Censorship Blues - 13/May/2011

How About Arguments Based On Intellectual Merit?

Where does one start with the idiotic submission by Bravehearts to the Senate?

ONE of Australia's most prominent child protection advocate, Bravehearts, has weighed into the art censorship debate, calling for the Classification Board to be overhauled and for matters of ''artistic merit'' and expert evidence to be scrapped when deciding if art is pornography.

Bravehearts's submission to a Senate inquiry into the film and literature classification scheme was one of several submissions highly critical of the board for allegedly sanctioning the exhibition of photographs of children that would otherwise be illegal, and for failing to halt the proliferation of images that demean women and pressure young girls to act in sexual ways.

Other community and Christian groups wanted the board's power increased so it could censor outdoor advertising, which is at present self-regulated by an industry body, the Advertising Standards Bureau.

The executive director of Bravehearts, Hetty Johnston, an outspoken critic of the work of the photographer Bill Henson, called for NSW employment laws that ban taking photographs of naked and semi-naked children to be replicated across Australia and said such photos should be refused classification by the board.

''How is it that it was illegal to take the photos but not illegal to exhibit them?'' she said, referring to photographs Henson took of a naked 12-year-old girl that were exhibited at a Sydney art gallery in 2008, sparking a ferocious debate about pornography and art.

That sound you hear in the distance is me grinding my teeth. I don't exactly do art with nude teens in them, so it's not a problem that sits in front of me, but I have written songs about an Orangutan sex slave prostitute and Josef Fritzl so I can see this sort of thing being a problem for my work as well. It may very well take Frank Zappa recordings off record shelves.

The problem is threefold.

The first problem is that the censorship board can't be the board that decides if there is artistic merit or not. neither can it proceed with the notion that there is no such thing as artistic merit. Asking for it to discard notions of artistic merit and place judgments based strictly on whether there is a minor depicted in the nude or not, is grossly censorious and has terrible ramifications for ALL freedom of expression. It places too much under the blanket of a taboo, just in case there's a pervert out there who gets aroused by art. Nobody would be able to discuss anything in fiction or art, because sure as hell it won't stop at fears of paedophilia.

The second problem is that of defining pornography when removing the framework of art. In any age of history in age of differing societal standards is that it's strictly in the eye of the beholder. It's up to the beholder to decide how they respond to an image or an object. By Johnson's logic, it's only acceptable art if one doesn't get sexually aroused. I don't think that is going to work as a definition of art. And this has a corollary:

Let's consider for a moment the humble rock melon. Most people on the planet don't conceive of a rock melon as a sexualised object. Some people who use them as sexual aids for purposes of masturbation might consider otherwise. By Hetty Johnson's logic, it would become illegal to display melons in shops because somebody might get aroused.

Similarly, if there are in this world bestial perverts and they were likely to be aroused by sheep, then why should there by all those naked sheep allowed to roam our countryside available to the person? How does Hetty Johnson suggest we enforce this issue? Putting diapers on all sheep in Australia? It's clearly an idiotic position to take on what things are in the public view.

The third problem is that should it be possible to enforce censorship without notions of artistic merit, then where would such a revision stop? The naked cherubs in Renaissance paintings? The statue of David by Michelangelo and Donatello? David was a teen when he slew Goliath by biblical accounts, so by Johnson's logic any statue of David should not be in public view, lest some pervert get aroused. Well, there happens to be a replica in a shopping centre on the Goldcoast, and it's been there for years. She is really arguing that we shouldn't consider the artistic merits of a Michelangelo, or Donatello, just focus on the exposed genitals.

Artistic merit of works is like the presumption of innocence in criminal trials. Without it, you're going to have totalitarian repression of expression. If Hetty Johnson doesn't understand this, it's probably because she is happier with embracing fascism than actually trying to help kids from paedophilia. Picking on the arts is stupid.There's no correlation between what artists do and child porn. Likening the two to one another is insidious. The fact that she can only see controversy and no artistic merit in Bill Henson's work is not a failing in Bill Henson or his work or for that matter the Classification Board, it's actually her problem and it rests squarely with her. She should seek help from a psychiatrist instead of wasting the Senate's time.

