Thread: The War on Child Porn: A witch hunt?

Originally Posted by Syme

Yeah, I'm familiar with the debate on Caravaggio's sexuality, and in fact I'd agree that his body of work, looked at in it's totality, suggests a preoccupation wwith naked boys. What I'm saying, hoever, is that the pictures you posted in the OP aren't, in and of themselves, "overtly and unashamedly erotic". They show naked figures, that's all; the figures aren't doing anything particularly suggestive, they're just standing there with their dicks showing. If that makes them inherently erotic, then a huge portion of art from that period (and others) is "erotic" too. Amor Vincit Omnia isn't any more erotic, in and of itself, than Michelangelo's David, or El Greco's Laocoon, or Perugino's Apollo and Marysas, or any other artistic work depicting nude figures with exposed genitals. After all, as I said earlier, painting figures in the nude was pretty standard procedure back then. It's only when you look at Caravaggio's whole body of work, and see that he seemed to have heavily favored adolescent boys as his nude models, that the sexual dimension at work there is suggested. I don't think that any reasonable person can claim that any given painting of those nude boys is inherently erotic, unless they are prepared to claim that ALL paintings of nude figures are inherently erotic.

Again, you and I will have to disagree, I suppose. I don't see how you can say that these works don't have an erotic dimension compared to El Greco's Laocoon or Michelangelo's David. I find it striking, for example, in Amor Vincit Omnia, that Eros's arrows are essentially pointing to his crotch, which is highlighted by the bright white sheet it is resting on as well as the configuration of his thighs (which the arrows also reflect). The boy's nipple is also highlighted by both the lighting of the painting as well as its central placement. Bacchus has a "come hither" stare, and the way he is holding the chalice of wine is suggested as an offering to the viewer (of course, that gesture is ambiguous and not neccesarily erotic in itself, but in the context of the painting I think it takes more erotic overtones.)

I'm not sure what else to say, to be honest. Of course his entire corpus of work suggests an even stronger preoccupation with naked boys, but I still maintain that these couple works do have a particular erotic suggestiveness to them that other contemporary works of art did not neccesarily have.

I guess it seems to me that striving for broadness in that way is counterproductive, because it just makes the ensuing argument multi-directional and unfocused. I do see the connection you were trying to make, but to me, the issue of charging minors for child porn and the issue of whether 17th-century nude paintings can be called "child porn" aren't closely linked enough for it to be really effective. Just my opinion, of course. To me, the real point of this thread should be the debate over hitting minors with child porn charges for taking nude pics of themselves, adding in this extra layer of debate over possibly-erotic old paintings just confuses the issue.

Yes yes yes. I realize that this thread was poorly concieved on my part.