Archive for the 'Consumerism' Category

Privacy rights in Child Protection investigations: the need for the mass media to disguise identifying features on the minors in the Henson images

Published
by
tigtog
6 months ago
in Art, Consumerism, Ethics, Law, Media, Parenting, Photography and Politics
. 59 Comments

crossposted

Author Note: The original title of this post was “Do the right thing, Mainstream Media: disguise the faces of the minors in your reproductions of the Henson images NOW”, deliberately imperative because I wanted it to grab attention in people’s feed readers and hopefully provoke an immediate reaction. That has happened, the faces are now being pixellated in the mass media (not that I’m claiming that this is a direct result of this post), so I’m changing the title to something that sounds a bit more like “me” speaking.

* * *
The Age has an article quoting the mother of the girl whose image is the most widely disseminated with respect to the investigation of complaints against artist Bill Henson’s nude studies of adolescents. The mother defends Henson against claims that he did anything unethical, and mentions in a statement given to The Age via an intermediary that he has been a friend of the family for over 10 years, that her daughter has “a keen interest in the arts” and that the whole family were well acquainted with Henson’s work before the photo-shoot.

The Age claims to have discovered that the pictures were taken last year, and that the girl is still 13 years of age. That contradicts earlier reports that the images were several years old, which would have made the girl perhaps now 16 or 18, i.e. possibly made her no longer a minor. If The Age is correct, then she is still very much under-age, and I’m pretty sure that that creates a problem for the media who have disseminated Henson’s images of her online and in the press, or at least it certainly should.

I only yesterday realised that the censored images of Henson’s work readily available online mostly lack one key ingredient that we usually see when images of minors are at the heart of a news cycle about alleged sexual exploitation/abuse - there has been no black bar or pixellation over the face to disguise the minor’s identity.

Why the hell not? Continue reading ‘Privacy rights in Child Protection investigations: the need for the mass media to disguise identifying features on the minors in the Henson images’

Questions on the Bill Henson “sexualisation of children” debate

Published
by
Kim
6 months, 1 week ago
in Art, Consumerism, Culture, Ethics, Masculinity, Media, Parenting, Photography, Politics, Sexuality and Women
. 251 Comments

Image by Bill Henson - sourced from DailyServing.com

I’ve made my interpretation of Bill Henson’s images of adolescents clear in a previous post, and I want to talk here about some of the issues raised by and about the “debate” on Henson’s photography and the subsequent charges laid against him and the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery owners.

The first point to make is that whatever the “debate” is now about, it’s not about Henson’s images as such. They literally disappeared from view on Thursday afternoon, and the interpretation of the image that’s attracted the most angst has been heavily slanted by its reproduction in numerous tabloid media outlets, with black bars over the subject’s breasts which have made it a sexualised image no matter what Henson’s (or the subject’s) intentions or its original context might have suggested. For what it’s worth, you can see the photo here at Junk for Code. The interpretive context for this image has been shifted, and violently reinscribed as the invisible or altered focus of a media circus where the battle lines have been drawn between “the arts community” (some of whose spokespeople have been doing the debate and themselves no favours, incidentally) and “society” - as represented in part by agents of vigilance such as Hetty Johnson and in part by the instigators of the talkback outrage, the Miranda Devines of this world. As soon as they get up and running, you’ve got zero chance in the so-called public sphere of making any sort of nuanced point, as nuance is immediately equated with “condoning pedophilia” or whatever heights of absurdity we’ve reached.

Continue reading ‘Questions on the Bill Henson “sexualisation of children” debate’

Class and Big Brother 2008

Published
by
Kim
6 months, 2 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Film, TV, Video etc, Politics, Relationships, Sociology and Women
. 107 Comments

You can’t talk about Big Brother without talking about class, it seems. Over at Troppo, Ken Parish, who should be familiar with the BB concept of the grenade lob, lobs one in comments:

Far from being careful, I’ll throw petrol on the fire. I think the phenomenon of people who should have more taste and intelligence professing to like BB is just a pretentious affectation, like ending a post with “just sayin’”. Then again, all these shows (including Ladettes to Ladies and the assorted Gordon Ramsey shows) have a certain macabre fascination, sort of like not being able to resist looking at a particularly gruesome car smash as you drive past.