Project Update (of Sorts)

Life In The Weird Lane

Gra-Gra (of 'The Ownerless Mind' blog) sent in the lovely picture above. It's a metaphor for our existence. There's the fat cow of capital, with the regulated flow of milk controlled by fat capitalists squirting this stuff in tiny portions into our tiny little waiting mouths, bit by bit. Or perhaps not.

Film Projects
Got a short film coming up. Might be exciting, might not. It's a courtroom drama set deep in space on a mining colony, except it's more a Spanish Inquisition than a proper courtroom. The Corporation is big and fact and nasty and extremely exploitative so the law is a flimsy thing. The interesting thing about the project is hat it coms attached with somebody with a name, which I'll reveal at some point. It's still being fleshed out, but the script is just about ready.

'GAD' is still in limbo. We're waiting for some people with a name to do something worthy about it. Beyond which, I'm reallynot in a position to say much.

'Crashing by Design' is also in limbo because neither I nor Kendal have had time to sit down and plan the next draft. I hate it when projects lose their steam, but that's where we are, working in a vacuum while holding down day-jobs.

Recording Projects
With any luck, I'll put out a couple of more CDs by the end of the year for you all. That's right, coming soon are a couple of CDs with songs that date from my Satellite City days which either never got played with that band or were played but never recorded. These songs represent a chunk of my life that was consumed with Rock music. Yeah, capital 'R' Rock, man.

I promise it has some really cool songs - possibly the coolest songs I've ever bashed out, with none of the Zappa-esque lyrical excursions into deranged, warped, obscene human foibles that is more manifest in my recent works. Damn it, some of these are indeed love songs - love songs I wrote for women whose names, birthdays and postcodes I remember - who probably don't remember squat about me. Such is life for the errant songwriter.

The two CDs will be titled 'Escape From Satellite City' and 'Tales From Satellite City' respectively.

Another Thought I Had On Bill Henson
The press is having a field day since it was revealed that photographer scouted for talent and the principal of the school *gasp* let him. In principle it's not that different from if a talent scout for an athletic or sports organisation, or an acting/modeling/dancing agency scoped out the talent at the local Primary School but society being what it is, it has one rules for 'healthy' sport and another for 'degenerate' artists.

Of course nobody even reflects on the abject hypocrisy, instead they're focused on Henson as some kind of child-porn producer of their worst nightmares. In a sense, Henson's work sails very close to the prevailing moral winds, but at the same time, nobody with an artistic education/training has come out and said, "you know what? Bill Henson is a pornographer." That alone kind of flies in the face of the media sensationalism.

And in all this media shit-storm, Bill Henson seems largely unmoved. If it had been me I think I might have gone spare at the abject misrepresentation of my work. Even a Labor PM and his Deputy are saying how revolted, disturbed and concerned they are by this development. You'd think the principal allowed him to physically molest them (or take photos without consent), but clearly that is not what happened.

So my conclusion is this: Bill Henson is an inordinately brave artist - much braver than I; and for that fact alone is deserving of much admiration. I would never undertake his subject matter, given society's willingness to deliberately misinterpret his work as 'child porn'.

Yes, I might write songs about Pony the Orangutan prostitute or Josef Fritzl the Austrian Dungeon Dad, or David Hicks hanging out in Five Dock, but I sure as hell am not going to write songs about celebrating the nascent sexuality of a low-teen girl lest the AFP come surging through my door to confiscate my computer.
So much for my weirdness. I guess it shows I'm a pretty ordinary guy, which probably explains why my creative output is never going to change the world.

News That's Fit To Abuse

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Henson Case Collapses

So Much For That
The NSW Police dropped their case against Bill Henson. While the ins and outs of it are tedious (yet worth considering), the bottom line is that they wouldn't be able to make the charges stick. Which is about the length of the arm of the Law should be.

