Pornography as art?
A great controversy has broken out over a photography exhibition featuring a series of naked and semi-naked adolescents—some in sexually suggestive poses—photographed by artist Bill Henson. As Wikipedia summarizes:
On the 22 May 2008, the opening night of Bill Henson's 2007-2008 exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, depicting nude children, was canceled after Hetty Johnston, a child protection campaigner, lodged a complaint about the exhibition with the New South Wales police.
The furore from commentators of the left and right has been intense. Elizabeth Farrelly, repeating a common argument, says:
It's like that joke. A man on the psychiatrist's couch sees, in ink blot after ink blot, nothing but sexual imagery. A butterfly shape looks like testicles, a hilly mountain-scape like a rollicking bedroom scene, and so on. But when the shrink delivers his verdict—you, sir, are a sex fiend—the man is indignant. “What?” he huffs. “But you're the one drawing the dirty pictures!”
This underpins the Henson case. Who's drawing the dirty pictures here?
To which right-wing satirist Tim Blair retorts, “Nobody. Henson is taking photographs of naked 13-year-olds.”
Indeed. Christians who have in the past been the brunt of taunts about prudishness and wowserism will be somewhat surprised, if pleased, to discover that a boundary line in public opinion has suddenly been reached. There really is a limit to what society will tolerate in the name of art. It's a pity that the issue has to be so extreme, but it's surely better than no limit existing at all.
This debate will continue to play out, and rightly so. Christian teaching about the power of sex to damage when misused is (sadly) going to be confirmed again and again. But for those interested in seeing the utter vacuity of secular thinking about morality, this will be worth paying attention to.
Here's just one example. People defending immorality have often used the argument that peoples' personal sexual preferences and behaviour are their own business; we have no business prying into individuals' private bedroom behaviour. Now, astonishingly, some of the defenders of these near-pedophilic pictures are arguing that they are legitimate because they are not private. So Elizabeth Farrelly, in the opinion piece linked above, mocks her opponents with these words:
As though a latent pedophile might enact his fantasies only after popping into a Paddington art show for inspiration ... We know that pedophilia thrives less on public erotica, offensive as such advertising is, than on secrecy masked as decency. We know it exploits children's innocence, not their sexuality, and that it flourishes in the very vestries, boudoirs and private offices of the respectable.
So there we are. Danger now lies with privacy. If we happen to discover that the obscene images are out in public view, we can relax!
Keep a watch on this issue; there will (unfortunately) be plenty of material here for the Christian apologist to use in talking about the nature of sin and our blindness to it.
PS. Soon-to-be-sola-panellist Paul Grimmond sent in this short, sharp comment:
What is art?
Last night I had a nightmare. They'd caught a priest with photos of naked 12-year-old girls on his hard drive. Cate Blanchett was saying how terrible it was that the church had abused its position of trust. Then I woke up. How relieved I was to find that it was all just a dream. And I thanked God that we have ‘art’ to ‘enrich’ our lives.
