Our prime minister’s artistic preferences have become an international story; everybody responsible must be thrilled. It’s a much more important issue than trivial crap like, oh, climate change or Australia’s role in the Middle East.
A photograph of a nude six-year-old girl on the front cover of an Australian art magazine has re-ignited a row over the depiction of children.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said children could not choose for themselves if they wanted to be portrayed naked, adding: “I can’t stand this stuff.”
The photo is on the cover of the July issue of Art Monthly Australia.
Its editor said the cover was to protest against the closing of a recent photo exhibition of naked children.
Mr Rudd said: “A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way.”
Government officials have said they will review the magazine’s public funding.
Review their funding? I thought that kind of blackmail was a Coalition speciality but apparently not. The BBC is even running an online questionnaire asking ‘Was Kevin Rudd right to step in on this issue?’, suggesting that Our ABC’s British counterpart may share its journalistic priorities.
Rudd’s rationale is staggeringly idiotic even for a politician. A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way. Kevin a little child cannot answer for themselves about most things in their lives. What’s your point - that parents should refrain from making decisions on behalf of their kids? That in making such decisions they should first write to the PM’s office to find out whether you approve? What is your point?
Here’s another brilliant bit of reasoning:
Joe Tucci from the Australian Childhood Foundation says the photo could have repercussions.
“We have seen these sort of cases in the [United] States and elsewhere, where a person in their 30s or their 40s decides that they want to be the President of the United States or they want to be a teacher or anything, they want to take up a public role, and those photos come back to haunt them,” he said.
Here’s the photo that is going to ‘come back and haunt’ the poor child we are talking about. Isn’t it shocking? Not only can she forget about ever being president of the USA, I’m amazed she’s game to be seen in public.
This episode, coming after the Henson nonsense, reveals an extremely ugly phenomenon. The fact that someone ‘can’t stand’ a picture like the one in question says more about their neuroses than it does about the child or her parents. And of course the alternative prime minister had to make an ass of himself by going completely over the top; he’s going to refer the matter to the federal police and reads a whole sinister sub-text into the photo:
Dr Nelson says the photos are indefensible, whatever the motivation.
“It is absolutely essential that we stand up to this,” he said.
“What these people have done in this publication and using the photographs of this child in this way is send a two-fingered salute to the rest of society.”
What in god’s name does he mean by ’stand up to this’? If the police saw no grounds for prosecution in the Henson matter they’re hardly likely to do so with respect to this latest picture. If that’s unlawful then a lot of newspapers and magazines and web sites better get good lawyers. Of course lots of the pictures of naked children in the MSM are published without anybody’s permission at all, but since they tend to be of Iraqi kids smashed up in a bombing or indigenous kids being the subject of an intervention they don’t really count I suppose … not the way proper white kids do who might want to run for president one day. Maybe Brendan thinks a vigilante mob should burn the offices of Art Monthly to the ground in the name of Common Decency.
The hypocrisy is staggering. Every election campaign we are treated to endless pictures of children being used as props in politicians’ electioneering. Can their own kids answer for themselves whether they want to be dragged around the streets with mum or dad on door-knocking exercises, or made to stand at polling booths for 12 hours handing out how-to-vote cards? I guess they think it’s permissible for parents to make some decisions on behalf of their children but not others.
If it’s not NSW Labor chucking tens of millions of dollars at the Catholic Church to stage medieval superstitious rituals in the streets of Sydney, it’s Queensland Labor with the enthusiastic assistance of Hetty Johnstone trying to introduce a mutation of 1950s Australian wowserism. All with the enthusiastic backing of the Libs. It must only be a matter of time before we start banning books again and closing bars at 6 pm.
The strange thing is that this doesn’t seem to be reflecting any groundswell of Mary Whitehousism in the community generally. Anyone who’s familiar with the kind of pictures that are commonly posted on social networking sites must be completely bemused by the fuss over a few artistic photos in Art Monthly. For some reason Rudd and Nelson, like Howard before them, are either extravagantly susceptible to moral panic or they see benefits in pandering to its existence in a small section of the community.
Does authoritarianism go hand in hand with wowserism? Maybe sociologists or historians can comment.