The Australian had this take in response to the case being dropped.

NSW Law Society president Hugh Macken said the Henson photographs did not offend the Crimes Act because they did not show children in a sexual context.

"There was never any prospect that these photos would fit the definition of child pornography and the decision of the DPP vindicates that position," Mr Macken said. "Nudity is not obscenity."

Gallery owner Roslyn Oxley thanked the many people who had offered support to her gallery and Henson over the past two weeks.

Ms Johnston told The Weekend Australian last night she was one of the three people who issued a complaint to police about Henson's photographs, and she intended to continue her fight against state and federal laws that allowed images of naked underage girls to be taken and circulated as art.

"It's just incomprehensible to us that, as a nation, we don't have laws that protect our children from commercial sexual exploitation," she said. "We all understand artistic protection is important - we get that. But child protection is more important."

Ms Johnston plans to consult legal advisers to examine the legislation and lobby for change.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma thanked police for their investigative work.

"My personal opinion remains clear: these photographs crossed the line and were inappropriate," he said. "I can't understand how a parent could allow a child to be photographed in this way."

It's been a weird week for me as well, in as much as I've had some discussions with people who are on the Anti-Child-Abuse crusade. Obviously this Ms Johnston's a bit of a crusader. If she thinks nudes are 'commercial sexual exploitation' I think she's going to have a tough time convincing the legislative assembly to change laws. In turn, she is suggesting the Censorship Board has no idea what it is doing, when in fact it is her, and the crusaders who are proceeding with insufficient understanding of art.

That is not to say artists are not caring about issues in our society. The prevalence of pedophilia as we've witnessed this week in the news actually does not correlate with art and nude works; and conversely, it's not like these people are going out hard buying up works by Bill Henson. They probably didn't know he existed until this last fortnight.

It's not that artists are saying children do not need protection or that they are not concerned about child abuse. It's just that when you fly in the face of thousands of years of art history and try and classify nudes as 'commercial sexual exploitation', you're going to be told you are dead wrong.

If it were the case that models who posed for Bill Henson's work were coming forward with allegations of abuse, that would be a different thing entirely. The absence of such claims kind of puts the onus on the law to prove *something* of a case out of the pictures alone - and that part of it actually has well-established social norms and conventions. If anything, this is a fight picked by the Anti-Child-Abuse crusaders with the help of wowsers, and does not say any thing about art or artists in Australia. If anything, none of this brouhaha makes our society look *good*. The fact is, there were 70 pedophiles brought in for questioning over an internet ring. People are committing suicide and politicians are goading them to do so. Real-life child-abuse crimes are going down and it's going down in places that have nothing to do with contemporary art. All this paints a pretty lousy picture of who we are as a nation.

Henson Images Cleared

And So They Should
The Classification Board turned the case around quickly as they declared most of the images as having a 'G' rating or 'Very mild' for some others.
Here's the report.

Late last week the Classification Board swiftly assessed five Henson images taken from media websites and rated them all "G" or "very mild". Some or all of the images are partly censored with black bars covering nipples and genitals. The assessment followed a complaint about images on media websites after NSW police closed his Sydney exhibition on May 23. The main complaint is said to involve a slide show of seized photographs on The Daily Telegraph's website.

Last Thursday, the Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, said images from media websites has been referred to the Classification Board. They were cleared the same day. An internet censorship expert Irene Graham told the Herald: "The fact that the Classification Board has become involved in this and then worked so quickly to reach its verdict is a sign of just how politically sensitive the Henson issue has become."

Responsibility for policing the net was given to the Australian Communications and Media Authority in 2006. Since then, it has referred less than a dozen complaints to the Classification Board. The Henson complaint is the first to be cleared absolutely by the board, which is is expected to release a full report on each of the five images today.

