The most read items on mgk, by a huge margin, have to do with photographer Bill Henson and his nude and seminude male and female adolescent subjects:
Censorship, self-censorship and the chilling effect
Paedophilic pornography paranoia
Merits mention that no Henson image has ever received an ACMA rating more restrictive than PG, including the one illustrating this post. Why? Because simple nudity isn’t pornography. If it were, there’d be a lot of stained glass featuring nude cherubs being seized from churches. For an image to be pornographic under Australian law, there must be sexualisation. Simple nudity just doesn’t get there.
Anti-porn wowsers have been stamping around in impotent rage ever since the ill-informed raid on the Roslyn Oxley9 art gallery resulted in red-faced NSW Police sheepishly having to drop plans to charge Henson and the gallery and return the Henson works they seized.
So, what do the self-appointed censors do? Lobby to have the law changed to suit them, against all reasonable community standards… as if that will magically make Henson’s images pornographic.
*sigh*
-weez
4 Comments so far
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Does.
Makes you wonder if Jim Wallace just can’t keep his hand off it and wants his god and the guvamint to save him from himself.
Comment by weez 01.13.10 @ 7:29 pmHenson’s work is wrong, he is adultifying children. Posing naked is not what 13 yr olds are meant to be doing, this is essentially pornography.
Comment by Sil 06.28.10 @ 12:21 pmNo- YOU’RE wrong. Simple nudity is not pornography. Go look it up in a dictionary.
When simple nudity becomes porn, there’s going to be a lot of ‘pornographic’ stained glass featuring nude cherubs in churches.
Comment by weez 06.28.10 @ 12:29 pmLeave a comment
Gives the wowsers the opportunity to have access to the ‘filth’, talk dirty and make other people responsible for it. It’s an addiction which needs therapy.
Comment by Melchior 01.13.10 @ 7:21 pm