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Highbrows v knuckledraggers
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Highbrows v knuckledraggers

July 7 2008

“FRANKLY, I can't stand this stuff,” said PM Kevin Rudd, on the ABC’s Sunday morning political show Insiders.

He was talking about the cover of the latest Art Monthly Australia (pictured here without the media’s favourite form of prurience: blacking out of allegedly rude bits).

What is wrong with this man? He’s intelligent, well educated and – in most things – measured. But when it comes to nudity and young persons, he turns into the kind of rabid spitball we haven’t seen since the “Rev” Fred Nile used to curse and call down serpents on Mardi Gras.

Still on Insiders the PM said, “We’re talking about the innocence of little children here.” And there’s the crux of the matter for Kev08. The phrase itself – “the innocence of little children” – is manipulative and wicked. It twangs the base populism notes that clever politicians always seek to pluck. It’s like tossing a lighted match on petrol: stand back and watch it go off whoof!

And it all depends on your definition of “innocence” and whether you – the adult – automatically sexualise it.

SHOW me an “innocent” six-year-old and you’re showing me a moron. Six-year-olds (the age of the artist’s daughter in the picture at the centre of the latest furore) are not innocent. They are sophisticated, knowing rascals, capable of wrapping silly adults around their little fingers, if they so wish.

But before you fly into a rage and jump on the anti-porno-wagon, please be aware that I’m not talking about sexual knowingness or sexualised experience.

If we’re honest and have halfway functioning memories, we know that normal small kids play with their own bits and pieces and, if they’re lucky, with one another’s bits and pieces and, if they’re even luckier, it feels funny and nice. Unless they are unfortunate in their parents and other adult carers, however, they don’t immediately get jumped on from a great height to be criminalised, traumatised and made to think of their bodies as shameful. And neither do they turn into sex fiends or become fatally damaged by the physical experience of exploration and fun between peers (of either or both sexes). However, it is not the same as having an adult or adolescent doing the same thing to you. That is paedophilia.

So what has that wicked sex fiend editor Maurice O'Riordan done in his evil, “taxpayer-funded” magazine? That phrase gives the game away too. Gasp: “taxpayer-funded”! Innocent little citizens being duped into paying for porn. What kind of filthy obscenity is that? Again, it depends on your definition of porn or obscenity.

A definition of obscenity could be that Burma, Cuba, India, Iran, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan and Vietnam not only allow millions of children to live and die in poverty but also manufacture and sell anti-personnel mines that kill and maim millions of civilians and children.

Another definition could be that the Russian Federation, Singapore and the United States all have vast wealth, as well as horrible poverty, and they also manufacture and sell anti-personnel mines. How’s that for obscene?

NOW let’s talk about pornography. Why does a nipple or a bum or a generally bare (innocent) body provoke such anger and disgust (another prime ministerial favourite) when violence does not?

The image of Polixeni Papapetrou’s daughter Olympia could only be seen as sexualised and/or pornographic by a very twisted, adult mind. And there’s the rub, if you’ll forgive the expression.

Highbrows v knuckledraggers

Society’s way of coping when a rapist or other sexual predator is on the loose is to caution women to stay home at night. Unless reminded by outraged women and such events as Reclaim the Night that it is the other lot who should be under curfew until the culprit is caught.

Similarly, society’s way of coping with adult problems of sexual perception and sexualisation of images is to focus blame on the subject rather than the viewer and the viewer’s own perception. It is not Olympia and her mother who have a problem here, it is the minds and thoughts of those adults who “see” the picture as pornographic and problematic.

For instance, in my view, Bill Henson’s work is problematic – but that’s the intention. You’re supposed to question the why and how of your “looking”. You’re supposed to examine your sense of disquiet and unease: that’s the point! And if nothing happens in your head or your heart when looking at his images, then I would suggest you have a problem. Particularly if something is happening lower down, in which case we all have your problem (to deal with).

The cover image of Papapetrou’s picture is another matter, however and I think the PM reveals himself as a rather sick puppy if he genuinely finds it “disgusting”. In his editorial in the offending issue of Art Monthly Australia Maurice O'Riordan writes:

“The choice of Papapetrou’s Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs (2003) for our cover may be seen as controversial but is made in the hope of restoring some dignity to the debate; to validate nudity and childhood as subjects for art; to surrender to the power of the imagination (in children and adults) and dialogue without crippling them through fear-mongering and repression.”

HELL, Maurice, rather than young Olympia being the innocent who needs protecting from an increasingly – and weirdly – puritanical society, I think it’s you! Some cynics have said this is your attempt to get the magazine 15 minutes in the notoriety spotlight, I don’t believe that. Unfortunately though, generating any kind of serious, reasoned response to a challenge such as the one you have so politely made is – as we have seen – most unlikely and now, virtually impossible.

Fear-mongering and repression are what this society has become good at during 11 years of radical, warlike government and now – ironically – with the election of the man who was supposed to be the antithesis of all that. War and economic depression are the perfect breeding ground for fundamentalism: as anti-Muslims are so fond of reminding us. Nevertheless, it cuts both ways: fundamentalist “Christianity” (not a brand that Jesus of Nazareth would recognise or condone) is as potentially dangerous and violent and for all the same reasons.

To cause and stoke a furore over Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs (2003) (notice the date, by the way) is to demonise Papapetrou and to inflict violence on her daughter. Both these outcomes would be pornographic. Let’s get this straight: a naked body is not wrong. A naked child’s body is not wrong. Both ought to be works of art, beautiful and uplifting in the sight of God (whomever yours might be).

Naked bodies and children aren’t the problem. What has happened in the past 48 hours is the problem. Germaine Greer once observed that all Australian men are secretly gay, which is why so many tend to be violently homophobic. It caused a ruckus at the time but I don’t think she went far enough.

The extraordinarily violent reactions and events surrounding the Henson photographs and now, Papapetrou’s work, suggest that many Australians are secretly … into kiddy porn? Closet paedophiles? Unable to tell the difference? What do you think?

The image (above)is the cover of July’s Art Monthly Australia featuring Polixeni Papapetrou's Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs (detail), 2003, type C print. Courtesy the artist and Stills Gallery, Sydney. This photograph is part of the artist’s Dreamchild series, 2003, which has been exhibited in Bendigo, New York, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne. Papapetrou was recently represented in the exhibition Presumed Innocence: Photographic Perspectives of Children, De Cordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts, USA, February 2-April 27, 2008.

 

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