So the bad news is, they're covering up the genitals with black markers and spots. Talk about unable to leave well enough alone, but I'm guessing this is more of a compromise in order not to politicise the Board itself. It sucks that the compromise is the very execution of the sort of compromise you wouldn't want to make, but such is life. It's better that Mr. Henson gets cleared of Pedophilia suggestions quickly than have to face 15 rounds in the court against the aesthetically challenged and morally infantile.

It's amazing just how much the forces of wowserdom has gained power in the last 15 years. Back when Wade Fankum went psycho and spree-killed in Strathfield Shopping Centre, calls were made to ban 'American Psycho' because it was one of the books found in his keeping after his death. Nobody mentioned that he also owned Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'. Nobody called to ban that book. It's surprising how selective wowserdom morality can be if it's sensational enough.

The fact of the matter is, books don't kill people, psychos with guns do. Equally, depictions of teen sexuality does not cause pedophiles to go out and do stuff - Pedophiles do what they do for their own reasons. The woswers of this world wish there was some real-world connection but the truth is it's only in their dirty little minds.

Bill Henson Investigations Continue

More Raids On Art Galleries

In a perfectly logical yet somehow hysterical development, the Federal Police went to the National Gallery of Australia to inspect the 79 Henson photographs housed there. None were seized.

The director of the National Gallery of Australia, Ron Radford, was reportedly questioned last night over the gallery's collection of 79 photographs, all of which were in storage.

Police said inquiries related to child pornography.

No photos were seized in yesterday's raids on the NGA and other Canberra galleries.

"If we determine there are offences disclosed, then we will go through the process of seizing whatever needs to be seized in order to prove the offence," a police spokesman said.

Photos held in storage were subject to as much scrutiny as hanging works because child pornography charges included possession, he said.

"If you're in possession of child pornography, whether you have it on your computer and whether you view it or not, that's an offence."

It stands to reason that if they are willing to venture that some of Henson's work is kiddie Porn, it is entirely possible his other works are kiddie-porn too. How, in an oeuvre of art, they decide which is kiddie-porn and which is not kiddie-porn totally escapes me; especially given that they were all intended as works of art and were shown as works of art and were understood to be works of art by the art community. The AFP must be confident their eyes are better than those of the curators and Gallery chiefs such as Mr. Edmund Capon.

Mr. Henson has declined to be interviewed by the Police on legal advice. The interesting bit in the linked article is Malcolm Turnbull coming out to bat for the artist.

The Federal Opposition treasury spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, supported Henson yesterday. He owns two works by the artist, although neither is similar to the photographs seized.

"I don't believe that we should have policemen invading art galleries," he said . "I think we have a culture of great artistic freedom in this country."

Despite an outcry from the arts community, the Prime Minister stood by his original assessment of Henson's exhibition as "absolutely revolting".

"I gave my reaction. I stand by that reaction and I don't apologise for it," Kevin Rudd said yesterday. "I am passionate about children having innocence in their childhood."

His refusal to apologise follows an open letter from artists urging Mr Rudd and the NSW Premier, Morris Iemma, to "rethink" their criticism of Henson. Mr Iemma had said the photographs were "offensive and disgusting".

The actor Cate Blanchett and the writers J.M. Coetzee and Peter Goldsworthy were among 43 members of the 2020 Summit creative stream to condemn the portrayal of the artist as a "child pornographer". They warned against art censorship.

The Arts Minister, Peter Garrett, has remained silent.

Well, of course Mr. Garrett is going to try and stay out of this mess. As a guy who stopped being a practitioner to be a politician, his credibility and loyalties have already been shredded. Need we take him seriously at all?

On Malcolm Turnbull's point, it is encouraging that somebody on the Liberal side is taking a small-'l' liberal position, especially given how uncompromisingly moralistic the previous Prime Minster was, and how equally a wowser the current Prime Minister is.

The weekend letters section of the SMH provided an interesting read in as much as there really doesn't seem to be a middle ground. One side says, "Yes, Kiddie-Porn is bad, but you can't go around locking up artists because their work reminds you of Kiddie-Porn," while the other says, "Yes, Freedom of Speech is important but when you cross the line of bad taste into Kiddie-Porn, we should string up the artist and lynch him".

