Loli art controversy
There has being heated debate in Australia lately on whether lolis can be considered art.
Okay I lied. This really has nothing to do with anime. Instead I’m going to rant about the headline making news that’s stirring up so much controversy in Australia lately.
The source of the controversy is this photo featured on the monthly art magazine, Art Monthly Australia.
Read the articles of you want more info, I’m not going to reiterate.
I think that people are confusing nudity to sexuality. Certainly, sexuality requires some level of nudity, the converse is not true. By no means is the image on the cover sexual in nature. You can probably fine dozen of images of fully clothed girls that are more provocative than this. (Based only on my experiences in the 2D realm on 4chan) To call this child abuse or child exploitation is just absurd.
There is the other argument that it’s giving paedophiles what they want. However, when it comes to child pornography, the harm is not caused by the actual viewing of the material. It’s is the fact that the paedophiles are condoning/encouraging the production of such material which is considered abusive or exploitative. But in this case, the material is not abusive nor exploitative by nature, so there’s no harm caused. What I’m trying to say is, if there’s someone perverse enough to be fapping to that image, let them fap away, it’s not causing anyone any harm.
All of this is the kind of knee jerk reaction I would expect from the paranoid society we live in, especially after the recent Bill Henson case. Gone are the days where parents are allowed to take photos of their children in the bath, only to embarrass them to no end, a decade later, at family gatherings. Now days, parents can’t even take photos of their kids in parks and pools, in fear that they are taking for more than happy memories.
At some point we really have to take a step back and say “enough is enough”. There will always be a group in society that will try to exploit any given situation. We cannot simply create rules in fear of those minorities. I’m sure if I tried hard enough (not that I want to) I can find a fetish for kids dressed in ski jackets, does that mean we should ban parents from taking photo of their children on ski trips? How about kids in casual clothing? Are we going to ban parents from taking photos of their kids altogether?
On another note, I think people should stop giving the Prime Minister crap about his condemnation on these photos. What do you expect him to say? That he thinks the photos look good? It’s pretty much the only stance he can take on the matter; either be known as a elistist bastard with now sense in artistic taste than a paedophile.
Argh, that’s enough rant from me on this topic. I’ll leave you with Ichigo Mashmaro, now this post is anime related. =P
Maybe they’ll call this child porn too…
10 December, 2008 at 10:58 pm
[...] art (as much as sexual drawings of the Simpsons can be considered art) and Australia never really mixed well. After all, the guys at the top are a bunch of reactionary ignoranmuses who brings us this and [...]