidence to the contrary? The advice of professionals in teaching your children to avoid sexual abuse is to establish an open dialogue viz sexuality in general early. Other correllations include: low education, lower socio-economic background and habitual violent treatment.
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The paedophilia panic is a product of media exploitation of the outcry of victims of paedophilia made possible by the more liberal social attitudes to sexuality and talk of sexuality since the 1960s. The panic of course produces an impediment to understanding. It renders any attempt at understanding a morally hazardous endeavour: one mustn’t try and understand ‘evil’.
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Despite the unconstructive consequences of moral panic however the fact remains that there is predatory behaviour towards children and adolescents. And despite your assertions this is not entirely a male activity. Mostly but not entirely. The bogeyman is real. S/he’s just not who they say s/he is.
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The polemic of diversionary tactics by conservatives does exist altho’ I wouldn’t express it in your terms. But think of Mel Gibson’s assertions that Vatican II is responsible for the sexual abuse of adolescents by the clergy. The fact that much of this activity happened before Vatican II is of course is something he conveniently forgets.
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My argument is based again on the apparent fact that environments with high levels of sexual shame repress instincts, amplify them and at the same time allow adults with power to exploit the system to perpetrate sexual misconduct. This has of course happened in the Catholic system. But Orthodox Jewish communities, Buddhist monks and Hare Krishnas have also experienced such scandals.
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It’s not just religious organizations, in fact certain counter-culture hippie commune type scenarios have also led to sexual exploitation.
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In whatever case the demonization of Henson is a kind of witch hunt. Henson, contrary to Mr Strocchi’s assertions, is not titillating people (Christ I hate that word). What has been called the ’sexualization’ of children occurs mostly via the advertising industry and is partially a consequence of the erosion of old standards of sexual decorum and the absence of new standards to replace them. What is clear however when one looks again at the facts is that openness and information are a child’s best weapons against abuse.
“In whatever case the demonization of Henson is a kind of witch hunt.”
I think that it’s more of a pre-sale marketing pitch utilising widespread horror at the thought of primary school kids being perused – from the playground vantage point – in the commercially viable nuddy, Adrien.
Credit where credit’s due: Marr sure knows how to play them.
BBB
Adrien
Fact No 1: The majority of sexual abuses of children today are of a heterosexual nature and committed by fathers, male relatives and family friends. Men and dominant forms of male sexuality are responsible for the manipulation and molestation of children in almost all contexts of intergenerational sex.
Fact No 2: Strictly speaking, until the last couple of decades, paedophilia has referred to sex with prepubescent children and not adolescents yet the common understanding today is that of sexual relations between gay men and adolescents.
Fact No 3: As a discourse, paedophilia is a Western invention of the late 19th century. In the late 20th century its emergence as a major category grew out of struggles around questions of normative masculinity and male sexuality under the influence and impact of the women’s and gay liberation movements.
Fact No 4: The “paedophile” arose as an object of concern at the same time as social movements, which included that of notions of child emancipation, quickly led to a widespread social disavowal of the ethics of investigating the erotics of childhood or adolescent sexuality. Feminism played an unwitting role in all of this by its focus on childhood sexual abuse by mainly male adults.
I think that it’s more of a pre-sale marketing pitch utilising widespread horror at the thought of primary school kids being perused – from the playground vantage point – in the commercially viable nuddy, Adrien.
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Are you seriously suggesting that Henson is creating deliberate controversy in order to sell pictures?
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Well I have to say that in the adevertising world that’s what we call a bonehead play. Ask me and the revival of this issue in the media was a mistake. It was much better for the Art world to let it die. This is a flag in the face of Kevvie. It’ll force him to capitulate to those howling for blood.
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BTW Henson’s work isn’t all nude teenagers. There’s a range of subject matters. It’s not about sex. But anyway keep going. It’s so much easier to target one artist then take on the marketing apparatus of corporations or seriously ask hard questions about the hole in our culture now innit?
Adrien, I think what is being suggested is that Marr is using Henson’s perhaps naive admissions to sell books.
I wonder if any ban on strangers in the schoolyard will extend to professional sports coaches scouting for talent?
I also wonder whether politicians will stop using school-kids for photo-ops, or at least consult with parents before they do so?
