joerimaas
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 p.5 #15 · Is it art or pornography? | |
Let me start of by stating that i am Dutch and therefore i come from a different cultural background. Let me also state that i have an American girlfriend who is a human rights lawyer. I have done human rights work myself. I do not condone any form of child abuse, including child porn.
I have seen many interesting discussions in this forum on this subject. I notice that often, the discussion is lost in a debate about american vs european values and the discussion tend to loose focus and get quite personal at times. This does not seem to be productive.
Looking at it more carefully, 'child porn' must be two things. Pornagraphy and Underage. The girl is 13, so it is underage. However, the term porn has no legal meaning.
A quick search will come up with some jurisprudential guidelines from the US. Let me tell you, it is different in Europe, but i will take the US as a starting position because Americans tend to be of the more sensitive and strict western nations about this issue. And please understand that I say that without passing judgment about that. As a general statement, it refers to your cultural standards and your norms and values. I can have different norms and values, but disagreeing with somebody else's is fruitless as they are an elemental part of what constitutes a nation, and for purposes of discussion is relevant as a given.
Back to the definition of porn. From: http://censorware.net/essays/obscene_jt.html
The term of legal significance is "obscenity", which, after struggling for many years and through many cases, the U.S. Supreme Court defined in Miller v. California in 1973. It is a three-part test, as follows:
"The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be:
(a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the purient interest, Kois v. Wisconsin, supra, at 230, quoting Roth v. United States, supra, at 489;
(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
These three requirements all have to be met. A couple of questions arise that maybe the discussion should focus on:
1. What are our community standards? What community? Local,national, international? Highest common denominator or the lowest? What is the role of an artist in this respect?
2. Does the 'action' of the girl in the picture constitute sexual conduct?
3. Does this picture lack serious artistic value?
From my point of view, taking me as the average person, this is not pornography. It does not offend me. To me, the action does not constitute sexual conduct, thereby not passing the above test. Whether it is very artistic is another question, but to me a harder one to answer than the one about sexual conduct.
Hope I have not offended anyone.
Joeri
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I have often suggested to Fred that the People forum should be split into two .. those who like the "glam" shots and those who prefer other forms of humanity! But in vain. One certainly cannot dispute that males are definitely in the majority on the People forum and the majority rules I guess. 
? Christ! What about going to any art museum and seeing nude religious paintings? I agree there is a line were exploitation becomes an issue, but not just simple nudity. Do people forget that we are all naked under our clothes