The really vexing thing is that these shows are also a calculated cost-saving gambit by the free-to-air channels. It doesn’t cost all that much to make them because they don’t have to pay the actors. A truly principled lefty would boycott them (although, as Jen pointed out last night, you can make a similar point about the employment effects of blogging on professional journalists).

I don’t know about the logic of boycotting tv shows for political reasons - I suspect it’s only ever invoked in this sort of context, and one could counter with the fact that a lot of writers and other “creatives” get employed by these mega shows (which are actually far more expensive to produce, but also more lucrative, than a lot of the cut-price free to air drama that’s around). And Corey Delaney is Worth(ington) 10 grand a show apparently. Though there’d be an interesting angle in thinking about how “creatives”, anyway, are self-exploiting - freed of career paths, permanent employment, and all those other things that go with not being a contract for hire and an entrepreneurial micro-business. And the lack of reflexivity that comes with seeing one’s endeavours as a big quest for that one big break has uncanny parallels with the show’s refusal of any solidarity to its Housemates. But, whatever, Ken probably thinks I’m displaying an “affectation” - while I think that the BB hatin’ *and actually I don’t enjoy this season, I just find it interesting* is a classic “that’s for the Bogans” Distinction. Proper people, of course, go to the theatre, dahling.

In a way, though, it was ironic that John Howard was a BB hater, because the Inmates couldn’t be more aspirational and individualistic. Some might even drive utes, and you can bet they’re big alcopop drinkers. I’m sure Brendan probably feels their pain. (And I’m sure that he’d probably jump at the chance to be an intruder. Might be useful training for all those frontbench wars.) But class is at issue within the House too, as another excellent post from Eye on Big Brother shows. Continue reading ‘Class and Big Brother 2008′

Mysterons: the sequel

Published
by
Kim
7 months, 2 weeks ago
in Consumerism, History, Life and Music
. 17 Comments

Here’s an update to my previous post.

The new Portishead single:

Scott LeMee’s suggestions for naming the decade we live through…

“Did you smile a lot or laugh a lot yesterday?”

Published
by
dk.au
7 months, 2 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Economics, Levity and Life
. 5 Comments

Guy with ponytail/mullet has the low down on why it’s fantastic if you were asked this.

(via Joshua Gans)

Of plutocrats and Blingocrats

Published
by
Kim
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Media, Politics and Sociology
. 21 Comments

Tony Blair hosts Oasis at a Number Ten reception. Sarko’s popularity slips as he jetsets around the Mediterranean in aviators. Carla Bruni wows the Brits and earns instant Jackie/Audrey cred. Hillary Clinton reveals that she and Bill have earned over a hundred mill since leaving office. Blair cops criticism for holidaying with Cliff Richard. A tv mogul becomes Italian PM. Peter Costello wines about his sacrificed earning power. Tony Abbott cries poor. Pollies queue up for photocalls with that Irish dude who saved the world and his sunnies. Kevin Rudd has Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman round to tea. Prince Phillip conspires. Vladimir Putin poses for topless military pr0n. Peter Garrett is a Minister. Oprah endorses Obama.

Snapshots of a decade or more of Blingocracy.

So what’s with the phenomenon of the Blingocracy that The Times tracks?

Continue reading ‘Of plutocrats and Blingocrats’

Mysterons

Published
by
Kim
8 months ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Economics, History, Life, Media, Music, Philosophy and Politics
. 8 Comments

Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis.

[”Everything temporal is but a likeness.”]

- Goethe

I was gonna call this post “All for nothing” as a play on the title of the article I’m riffing off, and to join the rapidly growing blogosphere fad of song titling posts (well slowly growing on a bit of this blog) but with Portishead instead of Dylan. But then I discovered the actual title of the song in question.

I was actually thinking about this today when I read Scott McLemee’s piece in Inside Higher Ed - this decade has no name. The “Naughties” never caught on (and for good reason probably). The 2000s is ambiguous. That, I reckon, has done something odd to our time-sense. Maybe there’ve been more periodisations like post-s11, but I, for one at any rate, had hardly realised the decade was coming to an end despite the 08 thing.