The hypocrisy stinks.
#129 – Ah. I stand corrected. Apologies.
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Henson principle defended but in hot water anyway. Personally I’m beginning to think, yes, the manufacture of images is inherently connected with abuse and oppression. Let’s all celebrate these fine crusaders against pornographers everywhere.
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They’re not smart men but they know what love is.
Adrien wrote:
“What has been called the ’sexualization’ of children occurs mostly via the advertising industry and is partially a consequence of the erosion of old standards of sexual decorum and the absence of new standards to replace them.”
You’re joking, right?
“How small of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.”
Samuel Johnson
Even after this dies down he will be in hot water, Adrien, because apparently his approach to his model, N was initially via an older sister and only latterly the parents, and the parents of his models have frequently not present during shoots (heresay recouting of contents of Marr’s book). Both of these circumstances, however innocent the results, will ring alarm bells with child abuse/exploitation advocates and I don’t think the continued repetion of variants upon “I don’t see anything wrong with…” will do anything at all to allay their disquiet, rather the opposite. Whether naivety or a massive sense of entitlement is the cause, that level of ignorance of basic protocols when working with children, which incidentally protect both adult and child as SC has already pointed out, is itself worrying.
Su – …that level of ignorance of basic protocols when working with children,
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Interesting.
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A few years back it was the first day of Spring and I was ridin’ my bike about. I stopped outside parliament house to appreciate the weather, the trees blooming and all that. One of the items in this charming bit of scenery was a little girl in a summers dress running gaily down the stairs. The whole thing made me smile. Her parents were looking at me like I was “up to something”.
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Now thing is I’m not much into kids. Short periods only. Parents waxing lyrical about l’il Whosawhatsit drives me to drink. So I don’t talk to ‘em much except at Christmas where apparently I prove to be a very popular uncle.
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But here I was being suspected for something quite innocent. Whereas when I was at boarding school there were adults, clothed in the full fabric of Moral Authority, who were behaving in a very dodgy manner on a daily basis and my parents were paying them to do it.
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So what are the protocols? Where is the harm and what is innocent? Henson’s activities are being spun as predatory but they’re not. No-one’s actually complained. And yet over the last couple decades I’ve been witness time and again to the spectacle of various Moral Majority types defending to the hilt clergymen who’re guilty of actual sexual criminal behaviour.
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Nietzsche was right: Joy in the herd is older than joy in the ego. And I’m right to. Those who want to be sheep should move to the Moon.
Sorry that’s no-one involved has complained. And I ddin’t mean to infer that anyone present was a sheep. I see the reason for the concern and respect it. The question is: what’s the protocol. And before that: what are the facts?
Thank you to Paul Norton for the even-handed way he quotes from my post on the Henson matter. As for Katz, I’m surprised that you accuse me of being intellectually bankrupt given some of the comments on this blog. I also can’t see how I can be accused of arguing in bad faith, I write a blog that seeks to offer a Christian perspective on issues of relevance to people of all faiths and none. I read non-Christian blogs because I’m keen to hear the views of others on such matters. I would have hoped that in a democratic society that all views would at least be considered. The comments about patriarchy have nothing to do with this debate, nor (as an aside) will you find views such as those you attribute to people like me in anything I write. I find it disturbing that in a civil society it isn’t possible to express a different view without being vilified.
Yes, Su and the parents chose not to be present during the photo shot.
Su, I work and film and tv production and it’s very common for the parents of child actors not to be present during a shoot. Often they have to be at work themselves.
Having parents prsent simply aren’t basic protocols for working with children.
Adrien @ 135. Well as to protocol, just the necessity, when working with children, of having at least one other adult present whose primary responsibility is as a guardian to the child, whether that is the parent or some other person and also the idea that one doesn’t develop a (working) relationship with a child without first contacting the parent. Doing otherwise presents a superficial appearance of grooming behaviour – particularly cultivating an aquaintance with a child without a parent’s foreknowledge. None of these protocols give absolute protection and it is difficult in institutional environments like boarding schools where loyalties may be exploited to conceal criminal behaviour and truly independent oversight is difficult but that is not the situation here.
