Another Request for Assistance

[lavender]

 

[Kitte]

I dont know much about federal statutes but the large photo developing company I worked for had to follow the state guidelines for massachusetts on all "pornography". I know that if there is nudity involving a child it is then examined for content. If the content was found objectionable it was then turned over to authorities. One such objectionable photo was of a father in the tub with his 18 month old son.

I think contacting one of the photo development companies would provide you with further examples if you could reach the correct people.

Good luck in your quest.

 

[april-wine]

John Robin Sharpe....

Don't know if you know about this guy Lavy....This has been going on since 1999....

http://cbc.ca/news/indepth/background/sharpe_pornography.html

 

[onewingedangel]

I have heard that the director for the movie "Powder" was severely criticized for his alleged molestation of a young boy earlier in his life.... coupled with the homoerotic overtones of Jeff Goldbloom's characters relationship with Powder. Apparently even the distributor of the movie thought about pulling their support.

Plus, Fiona Apples music video for her song "Criminal" was severely criticized because she was so small and girlish that the critics thought that the crime of the song was not her breaking up with her man, but that she was being exploited as a child.

 

[lavender]

 

[Harbinger]

Don't forget "Pretty Baby" with a very young Brooke Sheilds. Caused quite an uproar at the time.

 

[Bob_Bytchin]

I don't have any stories other than personal ones.

My wife and I have taken pictures of our kids taking baths...and never thought twice about the pictures. The pictures never show anything because my kids take bubble-baths and we were aiming for their faces.

Anyways, my wife had a collection of photos at work....one of them a bath-tub shot of all 4 of our kids together. Another was one of my middle daughter, at about a year old, standing in my mom's big wash basin....nude. Nothing slightly pornographic about either photo. But she was made to take the photos down because a co-worker complained that my wife had child pornography.

I can understand that children need to be protected...but sheltering them from nudity isn't going to work. Neither is the idea that there aren't innocent, tasteful, candid nude photos of ones own kids that can be non-pornographic

 

[phrodeau]

This is from the IMDb website:

Biography for Victor Salva _

Is a convicted child molester. Confessed in 1988 to five felony counts of sexual relations with a twelve year old boy who he videotaped in sexual situations.

Grew up in San Francisco.

In 1995, the boy he molsted (then in his 20s) boycotted the film Powder to bring attention to Salva's sexual misdeeds, which contributed to the film's less-than-stellar box office.

 

[aly*]

I read about Eli Langer's case in Dangerous Drawings: Interviews with Comix & Graphix Artists. New York: Juno Books, 1997. I can't remember if he is american though, sorry.

There is also Mike Diana's case. He is a cartoonist who was arrested in Florida. One of the first links i found on google http://www.theroc.org/roc-mag/textarch/roc-16/16-05.html

I haven't kept up with the case lately... but I worked at a comic book store at the time


**
gr i messed up the link

***
ok i just re-read the article and it isn't exactly on topic.

****
I'm shutting up now.

:/

 

[lavender]

 

[sexy-girl]

not sure if it is relevant but lewis carroll was a child photographer and took pictures of children including nudes with families permission

i guess that is the other side of the coin with someone doing that and it being looked as acceptable

 

[Jimi]

Re: John Robin Sharpe....

Don't know if you know about this guy Lavy....This has been going on since 1999....

YUCK!!!

 

[lavender]

 

[Mrs Christophe]

i think most of us would be considered guilty, i of course have a picture of my son, strark naked well of course he does have a sailor hat on. i plan on using it when he gets married, give it to his future wife.... i never thought of it as pornography....it is my son and it was taken because i love him............ew, not anything sexual that is just gross..... i can't believe some people....now i have found out that all shots, even newborns cannot have a bathtub shot...no butt shots even.....just because of all the perves in the world.....sad world out here.

 

[Ice Princess]

Lavender, do you remember a couple of years ago how the state of Oklahoma decided that Volker Schlondorff's film adaptation of Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum was child pornography? If I remember rightly they pulled all the films off the shelves in the video stores and tracked down people who had rented copies and there was quite a bit of publicity, not to mention a lengthy legal wrangle.

 

[lavender]

 

[zipman]

I'm not sure if this is off-topic or not

But I remember reading about a whole debate that has been going on about the use of digitally created images of child pornography and whether or not people could be prosecuted for them if real children weren't used.

I'm not sure how it ended up, but I believe it was deemed to be child pornography.

 

[lavender]

Re: I'm not sure if this is off-topic or not

 

[glamorilla]

a series of calvin klein ads were pulled from television and billboards as all sorts of parental groups petitioned the images as child~pornography circa 1995 (dates are always fuzzy)

the ads were set in a psuedo~seventies inspired seedy basement and and featured young models performing an audition to an older voice asking him/her various questions from the mundane to the suggestive.

the interviewer would ask questions like "what do you want to be when you grow up?" in one commercial and "that's a nice blouse...could you undo the top button?"

 

[Ice Princess]

Yeah, Calvin Klein created a big fuss with that campaign and with the one that came a year or two afterwards when he started selling children's underwear. If any other clothing company or designer had put up billboards with similar pictures, it probably wouldn't have raised an eyebrow, but since Calvin Klein has this reputation for using sex to sell his stuff, people took one look at the pictures and felt uncomfortable. I think that campaign was in 1999 or thereabouts and that he finally took the billboards in Times Square down (but hey, by the time he took them down, he'd gotten all the extra publicity he wanted for his designs during fashion week, so what the hell?).

 

[Pyper]

Oh crap, a few years ago at my university there was a big to-do over a professional photographer exhibited here that had taken pictures of naked children. He defended himself by saying that the pictures were not meant to have sexual overtones, but were rather art in the way that many photos of nude adults are art. He claimed that he was only exploring the human form.

Unfortunately, I can't remember his name or how the whole thing turned out. I'll try to find it for you, lavy.

 

[Pyper]

Hmm, still haven't found the guy I'm thinking about, but this is an interesting article on art and child pornography through the ages:

http://www.robertatkins.net/beta/witness/culture/censorship/naked.html

 

[lavender]

 

[Rhys]

I know many of you keep up with the news and various tidbits about the First Amendment.

Have any of you heard of artists whose work has been questioned based on the idea that it was child pornography?

I know that there was a suit against Barnes & Noble in a few states because they were selling the pictures by 2 artists who have works displayed at the Met.

I know that the Jeremy Irons remake of Lolita took a year to find a studio that would produce the show for fears that it would have no First Amendment protection.

I know that many mothers, fathers and grandparents, have been arrested for rather innocuous photos, that are just traditionally candid shots of their children - because police and prosecutors believed the images were pornographic.

Do you have any stories such as these? Do you know people this has implicated? Do you know of any movies, books, pictures, etc. that have raised these questions?

I know that the Court has cited Romeo and Juliet, American Beauty and Traffic as examples of what current works with literary or artistic merit may fall within child pornography statutes. Can you think of any others?

Thanks in advance.

Lavy

There was a big stink in Oklahoma a few years back about the Tin Drum. The Library system was allowing copies to be checked out and some right wing religious group started a campaign to have all copies confiscated. They went so far as to get copies that were available from Blockbuster pulled from the shelves. Now, here's where it gets a little weird. Apparently, they were so angered by the Tin Drum, they were able to get the police department to pull Blockbuster's records. Everyone who had a tape still in their possession was arrested for possession of child pornography.
The NAACP got involved, because one of the people arrested, just happend to be a rather well known NAACP advocate.

Ugly situation.

 

[Rhys]

Whoops should have read Ice Princesses post...