Description : "There is a war over childhood. Both commercial interests and moral conservatives want to control how kids are raised. But who’s actually listening to the kids?"
There is an hypocrisy born of ignorance at the heart of the debate over the naked child in art. Those who condemn some images find others cute. Yet both types have the same origin in classical art.
I haven’t included many images of Cherubs and…
I had put this on the back burner, but a recent article on Polixeni Papapetrou… has prompted me to bring it forward. Polexini is an artist who got into the usual strife over taking nude photos of her daughter Olympia. This was all part of
If one were to step back and look at the current moral panic over sexualisation from some intellectual distance in the future, one would see a series of myths building on each other. The truly shocking thing will be to understand that these myths were…
It’s a publishing phenomenon. It’s erotic fiction. Or is it porn? It’s the tired old distinction. The double standard. If women like it, it’s erotica. If men like it, it’s porn.
Whilst critics like Gail Dines and Melinda Tankard Reist are the most recent to…
Interpreting the cultural memes…
An item on today’s flippant media – South Korea has banned under 18′s from Lady Gaga’s concert. Which triggered one of those superficial ‘shock/horror’ discussions with non-expert experts about sexualisation. And I mean non-expert experts because these people really don’t know…
It’s wet, it’s cold, it doesn’t matter. Not when you get to visit the Musée d’Orsay. Turn a corner and there’s one of your favourites in glorious detail and exquisite colour. Too many to list.
But the one I do want to discuss is L’Origine …
This has hit the media today. I’m appalled. Not at the video, but at the complete over reaction from some sections of the media. Initially I wasn’t interested. It seemed to be just another silly teenage video posted on Youtube. And it is exactly that.…
If only I had thought of this earlier, it might have made things clearer – but I didn’t, so here goes…
The word sexualisation describes a process whereby something that is not ordinarily considered to have a sexual meaning is given a sexual meaning. Regrettably…
I haven’t seen this, but it looks incroyable. Tomboy… tells the story of a girl who decides to masquerade as a boy. The young actress, Zoe Heran, who plays the tomboy Michael, does an extraordinary job and has received high praise.
Of course, given the
Couple of interesting links through FB this week; highly topical. The first is to a Time article about the effects of childhood trauma on brain development. How Child Abuse Primes the Brain for Future Mental Illness.
The aftermath of that trauma could be seen …
Ray is a Melbourne based writer. He has completed two novels and is currently going through the process of getting them published. Read his Biography
A work in progress – and something completely different. A crime novel about cultural and generational clashes. A series of murders in the Melbourne art world. 
Greenfields Site.
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