No doubt that is seen as an onerous imposition or as an assumption of malicious intent by people who don’t deserve it but it is just insurance and contrary to those who subscribe to the “this is just paedophile panic” narrative, I think it is an imposition that is justified. I wonder how much of the outrage on both ends of the spectrum has to do with subscribing to the mythos of the artist. There is a very long tradition of depicting the relationship between artist and subject as both exploitative and sexual and there is an equally long tradition of seeing the artist as needing to inhabit a domain free from ordinary mortal concerns in order to produce art. So we get this pushmepullyou of people who don’t trust the relationship between artist and child and artists who resist any attempt to formalize a process that may go some way to allaying that suspicion.
I also happen to think that the nudity is an important factor to consider. It is disingenuous to treat the nudity of the subjects as if it were no different to photographing clothed subjects. Adults closely circumscribe the contexts in which they appear naked and outside certain spaces like naturist resorts or nudist beaches (which have their own formal or informal rules of behaviour) it is mainly a context which carries particular meanings of intimacy and privacy. I find it almost unbelievable that the precariousness of his practice has not occurred to Henson. I don’t believe it is possible to be that naive. More likely I think that the conventions of art practice just have not kept pace with what has occurred outside, and for mine, the particular convention that automatically presumes adults will behave appropriately with children or that relies on artistic reputation or standing as a guide to the ethics of the practitioner is just insufficient.
Now I have to go and do penance as I broke my vow not to argue about this ever again.
Don’t you think it should be when it involves situations of nude or semi-nude photography of children? Even as an elementary precaution to protect the photographer, not to say the child?
In fsct Su, here’s the mandatory code of conduct for working with children in the entertainment industry in Victoria.
Please note, in not only says a parent doesn’t have to be there, in fact a parent can be excluded if they’re disrupting the work.
“Do I have to accompany and
stay with my child during the
employment period?
No. if your child is more than 12 weeks old
there is no obligation for you to remain at the
workplace with your child unless you have
accepted the role of direct supervisor. You
should communicate clearly with the employer
so that all parties understand your involvement
on the day of employment. There are some
employers and some situations where employers
would prefer that you remain with your child and
there are other employers who may prefer that
you do not remain.
The Code requires the employer to allow you to
be present at the workplace at all times that your
child is there. It provides that the employer may
exclude you from a particular area or from direct
contact with your child for a period only when
necessary to ensure the production is not
disrupted or to protect the health and safety of the production.”
Trevor Cairney wrote: “I find it disturbing that in a civil society it isn’t possible to express a different view without being vilified.”
Sadly, Trevor, you are not alone in experiencing such treatment. There are some as sez: “anything goes, on a blog!” I beg to differ. Others occasionally complain (here) when casually vilified.
Here’s my take:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/10/06/bill-henson-visual-shock-and-the-democratisation-of-art/
Spotto specious logic.
Just because there may be more than one intellectually bankrupt contributor to this blog does not exculpate you from your intellectual bankruptcy.
This slipshod performance has done your cause no good.
Please think through your argument before you push the “submit” button.
Fine, I asked the question in respect of your comment that “Having parents prsent simply aren’t basic protocols for working with children.”
Apparently you think not, quoting from a mandatory code of ccnduct for children working in the entertainment business, the only part of which which seems to support your position being:
Try to run that argument before a Court and see what good that will do you. They are not bound by that code of conduct, and they will tell you so in short order.
They will point out to you that the right of a parent to be at a photo-shoot is a basic right (and they will infer that it is a duty derived from a basic parental resonsibility), and that in the case of nude or semi-nude photography of a child they will most certainly to be an obligation. You’ll rapidly find in those circumstances just how far the argument founded on that “the production is not
disrupted or to protect the health and safety of the production” will get you.
There is quite a body of case law about the rights of children and duties of protection towards them that they have to draw on.
How old must a human be before they have Life rights to do with their life as they please?..