What’s interesting about McLemee’s take is that he argues there may be no recognisable Zeigeist in a cultural sense for these times, and when you think about it, in an age where the medium is not the message but the culture is the commodity, the absence of a brand is puzzling. Continue reading ‘Mysterons’

Creeping pinkification: “the persistent feminization of unisex commodities”

Published
by
tigtog
8 months ago
in Consumerism, Fashion, Feminism, Life, Media and Women
. 167 Comments

In breaking news, marketing drones continue to lack imagination, sticking to the apparently conventional wisdom that if you want women to buy things that both men and women tend to use and want, just run up a version in pink and do a fluffy/flowery/frilly ad campaign. Butterflies are good. In June last year (in an essay provoked by the launch of a special shopping flight from London to Paris named Fly Pink) the Guardian’s Vicky Frost summed up the extension of pinkification from childhood to adult women as follows:

It is now possible for women to experience their entire day in pink. You can work out with a pink yoga mat and weights; adorn your windscreen wipers with pink wiper wings; cook dinner on a pink George Foreman grill and style your hair with hot-pink hair straighteners. You can even see off would-be attackers with a powder-pink Taser gun.

My response to the whole Fly Pink concept was this photo-essay, Puking Up Pink. Documentations of the pink consumer ghetto on feminist blogs abound, especially the Pink Alley in toy departments, but it is the continued extension of pinkified marketing into the adult world which is being most keenly examined. Twisty anayses the latest version she’s found: women’s vodka.

vodka_girly
Continue reading ‘Creeping pinkification: “the persistent feminization of unisex commodities”’

Beyond the pale

Published
by
Kim
8 months, 1 week ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Ethics, Feminism, Government, Media, Parenting, Sexuality, The Web and Women
. 141 Comments

I’m normally a bit sceptical about some of the claims about the sexualisation of teenage girls and women, because I think that sometimes such discussions play into the hands of those who’d want to circumscribe or erase the possibility of a positive and autonomous definition and articulation of female sexuality in favour of either puritanism and/or the reinscription of traditional gender roles, because I like to lean towards the libertarian side of the sex wars, and because we just have too many moral panics. Nuance often gets lost. And the insta-loud condemnation thing often works against any examination of complexities or reflection on issues. But there’s not a lot of nuance in this really vile “Bimbo avatars” site targeted at teen girls. [I decline to link directly to the site.]

One word: Ewwwwww.

Via Laurel Papworth, whose post you can read for all the sickening detail.

Getting away from this repulsive website, it may be of interest to note that Andrew Bartlett advises that there is currently a Senate Inquiry into the Sexualisation of Children. Andrew’s blogged about it here.

Firing up the Trrrrrraade Practices Act … could get interesting

Published
by
dk.au
10 months ago
in Advertising, Consumerism, Environment, Law, Levity and Media
. 9 Comments

While the merits of bringing the externalities of our more ancient sins into an economic frame are up for debate, the marketability of voluntarily offsetting certain modern excesses is becoming increasingly clear. Enter GM Holden, importers of Saab. Last year’s ‘Grrrrreen’ campaign which ran in newspapers, magazines and billboards comprised of statements like ‘Every Saab is green, Carbon emissions neutral across the entire Saab range’. And it has now attracted the ire of the ACCC, to the surprise of Holden - if the first comment at this prdisasters.com post is any indication.

Now I’m no lawyer (just a lowly social science postgrad) but from where I sit the ACCC’s claim - not to mention the scope of its issues paper - is quite profound in its implications. Continue reading ‘Firing up the Trrrrrraade Practices Act … could get interesting’

Of gallstones and equality

Published
by
Mark
10 months, 3 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Disasters, Health, Policy, Politics and Sociology
. 32 Comments

No doubt I’m not the first to comment on the fact that Therese Rein had her gallbladder surgery at the Mater Private Hospital. I’m certainly not casting stones, as I had my gallbladder removed at St Andrew’s Hospital in 2004.