If The Label Fits, Wear It
Miranda Devine is on the crusading side of this issue. She brought up the initial outrage, and is trying to label the arts crowd as puerile and the real philistines. Again, normally I would not want to sink to the level of discussing the un-sound reasoning shown by jaded columnists such as Ms Devine, but this piece does seem to shed some insight into the mind of the wowser.

So artists want the freedom to exploit budding pubescents as nude models, but they don't want the Prime Minister to freely express his thoughts?

If the arts community is so creative and "edgy", why do they all travel in lockstep on such things? Their single voice suggests not originality and boundary-pushing, but a suffocating conformity.

Who in the arts community - whether creator, curator or critic - has come out and said: "This is wrong," not just "provocative" or "controversial"? They say they are happy to have the debate but they have never had the debate, perhaps for fear of being seen as prudish or out of touch with the in-crowd.

This deficit of moral courage was most stark last week in people who have since told friends they felt "uncomfortable" about the image on the invitation from Roslyn Oxley9 promoting Henson's show, but kept their feelings to themselves. It might not all be cowardice; through the relentless normalisation of the abnormal, the annihilation of taboos and the persecution of traditional moral guardians, we may have reached a point of such communal moral ambiguity that these people don't quite trust their instincts.

And on and on she goes.
The first point that the arts community doesn't want the PM to express his opinion is not true. The Prime Minister is entitled to his opinion and is accepted in expressing them. It is when he condemns artists sight unseen, the arts community would rightfully bristle. We also bristle at the thought that the Prime Minister's opinion is one which gives no benefit of the doubt for the artist. Then, when the Prime Minister says it should be left to due process, having poisoned the waters of public opinion itself, it is logical that the arts community take umbrage. On top of all this, his position is that of a wowser philistine.

The second point that somehow the arts community is in lockstep and therefore are all somehow brainwashed lefties, is a mis-characterisation. The fact of the matter is, Freedom of Expression is one point all artists of all walks would agree upon; and equally, regardless of the political persuasion of the artist , an artist cannot surrender their Freedom of Expression on suspicions alone - Just as if Ms. Devine herself were to be rounded up by a political organ and sent to trial and prison for her (rather daft and misguided) opinion pieces, there would be an equally vociferous solidarity by the same people for her behalf. The same Freedom of Expression that allows her to sound off her political diatribes day in and day out without injurious consequences, are exactly the same freedoms which these artists are unanimously supporting.

It shows an incredibly over-privileged perspective and irresponsible attitude for MsDevine to think that somehow it is the Lefty artists who have lost their own 'moral instinct' that are squealing in the face of proper moral rectitude. But of course such an obvious point would be shoved under the carpet so she can score ancillary partisan points.

Thirdly, to try and say there is a 'deficit of moral courage' because they don't see the moral questions in the same way is a kind of Orwellian double-speak. It is just as moral to champion the said freedoms of and for and by the artists themselves. If people felt uncomfortable, they should be grateful that they had just experienced a truly artistic moment. Art isn't all pretty flowers and nice colours. It is going to be challenging. To try and construe a position that "smut sells" and therefore the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery was trying to make a buck out of prepubescent nudie girls is an insinuation that says more about Ms Devine's own lack of taste more than anything else.

On a side note, I have met the owner of the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. Truth be known, she insinuated that I was somehow a Chinese person who through racial association was therefore a cannibal. Though it was brief, it was a most distasteful conversation. She was so wrong in so many ways, but I let her have her nasty little spit at me because I figured she's entitled to her opinion, no matter how wrong (as in incorrect, mistaken, and false), and did not need to be prosecuted for such words spoken in rash prejudice.
So, yes, I do have sufficient moral courage.