This culture denies nearly everything to kids, but boxed-in protection, till people are 18, then kicks them out into the wild/insane/vicious money-sucking culture to make a successful adult of themselves the day they are 18… No wonder this culture is so messed-up… 18’s treated as babies till 18 can’t ever grow-up.. they’ve been overly-conditioned to be babies, by the Insane ones who can’t grasp that a human has rights to be something other than a caged chimp…
The Crazies in this Culture fear human nudity, and skin… They try to prevent humans skin from being seen , because they are ashamed of themselves, and feel that everybody should fear and be ashamed of their skin and bodies… It seems the Insane are seizing control over our reality, in trying to legislate bare-skin Illegal and Immoral…
A species that fears and hates its bare skin would go absolutely insane, and would do thin gs in reverse of reality.. like doing war to make peace.. like it is happening today… Insane Christians have driven humanity into mass-insanity.. and now we are driving ourselves to kill a planet, and to effect an early extinction…
Near the year 145,730, the last human can be viewed cracking the marrow out of the bones of the second last…
All wars are religious in nature… What does that tell you..?
Attacking our precious young for proudly exposing their skin is INSANITY… Nakedness is NOT evil… WAKE UP TO SOME REALITY, AND LEAVE OUR YOUNG HUMANITY TO DO and BE ITSELF, AWAY FROM YOUR CHRIST-INSANITIES!..
Cosmicbrat, that would all be true if children had equal power with adults like Henson. But they don’t. Even up to the age of 18 there is a power imbalance. That’s the problem.
GregM, I didn’t answer your question because I’d gone to bed.
Whether Henson would be wiser to have parents present, I don’t know. For a start, I’d leave it up to the judgement of the parents, who quite possibly don’t want to be present.
I wa quoting form the mandatory code of conduct in response to several posters who have claimed that Henson has been breaking protocol. In fact, in terms of the entertainment industry he hasn’t. Parents don’t need to be present with any child after 12 months of age. Whether it would stand up in court, I have no idea. But I’ve certainly been on sets where parents have been asked to leave because their presence has been detrimental to the child’s performance.
I think one of the problems is that there is a difference in perspective between those who want ‘kids to be kids’ and the needs of the entertainment industry. I’ve employed children and from my perspective they become employees who happen to be children. This gives me extra layers of responsibility to those employees. But they’re expected to be be professionals, not waste time and work with an adult crew to get the job done. And they enjoy their work and are paid well for it. From what I’ve read of Henson, he’s probably doing the same sort of thing.
The ‘Age’ is full of letters today from parents of St. Kilda Park Primary supporting the principal and saying they have no problem with what she did. There’s also an opinion piece from Leslie Cannold saying the same thing. They also point out the hypocrisy of their kids having to cope with a media scrum to get to school yesterday. Presumably that’s not ‘revolting’.
I imagine the next place for the panic to occur could be creches and hospitals. After all, where do people think babies and toddlers are sourced for film and tv?
Well said Fine.
Unspoken by some opponents of your position is the assumption that Henson is a moral leper because on occasions he has photographed adolescents without clothes.
Projection would appear to be one explanation for that attitude.
The apparent blindness of many to the unsettling nature of the media scrum at St Kilda Park Primary is also telling.
What is a child to make of that prurient sensationalism?
Well, Cannold says she understands that the boy at the centre of this was proud of his work and pleased with the photos. I guess now he’s just a bit of collateral damage in the culture wars.
“So you would like to wander around the playground and pick out some students for some nude photography?”
“Yep”
“And are you some nasty pornographer looking to peddle kiddie pics around paedophile groups or are you a highly respected artist?”
“Well, I don’t like to blow my own trumpet but I’ve had some success”
“Well that’s OK then. Go for it.”
That comment is inane Jenny.
And unfactual.
The photos were taken. No naughty bits (snigger snigger) featured (chortle blush).
Inane yes, but sadly typical.
The point that none of the purveyors of outrage have addressed is why nobody, parents or children have made any complaints about Henson, his photographs or his manner of working.
And since you’re all so concerned about the rights of children, I am sure you all objected equally as stridently to the psychological damage inflicted on children through the policy of mandatory detention. Now there was an issue worthy of outrage, but of course most of the usual suspects were strangely silent.
Hypocrisy is an ugly beast – no more so when children are being used as pawns in the latest round of the culture wars.
Its cousin self-righteousness, is equally as ugly, and equally as apparent in today’s Australia.
