Projection onto Adolescent Forms

Bill Henson's photos of adolescents aged between 12 and 13 have caused offense to some people. The gallery that was to show the photos was shut down by police just before it was due to open to the public. Further intimidation directed towards the gallery has followed with threats to "burn the building down."

The prime minister Kevin Rudd, wading into a murky debate, has been quoted as saying that the photos of 12 and 13 year old girls were 'absolutely revolting' and "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." Elsewhere Kevin Rudd has said 'why we can't just allow kids to enjoy…the innocence of childhood.'

The organization calling itself 'Bravehearts' fronted by Hetty Johnston has been quoted as saying that 'pornography and pedophilia were rife in society'. Ms Johnston has also said that "You can call it anything you want, but at the end of the day, these are images of naked adolescents..."

Are the images pornography? Are the images sexualized? What images count as pornography? Where is the line between art and pornography? And is some pornography 'art' and some art 'pornography'? What was the artist's intent? Why are the prime minister and Bravehearts going after an artist? Is this 'moral outrage' actually about protecting adolescents and children? And who should decide what is acceptable to be viewed by the public? Should the police decide? Should lobby groups? Should the government? Or should the public?

An art market analyst Michael Reid believes it a case of "have the images be sexualised?" and believes that they have not. And points to the naked human form being a subject of art for hundreds of years.

The Law Society of New South Wales has come out in support for Bill Henson and argues whether a crime has been committed or not by Bill Henson is a matter of 'intent.' The legal thinking is that because there is no intent to portray adolescents in a sexualized manner in a public forum, like an art gallery, no crime has been committed.

The question of 'have the images of 12 to 13 year old girls been sexualized?' cuts to a far deeper social quandary. Is it acceptable for 12 to 13 year old women to be sexual beings or not? And how is the sexuality of youth socially constituted?

Advertising, which also appears in public space, depicting young girls and adolescent women (or young women depending on your take) has increasingly depicted them wearing clothes and makeup and arguably in an manner that positions them as sexual or sexually attractive. The market category of "tweens" which are supposedly 'savvy cashed up 12 to 13 year olds' has been one that the advertising industry has increasingly targeted by advertising campaigns. Models have also gotten younger and younger and there has also been some outrage about models as young as fifteen being used as catwalk models. Fashion has exploited young looking women to sell clothes for a very long time. Plastic surgery for many women exists to make them look younger as does the use of various 'beauty products' and cosmetics. Youth, it seems, is something that is 'attractive' within Western culture and society. Attraction to who you might ask? Well to men of course. But how young is too young to be sexually attractive? It seems that 12 to 13 years old is considered by some to be too young to be attractive. Censoring Bill Henson's art in this context seems hypocritical or at the very least going after a 'soft target' in a populist manner. Why have they not gone after various advertising campaigns for major brand names who use young women or 'tweens' to sell product? This goes some way to providing context for an examination of what imagery counts as sexual and what does not, but does not deal with the question of are young people are sexual or not?

The answer is one that people don't want to think about. Sigmund Freud argued that children are sexual and this is repressed. He also argued that children go through anal, oral and genital stages of sexual development. This is to do with the 'pleasure principle' in terms of what gives a human being 'pleasure'. At around the age of adolescence children shift from the pre-genital stages of sexual development to adult (genital) sexuality. The reaction by most to Freud's thinking might be something along the lines of "Oh my goodness! How could anyone think such a thing!" This reaction as a radical denial of young peoples sexuality, seems to confirm that people must repress and forget that children and adolescents are perhaps not entirely 'asexual' beings. The prime minister's statement of 'let children be children' seems to point to some sacred asexual (non-sexual) period of a human beings life. This might not be the actual case, human beings might actually be sexual beings on some kind of continuum from birth to death.

But was it Bill Henson's intent to portray adolescents as 'sexual beings'? Of course the artist because of the climate and the moralistic reaction is going to say 'No, it was not.' But I am going to suggest that it does not matter what the artist's intent is on one level. Once art is out there in the public sphere it is up to each individual viewer to imbue meaning to art. The problem with removing the art as censorship from the gallery is that the public never got a chance to decide, to imbue meaning, or to question the problems of social meaning given to adolescent sexuality.

Furthermore sexuality is contextual. We all accept that what is 'sexually appealing' for one person is not for another. So are photos of adolescent women aged between 12 to 13 in a public gallery 'sexual appealing'? On the one hand it might be argued that due to the nature of a public space like a gallery the viewing of the images cannot be done in such a fashion that they are sexualized. The problem with this view is that meaning is constructed by the viewer and not entirely by the artist, nor entirely by the context in which they appear in. Perhaps an argument could be made for removing the photos of adolescents in Bill Henson's work from the internet, as sitting in front of a computer screen is different to being in a public space, hence perhaps it could possibly be more likely that the images are seen by the viewer as sexual and as pornography. But so could a Target catalog featuring 'children's fashion'.

In addition perhaps some art is porn and some porn is art. Take for instance the painting of Chloe in the Young and Jackson hotel. The line is not clear and will not necessarily be clearer in the future. The depiction of images of naked adolescents also points to the radical instability of the way by which our bodies as human beings are viewed. In many ways our bodies are constructed from outside of ourselves by others who project various ideas, ideals and fantasies onto our embodied selves. Indeed arguing that Bill Henson's work is pornographic is projection. It is only pornographic if one allows oneself to see his work in such a manner. Unfortunately due to middle-class moralism the general public will not be able to determine their own meanings to such imagery. The public are not being allowed to think about it and make up their own minds, as the state has acted and seized the art in an act of censorship. This shows a deep distrust and paranoia about the Australian public. And this act of censorship is authoritarian and should be protested.