Complaints regarding gallstones are often highlighted to demonstrate what’s wrong with waiting lists for public operations. Gallstones can be incredibly painful - it is very difficult to write about pain, because as a number of writers have noted, it literally defies expression. But suffice it to say that very severe pain for about two hours, often at an ungodly hour of the night, which almost nothing short of morpheine or similar painkillers can relieve, is very far from being pleasant, and though the pain is intermittent, it can be very difficult to work because of the loss of sleep and the general feeling of enervation when you have severe gallstones. Gallstones, left untreated, as I’m well aware to my cost, can also lead to some very nasty complications, and in some instances can also lead to things like pancreatitis and worse. Even if that’s not the case, waiting for an op can be quite awful, though the operation itself, if done by a good surgeon, is pretty straightforward in the absence of complications, and can be done by keyhole surgery, requiring only an overnight hospital stay.

Continue reading ‘Of gallstones and equality’

Good riddance to bad rubbish

Published
by
Paul Norton
10 months, 3 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Environment, Markets and Policy
. 127 Comments

It’s reported today that China will ban the free distribution of plastic shopping bags at shops and supermarkets as of 1 June this year, and that the Australian government is considering phasing out plastic bags either through imposing a levy or an outright ban.

The emotive responses in the blog associated with the latter story, and the reaction of some commenters when I posted on this issue on John Quiggin’s blog a couple of years ago, indicate an element of resistance from people who seem to have become dependent on plastic bags and thus claim that all manner of misfortunes will befall them if plastic bags are phased out.

As someone who has been saying “no” to plastic shopping bags for over twenty years, I must admit to being unable to see what their defenders are on about. It isn’t hard for me to just pick up a shoulder bag, a sports bag or a backpack (depending on the size of the shopping run) from my floordrobe and take it along to the shop to pack full of whatever I have purchased. And supermarkets will still home deliver large orders for those of us who don’t drive.
Continue reading ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish’

Trickery or treat?

Published
by
suz
1 year, 1 month ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Imperialism, Parenting and Sociology
. 69 Comments

It’s Halloween. A decade ago I wouldn’t have known that, but in the past 10 years, not only have I been exposed to daily American culture through the Internet, but Halloween has become an Australian festival (if festival is the right word).

I first glimpsed some children trick or treating in my neighbourhood about six years ago. At the time, I had a toddler who was totally unimplicated in that sort of behaviour, so I could afford to think of it purely in a critical way, as the importation of an American custom — as cultural imperialism. Continue reading ‘Trickery or treat?’

Ready to download?

Published
by
Anna Winter
1 year, 1 month ago
in Consumerism, Environment, Fashion and The Web
. 3 Comments

Mel at Footpath Zeitgeist* has a post up about the ethics of fashion:

There has been more and more mainstream media coverage lately about issues of ethics in fashion, which is giving consumers this kind of knowledge. Sue Thomas’s opinion piece lays out most of the main things that consumers should consider, and there was a recent Sunday lifestyle story (which I can’t seem to find online) directly comparing the environmental footprint of various fabrics (taking into account the water and energy needed to grow and/or process them into fabrics, the energy to transport them to factories and retail outlets, their durability (hence how often they’d need to be replaced) and the energy, water and detergents needed to launder them. I remember taking from this article that organic cotton used extravagant amounts of water and that polyester was surprisingly environmentally friendly because of its durability and the fact that old garments can be broken down and recycled into new synthetic fabric.

It’s an interesting post that argues that the ethics of fashion are not straightforward.

Adding to this complexity, in addition to couture, ready-to-wear, knockoffs and vintage we need now consider the ethics of online fashion.

Continue reading ‘Ready to download?’

Doing business online

Published
by
suz
1 year, 2 months ago
in Consumerism and The Web
. 31 Comments

As the election approaches, there’s bound to be another round of discussion about politics and politicians online - the role of You Tube, Facebook, newspaper blogs, online polls, political bloggers, etc.

But as I was squashing a cockroach in my kitchen this morning, I was thinking about the apparent failures of Australian small business in the online environment. Continue reading ‘Doing business online’