I have never been on a film set but I assume that there is more than one adult present at any one time. That was the protocol to which I was referring – ensuring that there are others who have visual access when an adult works with a child and if there is only one professional and one child then arrangements are made either for another adult to be present or for the parents to watch through one-way glass etc. But if what you are saying is correct and the film industry would allow a child do a nude scene with neither a parent or agent present then you are just proving my point that procedures in the arts and entertainment industry are out of step with what happens in other sectors that work with children. And none of this is about assuming the adults are moral lepers, Katz, it is about NOT assuming that one can divine everything about an adult’s intentions just by looking at their credentials.
Is it possible to divine EVERYTHING about an adult’s intentions?
Have you achieved this feat recently?
These would appear to be a very stringent test for access to school children. I imagine a few priests and a smattering of Scoutmasters may be suitably transparent in their motives to allow access.
Su, there has to be a ‘designated supervisor’ for the child. Generally this would be a paid chaperone, who’s undergone a police check. But under the code of conduct, it can be the employer, which I guess, in Henson’s case is him.
No it’s not possible to divine everything about intent- that is the whole point. If other adult’s can view the scene then you don’t have to be able to divine intent you can just monitor behaviour. No system is perfect but this does provide a level of protection for everyone involved.
I see, Fine. I don’t think that if one is a lone professional one should be able to be the designated supervisor as that kind of defeats the purpose of having one, it seems to me.
More of my inanities …
“Hello, a photographer has asked me to pass on his request to take some nude photos of your daughter. If you’re interested you can contact him on xxxx xxxxxx.”
“Oh right. Yeah nuthin wrong with that stuff. I like to surf that stuff on the net, myself. Jeez, I’d be proud. Say, it’s not like that poxy hoi polloi art gallery stuff is it?”
“Well yes, the photographer is a serious artist who exhibits in major galleries”
“Oh. I see. Nah, I don’t think so.”
“So I’ll tell him no?”
“Actually, if he can throw in a couple of slabs of beer, I’d be interested.”
“Your daughter would also have to give her consent.”
“She won’t give any trouble. She’ll do whatever I damn well tell her.”
But this furore isn’t about what later happened in the studio.
This issue is about Henson’s access to the school, which as far as can be determined simply involved strolling around the playground accompanied by the principal.
All reasonably sized schools are visited dozenes of times every day by outsiders who are subjected to far less attention than Henson was.
So the question remains: why is Henson’s visit singled out as the one worthy of provoking a ravenous media scrum at he very gates of the school?
What may or may not have happened later in the studio is irrelevant.
Many schools now require a visitor to go first to Reception to sign in(where the teacher they’re visiting can vouch for them) and then wear a prominent VISITOR badge for the duration. The first time I saw this was in 1994, at a school where some germ had snuck into a school toilet (easily reached from the street) and molested a young girl. OK, raped.
I doubt that such crims would be reporting to Reception to get their badge.
If someone looking like a bit of a perve attends the school sports day or fete, he can be asked to leave, or may be watched closely.
I’m glad you recognise they’re inanities at least, Jenny.
Su – #138
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Thanks for that. A fine comment.
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I think you’re correct about the mythos of the artist being central to this ‘incident’. I also think that your assertion that it “is disingenuous to treat the nudity of the subjects as if it were no different to photographing clothed subjects” is absolutely correct. My arguments in the past against this line of argument have been against the assumption that nudity is pornographic. Inherently.
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The meaning of ‘pornography’ has been warped by arguments for artistic freedom and campaigns to preserve the Judeo-Christian moral consensus dominant until at least the 1960s. The former have argued that ‘artisitic merit’ renders work not pornographic. The latter have argued that any work of an erotic nature – that is any work that roams in the realms of the sexual – is pornographic, and that pornography is inherently exploitative and destructive of the moral consensus.
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I believe both arguments are nonsense.
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Pornography simply denotes the capacity of artistic work (artistic as in a purely symbolic cultural artifact or performance not as in: ‘of quality’) to arouse sexual feelings in the reader, the viewer, the audience. In the 50s when Maurice Girodias, whose principle source of income was to produce pornographic books, indulged his literary ambitions by publishing literature of an avant-garde nature, there was a reaction by the legal and religious establishment to not one but several of his projects: Naked Lunch, Samuel Beckett’s first novels and of course Lolita.
