Article from The Guardian

[dalekboy]

The notional paedophile now dictates what we can look at

Whatever the artistic import, images of naked children are now viewed by society exclusively through a sexual filter

I am reminded once more of episode of Reboot that celebrates Enzo's birthday. The censors insisted on the removal of a shot where Dot, his older sister, kisses him on the forehead. Their reason - it was an obvious sign of an incestuous relationship.

These attitudes and decisions say more about the people making them than anything else.

Comments

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

I hope you're not feeling like you're being picked on, you just happen to be raising interesting points to discuss.

So would you say photos taken at a nudist resort that featured children wouldn't wash? Certainly if they're playing games you will get the occasional angle that will show genitalia.

Or the previously mentioned Spencer from Nevermind? There's no doubt he's a boy.

And in answer to your other reply, just checked some of our catalogues. No kids in underwear (though young teens are still okay, apparently), but there were children in swimsuits, one and two-piece.

[kaths.livejournal.com]

Like I said, hard to know where to draw the line :)

When you say photos taken at a nudist resort - by whom? And for what purpose? If they are just private photos as per any holiday you go on, I don't see a problem with that (and they're quite strict about filtering out people who go to nudist resorts for the wrong reasons).

If someone's taking pics to eg illustrate an article for a newspaper, I don't think they should include any naked pics of the kids, even if their parents give permission.

The album cover is a tricky one - the younger the child the less it seems to be an issue, even though there are people who abuse babies. Perhaps it's so hard to contemplate that, that we (ie society) just don't see it as an issue in the same way as with eg 6 year olds.

I think it's also hard to judge because there's too much context around the album. Anyone saying it shouldn't have been published would be seen to be attacking the historical value of the album, its musical contents etc. It needs to be presented out of context to be judged just on the merits of the pic.

If it had been my child in that photo, I wouldn't have allowed it to be used for an album cover. But if they wanted the photo to be used for something similar when they grew up, that'd be their choice.

[dalekboy.livejournal.com]

Good answers, all.

The magazines produced by various nudist resorts feature pics of people of all ages, from babies and small children, through to people in their eighties and nineties. So the photography of the children is no more sexualised that that of anyone else, but it's come under fire from some groups trying to protect the kids, because the pics may fall into the hands of paedophiles.

Geffen originally discussed altering the album cover, but decided to go with it when Cobain made it clear that if they wanted the penis hidden, he wanted a sticker placed over the boy's member saying "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile."

the younger the child the less it seems to be an issue is actually one of my general points - why should a shot that just happens to have the genitalia of a baby in it be any more agreeable than shots of children at 3, 7, 11, and onwards? If the shots are not sexual in nature, and aren't intended to evoke an erotic response, but still need to be hidden away for fear of the paedophiles, where's the cut-off point? And why aren't the babies considered to need equal protection to the six-year olds?

The problem is that once any reaction becomes knee-jerk, we lose control of it and other things get lost at the same time. Cases need to be decided on their own merits, not on arbitrary gut responses.

And if Spencer had been your kid, and you hadn't wanted the pic used, I know you would have made the decision with at least some consideration and thought, rather than an automatic "no!"