You've certainly surprised ME Chuck! What happened elsewhere at any other time is unknown and irrelevant. I don't know -and I suggest, you don't either- what the problems were of the societies of which you speak. Nor do I care. I care about what's going on here and now.
I have admitted often and -because of the slackness of your intellectual vroom-vroom- I'll say it once again: The advertising industry IS, (I've got the word in capitals, in case you have an ocular problem) a sleazey industry which govnt's have molly-coddled for far too long. It's time they've stopped that practice and shoved a few advertisers in jail. They've been culpable in some dreadful atrocities, not only of children but of whole societies. OK? The advertising industry is bad!
BUT the issue here is ART, so I'm discussing ART -not advertising, not America's robbery of the world's resources, not Zimbabwe's terrible ordeal, but ART.
Perhaps you and Goldie can begin a thread on the evils of the advertising industry. You'll find me in agreement with you there. But that would have to be another thread. It's absolutely true, the one convent feeds off the other and the two are well nourished by fawning governments and both ought o be controlled much more sternly without the simplistic claptrap slogans of "police state" and "nanny state" and such like excuses for govnt's to put important issues in the too hard basket and do nothing.
But we are talking about ART and questioning -everybody's right in a democratic and civilised society- whether artists OR anybody else for that matter, has any right to publicise pictures of nude children.
My view is that no: children should be out of bounds when it comes to taking pictures of them in the nude AND publicising them. By all means, keep them in a family album, love them, caress them, remember them fondly etc, etc. But DON'T exhibit them to the world. A very narrow circle of relatives and friends, is fine but not in magazines, newspapers, internet, public wall space or elsewhere where they can be seen by everyone. It's self-indulgent, self-aggrandising, self-centered, irresponsible publicity seeking which will almost certainly damage children. The unpalatable insult is that it's done in the name of some abstract notion of "art."
Catlover made the ridiculous point about some muslim kids running around naked in the street. I don't know how old those kids were and what sort of street that was; but I find that a disturbing exhibition of parental negligence. I hope the time will never come when people will shake their heads at some horror that might have stricken those kids and utter in dismay, "where are the kids' parents?"
The photos are taken, exhibited and money made. That's not capitalism at work, that's exploitation. Very much akin to telling young village girls that they'll be given a good job in a foreign country and then turning them into sexual slaves. Very little difference when the question turns to ethics.
I have seen the very sad results of exactly that sort of thing in my schools -and I've seen worse because some parents thought that leaving their kids to themselves, to "be free and choose as they want," to be a cute and wonderful thing. Abrogating our responsibilities to adults might me bad but to the kids, it's criminal.
So, truce, dude! I know I'm not going to convince you of my ways. Just don't insult my intelligence, OK? I've studied the matter as well as anyone can study it and made up my mind: The obsession of self-proclaimed artist with nude children is, was and probably will continue to be for a very long time disgusting and should be stopped.
I doubt there's a question you can put to me on this issue the answer to which you won't find in my previous posts -if you care to look, so no more, please.