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Lolita is linked in my mind with Bill Henson’s work because I found them about the same time of life (age 14). It is an erotic book. It explores something quite unpleasant about human sexual dynamics which I won’t catalog here. Suffice to say that desire, in the book, is portrayed as the ultimate slave-master.
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It is not a pornographic book.
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It would be clear, it seems to me, to any reasonably literate reader who is not possessed of a Calvinistic or similar attitude of mind that Mr Nabakov’s intention was to explore the capacity of imagery and ideal to trap our psyches by way of our bodies, to illustrate how sexual power is used and abused by way of an American comedy of manners in which the relatively liberal sexual mores of the US prove to be destructive. The central character is a 44 year old man, obviously highly intelligent, who in lustful pursuit of a child renders himself a fool, a monster and a destroyer of himself, his rival and his ‘object of desire’. The book is not a work that arouses, it confronts one with unpleasant truths.
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But a work can be pornographic and artistically meritorious. Here I think of several Academy works of the 19th century. Courbet possibly the pioneer. The production of works that conjure sexual feeling had, by the end of the century, become commonplace in the English and French Academies under the subterfuge of Christian or Classical mythology. In a highly repressed society this was a small slice of the storm raging underneath the too-tight clothing of the restrained bourgeoisie. It is perhaps a by-product of the aesthetic codes and the moral hypocrisy in addition to the high standards of four centuries of classical training that this ‘pornography’ startles with its beauty and sophistication any 21st century person inevitably benumbed by the fast-food sex bombarding us everywhere and always; devoid of beauty, of decorum, of modesty, of intellect, of anything remotely sublime.
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Still some of Courbet’s works like the stories of Anais Nin are both artistically excellent and and explicitly pornographic.
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However one regards the social revolutions that date from the 1960s (and I applaud them) if one is to confront the facts of human life and to look at the data one must conclude that the commonly accepted modes of behaviour – the moral consensus – that hereto had existed has been dismantled some. It is generally felt that these days there is no new consensus to replace it. The everyday etiquette of 19th century life, for example, has faded to the extent that people no longer possess most of its techniques.
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Moreover the granting of sexual freedom has had nefarious consequences as well as benefits. I can’t speak for the entirety of those in feminism’s second wave during the 1970s but I feel somewhat certain that they weren’t marching for the right of men to abandon their responsibility en masse. Yet when divorces becmae easier to obtain, when marriage became optional, many did. And I needn’t list the various distasteful phenomena to which Camille Paglia alludes when she argues that where sexual freedom goes sado-masochism follows.
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Obviously we need new codes of acceptable behaviour. I think that the Henson Incident (will it become an ‘Affair’) centres around the scapegoating of an artist as an expression of public anxieties in general about these matters. The fact that it appears that man, tho’ perhaps unconventional, has not done anything that has harmed anyone actually involved. Sue Knight has been staunchly defended by the parents of St Kilda Park Primary Schoolkids. Henson’s models and their parents have defended the man. If such a principle is trusted and respected so does she not qualify as appropriate supervision?
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It seems that to those who are determined to hatch out the poisons the answer is ‘no’. The relavent minister, who habitually ignores the interests of her constituents and’d earned a reputation for a certain incompetance perhaps undeserved, seems eager to pursue Ms Knight despite the endorsements. Politicians love to finger-point. It means people aren’t looking at them for a change. This is so of many humans unfortunately.
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The only thing I can say is, no matter what the appropriate etiquette by which an artists seeks models, I will tell you one thing: Henson is not the problem. These actions are useless.
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Such discussions as as those indicated at #138, contrawise, are anything but. Perhaps this incident has a sliver lining after all.
I have never been on a film set but I assume that there is more than one adult present at any one time.
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I have. Yes there are several adults. If you keep to the broadest possible definition for that.
Jenny:
Spot on. Two excellent examples of scenarios which show firstly that people’s stated objectives are not necessarily to be taken as reliable or trustworthy and secondly, that parents don’t necessarily have the best interests of their children at heart or can be relied on speak on behalf of those best interests.
Regulation: a gas, ain’t it.