What Censorship Looks Like

Obscenity Trials To Come

I just wanted to post up the above picture.
The pixellated face, the black band through where we might anticipate the nipples... it's so much more tasteful than the smut that was there before... not. It actually makes it look a though the girl participated in something incredibly illicit and disgusting, when all she did was pose nude for art. People have been doing the latter for centuries. You sort of shake your head at the sensibility of the moralists. For heaven's sakes, even a wowser like Hitler didn't ban nudes; he was willing to call modernists a bunch of degenerates, but he thought nudes were an important part of 'Germanic Art'.
Thus, this image is the face of idiotic censorship in Australia so we'd better get used to it.

While I'm updating, here is an article that's worth a read.

The public threshold for outrage is notoriously low, while the art world's taste for challenging and "subversive" work is insatiable. This has led many artists to actively seek out sensation and scandal - but Bill Henson is not of this persuasion. He obtains the full co-operation of his subjects and their families, many of whom have remained friends. Few Australian artists are so articulate or well-read, few have such a genuinely philosophical turn of mind. The worst charge that could be levelled at Henson is that he is an aesthete - with the ability to make anything at all seem beautiful.

It is not surprising that many people are shocked and disturbed by images of naked adolescents, but according to the dealer, Roslyn Oxley, the current exhibition was actually less confronting than some of Henson's previous shows at the gallery. There is no denying that it was less confronting - and far less public - than the massive retrospectives of 2005 that packed out the state galleries. After ignoring Henson for decades the self-appointed guardians of public morality are suddenly burning with rage. So what happens now? Are Henson's works to be purged from public collections and burnt? Are his books to be pulped?

A bit rhetorical, but you get the drift. The Art law Council is lining up to defend Henson.

New South Wales Law Society president Hugh Macon says the case against Henson could be very difficult to prove.

"The Crimes Act requires two things - an intention and an act," he said.

"The Act is usually fairly easily established but if the intention is to produce a work of art and solely to produce a work of art, then I can not see how a crime has been committed."

Kind of goes without saying, really. Then there's this comment which is very clear.

Like any really interesting artist, Henson has been trying his whole life to make the perfect picture. He is compelled to keep making the same work in many ways.

His images may take the viewer to an edge, to an uncomfortable place, but it's like great music or great literature. I don't look at Henson's work and see it as anything other than a broad field of possibilities.

Art and pornography are entirely separate things. It is an art gallery's job to deal with art, whether it is by Michelangelo, Caravaggio, or Bill Henson.

... And there's still no further comment from the philistine Prime Minister. If there's really going to be an obscenity trial, I think it's going to get pretty ugly.

Art And Porn

Kevin Rudd, Philistine

I normally just want to sail right by these kinds of reports, but I have to say something while I still have my freedom of expression. Call it an ethical responsibility as a practitioner in the arts.
First of all, Artist Bill Henson is about to be charged with Child Porn laws for his most recent exhibition.

NSW police have seized 20 of 41 photographs from Bill Henson's Sydney exhibition of adolescent girls with the intention of launching criminal proceedings under the Child Protection Act.

Police say charges will be laid under both the NSW and Commonwealth Crimes acts for publishing an indecent article.

The alleged Commonwealth offence relates to publishing some of the photographs on the internet.

The decision to launch a prosecution was made public by Rose Bay police commander, Superintendent Allan Sicard outside the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery in Paddington while detectives carried out a search.

Superintendent Sicard said police had taken possession of the Henson photographs that were due to go on public exhibition on Thursday night.

"Police at 3.30pm yesterday received a report from a concerned member of the public that an exhibition was occuring at this gallery,'' said Superintendent Sicard.

"Police attended the gallery yesterday and it was the agreed position between the gallery owners and police that the exhibition not go ahead last night.

"This morning police have attended the gallery and executed a search warrant and seized some items depicting a child under the age of 16 years in a sexual context.

"Police are investigating this matter and it is likely we will proceed to prosecution on the offence of publish an indecent article, under the crimes act.

"It is likely that a future court attendence notice will be issued for the offence upon the completion of the investigation.''

