Censorship - unless it's big business...

May 26, 2008 8:52 PM | Related Categories: censorship

I've resurrected my blog surfing activities, inspired by some suggestions from fellow photographers. The first interesting blog I stumbled across was Conscientious. A relevant "heads up" type of blog, not dogmatic, but interspersed with some intelligent and reasoned observations.

In a post about the censorship of some Bill Henson images I noted the following paragraph by the author, and nodded my head.

Art shows are being shut down, all the while corporations sell padded bras for little children, and parading the bodies of extremely young women in fashion shows is seen as, well, just part of that business. It seems to me that maybe we need to set some priorities and see where we can find the worst abuses of children and adolescents, before we have the police storm art shows. Just an idea.

I could equally have shaken it.

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I get a sense that hype and reality are steaming away from each other at an increasing pace. Somewhere (at the editors desk of Sun?) there is someone making decisions with the subtext "Surely we can't get away with THIS?" and yet they do, every time. For all that the actions of someone like Bill Henson might be viewed cynically, it is probably the job of art to push boundaries (even if it isn't good art) and censorship in my view is plain bad and counter productive. Of course, there is debate to be had at the fringes, as there for the right of free speech extending to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded cinema but this is nowhere near the fringes. If anything, the issue is that people may find it exceedingly uncomfortable to confront their own reactions to this material.

The latest book by Ben Elton, Blind Faith, tackles the issue in a reductio ad absurdum manner. Not particularly excellent writing, but some interesting ideas and a gory post-apocalyptic future that may not be as far away as we would like. The reviews in Amazon seem spot on, at least those between 3 and 5 stars - http://tinyurl.com/3fh4ch or the Indy article is here http://tinyurl.com/45oyw2
# Posted By Ham | 5/31/08 1:33 PM
Thanks for your thoughts Ham. Unfortunately I think the problem is that we never get as far as confronting our thoughts and reactions because so many things are just off-limits now. Who dictates this I wonder? I'm sure it has something to do with the gutter press who will jump on anything for their own ends.

The problems with kids is quite distressing as far as I can see. Kids are the future and yet they are now so often cossetted from reality in our over-protective society that I worry their development will be stunted or warped in some way. Depictions of the wonder and excitement of childhood surely should form part of our culture? The issue with photographers is just one angle on this. When people say that innocent photographic material can provide unhealthy stimulus for certain people, then they should realise that these same people will quite readily make use of so-called legitimate material that we see in pushy advertising everywhere
# Posted By richard | 5/31/08 11:29 PM
I don't think that we are apart at all on this, except that I think kids are not cosseted from reality - to the contrary they are sexualised and marketed from ever earlier age and as a result their development is warped, as you fear. There is some middle ground that lies between the prurience of the pre-war and the abandon of the current generation that has been skated over to the detriment of us all.

The thing that makes me shudder is not so much the adoption of these invented mores such as: "Member of public taking picture of youth for them to look at - bad. Media showing sexualised picture of youth for me to look at - good" but the unthinking way that they are adopted.
# Posted By Ham | 6/3/08 11:46 AM
Ham - you're right that we are on the same side of the line here, and my issue with kids being "cossetted" is a bit confused I admit. Your last paragraph is more telling I think. The nasty business of child molestation has gone on pretty much uninterrupted since time immemorial - that much hasn't changed I'm sure. The question as you say is whether today we are in a much worse position of because of our blind following of what is fed to us. This rather neatly reflects how politics and the media works - especially in certain parts of the world

I rather like the recent referenda in Switzerland where the people who elected the right-leaning SVP have since told them on several occasions that they cannot just do what they like, and that the population has a mind of its own
# Posted By richard | 6/3/08 11:44 PM
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