@What a shame, with so many real issues available at so many threads, this mangey tabloid beat-up of an issue is the only topic that seems to be occupying people’s small minds.
Reckon it’s worth reiterating again that both Fairfax, and News Ltd papers in Melbourne today featured letters unanimously supportive of the principal.
Curious that those people close to the story, well-informed, one presumes, parents – are unruffled. Do those flailing away in outrage know all the details? It would seem clear that they do not.
Music hating cunt.
I’m sure that’s not true, Via. I’m sure that the well-informed people close to the story shared all the details that they knew in their letters to the Fairfax papers and News Limited. Why would they not?
So those flailing away have been fully informed, to the extent that Letters to the Editor fully inform anyone on anything, which is not much.
Though why you would presume they are parents is a mystery, unless they said they were such, in which case it would not require any presumption on your part.
Surely if they wanted you to have been fully informed on that point they would have informed us that they were parents writing their Letters to the Editor.
Perhaps they are not or, if some of them are, there are other parents with different views whose Letters to the Editor were not published (horror to think this but newspapers don’t publish every Letter to the Editor that they receive) or they haven’t written Letters to the Editor or that they have written Letters to the Editor to other newspapers or perhaps just letters to the Minister of Education.
I am so sad and angry this whole beat up has been re-ignited.
I recently posed a question to some amatuer and professional photographers on a photosharing site about how they felt these days about photographing children and the innuendo that seems to accompany any enjoyment of this kind of photography.
Some said that they really find it difficult to photograph chidren or exhibit or in anyway publicly dispay this sort of work now because of the almost immediate innuendo that comes from some quaters. Others are well aware that there could be one false accusation between them and a ruined life or career.
This is so sad because obviously there are people about there who will always insist that anyone who wants to photograph children has some perverted intentions.
Sadly, attitudes towards images of children have changed very rapidly in some quarters. A former a/g of the United States has stated that images of children should never be used in any form for commercial purposes or displayed in public places because it provides paedophiles with easy access to fantasy material, and further provides implicit endorsement of their behaviour. I wonder if the same argument works for the dipiction of adults and non-human animals? I know at least one person in my circle of friends who firmly agrees with the retired American a/g’s sentiments.
I think the suggestion is muddleheaded and culturally malignant. However, artists and especially photographers need to start engaging with these challenges. They need to start engaging with some of the more absurd things that some wowsers and weak politicians are saying. This is not just another obsenity moral panic, it is much bigger I believe. Given the PM has weighted into it I think there is some support for my contention.
There is a serious risk that all images of children will become fetishized if we allow this to continue. The only way I see this stopping is for artists to engage with the general public; but artists also need to take a strong stand on this to protect their own integrity. Rolling over will not do.
I speak from the point of view of an abuse survivor who has had to really search his soul. The photographs that were taken of me during my abuse were taken by someone whose public work was extremely squeaky clean. Judging the moral character of a photographer by their publicly displayed works is just plain ridiculous.
Last thing: I am utterly disappointed in the mainstream media in the way they have handled this case. Not once have they entertained a view that does not further ramp up fear and panic. Much more thought provoking and quite frankly balanced debated is to be found in forums like this one.
Dude,Adrein,can i marry ur brain?
Garnet Mae is the latest arts figure to come under scrutiny for using an 11 year old boy in a film that deals with issues about sexuality and paedophilia. According to the daily telegraph, the film maker is being ivestigated by the police. I do not know the details of this case at all, but it the film maker has done nothing wrong (it is becoming very unclear how you define that these days) and this is just another spurious complaint about artists in Australia, then, for those people who are a little closer to the Australian arts scene than me, how are the Australian arts community to respond to this?
I’m typing this comment in the nude while artfully backlit in a derelict knitting factory in Richmond.
Where is the outrage!!?! Or the bids?
Dude,Adrein,can i marry ur brain?
.
Uh … no!
I kind of hate to bring this thread back to life – but the St. Kilda Park Primary School principal who was being investigated by the Education Department for daring to allow Bill Henson into her school yard, has been completely exonerated. It’s been decided that her actions fell within Education Department guidelines. So much for the manufactured outrage.
Fine – I’ve just put up a thread on this development here:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/11/07/bill-henson-principal-cleared/