"The child depicted in the image is female. We believe that the child is 13 years of age. The information is that the child... is not a resident of New South Wales and we have referred liaison through our child sex crime unit to liaise with the state where the child is believed to live.''

Police would not say if they had interviewed Mr Henson, or where the child lives.

So, let's see now, the inbred-idiot-farmer-boys who cannot get other jobs, who are the NSW Police know Art when they see it, and they think this isn't Art, it's filthy child pornography?
Great.
Sack Edmund Capon now and let the Police Chief in charge of the AGNSW. Get a black marker and colour in all the genitals on display in the art gallery. There are reasons this doesn't happen, and it's mostly to do with common sense and social norms. There are expert curators and critics for these things, just as we don't put Mr. Capon in charge of the NSW Police. This isn't some artist who suddenly popped out of nowhere with this stuff. He's an established artist who has been working this field for years and years.

Isn't it the oldest ruse of wowser-ism to shout "I might not know art, but I know smut when I see it" and shout down objections on the grounds that you're secretly a communist or a pervert or a homosexual or something like that? Didn't we leave this kind of moronic discourse behind with the Howard Government?
But, No-o-o-o!
Our fearless Prime Minister Kevin Rudd weighs in saying he's "revolted".

"I find them absolutely revolting," he told the Nine Network.

"Kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected. I have a very deep view of this. For God's sake, let's just allow kids to be kids.

"Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff - frankly I don't think there are any - just allow kids to be kids."

*Ugh*. Where do we begin?

First off, Kevin Rudd has not seen the work of the artist. So he's going on second hand misinformation. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on his artistic tastes on this point (just for now, but I will take him to task in point four), but it has to be said, the over-riding moralist concern in his utterances is not a sign of somebody who understands the position of an artist in society. Art is going to challenge your sensibilities Prime Minister, and you've surely got to be ready for it.

Secondly, he presumes that the work of art is sexual and therefore is pornography; as if there were only two possibilities!
This is the part that reveals Kevin Rudd's greatest misunderstanding of sexuality itself. Just because there is naked-ness it does not immediately equal cheap provocative voyeuristic sexual imagery. Sex is deservedly one of the greater mysteries in life that we must tangle with and wrestle with against and through our existence. Just because there is a nude girl does not make it child porn. His professed revulsion says more about Kevin Rudd than the works of art themselves.

Thirdly, we always get this when a work of art goes against the prevailing moral wind of society. Anybody remember 'Piss Christ'? While I haven't seen Bill Henson's work either, I can well imagine that Henson's work actually poses a tremendous question against moral certitude that the mainstream society wants. What if a thirteen year old girl was indeed sexual? It's not unheard of in history. There are plenty of instances where woman have been married off at such young ages in history. It's just that today, we pretend that onset of our sexual beings is much later.

A figure no less than Gandhi for instance married a 13 year old when he himself was 13, and had children. The famous anecdote is of Gandhi having sex with his wife at the time of his father's death; something for which he beat himself up over. We certainly don't judge Gandhi negatively for this fact, but I think Mr Rudd would - and again, that says more about Mr. Rudd's own pathetic prejudices, more than anything else.

The fact of the matter is, sexuality itself is an incredibly motile, bendy, tricky, difficult subject. It's nice if we could deal with sexuality by decree, but it just isn't so. Just scanning the SMH headlines on the same day we have this story for instance where a school teacher was jailed for having sex with his student.

David Barry Quinn, 33, of Croydon, pleaded guilty in the County Court in late April to four counts of sexual penetration of a child under 16 under his care, supervision or authority between August 7 and September 4, 2004.

In sentencing today, Judge Frances Millane said Quinn had committed a serious breach of trust.

"The victim was infatuated with you ... at the time she was a child nearly half your age and because of her infatuation with you ... she was no doubt extremely vulnerable."

She said Quinn had sex with the year 9 student from his geography class after she initiated an SMS flirtation.

"If you ever just want to fool around, text me, I'm all for it," one message from the 15-year-old girl read.

"It seems very very wrong but I do enjoy your company," a message from Quinn to the victim said.

Quinn acted on the invitation and arranged to pick up the girl, who cannot be named, from her part-time job one Saturday. They went back to his house and had sex, Judge Millane said. They then went to see a movie and Quinn then took the girl back to his house and had sex with her again.

On another occasion she stayed the night at his house.

Judge Millane said an aggravating factor in the case was Quinn's attempt to hide the relationship by making an agreement with the victim to deny the affair if it was discovered.

"Not content with the sexual corruption of this student, I am told you sought to enter into an agreement with her that if your relationship is discovered you would both deny the relationship."

The girl told a workmate of the affair and the school principal was notified. But both Quinn and the victim denied the relationship and the inquiry was dropped, she said.

At the plea hearing Tim Sowden, Quinn's lawyer, said the victim had obsessively pursued Quinn and he found it hard to resist her persistent advances.

Mr Sowden told the court Quinn regretted his actions greatly and knew what he had done was wrong.

You can just feel the judge, the lawyers, the defendant, all squirming in their chairs because a 15 year old girl wanted it badly, and went and got it. Isn't this exactly how the lyrics to 'Don't Stand So Close To Me' go?

Young teacher, the subject
Of schoolgirl fantasy
She wants him so badly
Knows what she wants to be
Inside her there's longing
This girls an open page
Book marking - she's so close now
This girl is half his age

Dont stand, dont stand so
Dont stand so close to me

Should we express our revulsion as Kevin Rudd, round up Vladimir Nabokov, Stanley Kubrick, Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland and start prosecuting them for child porn? Clearly not. In fact, the so-called 'sexualisation' in Mr. Henson's work isn't remotely about sex itself. It's not like he's busily thrusting dildos and Drilldos into a thirteen year old girl. They're nudes. Not exploitative images.

Let me make this clear: I don't approve of this teacher doing what he did, but I accept it happens, and happens often, and that it is one of the quandaries of our society because sexuality poses such a destructive question to our so-called moral integrity. It's not easy stuff. It's the stuff that makes the book and both movie versions of 'Lolita' great art, as well as Sting a great song writer. It is not inconceivable that Bill Henson has produced great art. To condemn his work, sight-unseen, is nothing but philistinism.

The sad part is, I really thought we left this kind of crap behind with the Howard Government. Clearly, not.

Fourthly, if indeed it is his artistic opinion that they are devoid of artistic merit, then he should express them in those terms, as his personal take. To judge from the office of the Prime Minister calls into question whether he should be anywhere near the arts portfolio, as he is most likely out of step with most artists, curators, and audiences.

And the best clue to the intensely painterly quality of Henson's genius, the least distracting way of getting a grip on it because both the ripeness and the exultation of the girls (or the sense of portent or ruin which sometimes afflict his figures can be disturbing is the way he can make some rusty old ruin of a landscape in urban or suburban Australia look like a place where some unearthly spirit blows as it will.

Of course there are legitimate concerns about the ways in which kids can be pushed prematurely into a hyperconsciousness of sex, but we should hardly blame this on a major visual artist simply because his art fills us with a kind of awe because of the way it plays on both the capacity for sexual intensity and the disturbing apprehension of beauty in someone alarmingly young.

The great paintings of the Renaissance do this and so does Shakespeare's Juliet (who happens in terms of our own culture to be underage) and through whom Shakespeare showed the massive power of passion in a girl who is forced tragically to make the transition from girlhood to womanhood too soon and is crushed by society and by circumstance.

But we should bear in mind that artists and writers do not create the world they express themselves in, however much their art reconfigures it in startling ways that reveal truths.

I'm glad I'm not alone in my outrage.
What really gets me is that this is not the kind of discussion I thought I would be having in Australia in 2008. It's as if 11 and a half years under the Howard Government has made us backwards cultural munchkins. If this is the best we're going to get from a Labor Prime Minister, Heaven help us all.