sapphi_snake said:
Regardign the first half of your post: paedophilia is sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children, however if for some reason a person hadn't developed properly and looked pre-pubescent at 18, there would be no legal problem. The person who would be attracted to such an individual would still be a pedophile though, but paedophilia is not a crime, child sexual abuse is (and there are no children invloved). The examples with people being tunred into children and other fantasy stuff are just ridiculous. Regarding the second part of your post: It's quite simple to determine whether something has artistic value or not. Works of art have several levels of meaning, because an artist uses the art medium as a sort of language to send a message. The most basic level of meaning can be called "denotative" and reffers to the basic things portrayed (for example two people having sex), the thing that you see and that anyone can realize. In a word of art there will be deeper meanings, not just he basic thing you see, however if there are no deeper meanings, and what you see is all that the articular work has to offer, then it is not art (for example in the case of porn, you'll just see two people having sex, with no deeper message present). Most people cannot interpret art, and they're stuck at the most basic superficial level. A person will see sexual perversion in works that are actually pieces of social criticism (like Sade's works), because they cannot see part the dennotative level. I've noticed though that there's another bran of people who cannot really interpret art, but who take the opposite stance: they see art in everything, thus they elevate even things like porn to that status, and they take an extreme relativist position ("oh, but who can say what is are and what isn't?"). Regarding drawings, use Erwin Panofsky's iconological method. If you can interpret lolicon beyong the pre-icnonographic level, then you have yourself an actual work of art. If no... well, then it's just porn... child porn to be exact. (note, portraying children in sexual scenarios is illegal, even if we're dealing with a genuen work of art).
P.S.: Welcome to the site! |
The first part of my post was meant to highlight the differences between a drawing and an actual image of a pre-pubescent human, which I don't see acknowledged in your post. The reason why I did this was to show how many of the concepts regarding paedophilia that you're arguing about don't really apply when it comes to drawings, as their origin, discussion, purpose and execution is based on actual humans, not fictional characters. Not only that, but as I mentioned before there's no evidence (at least, that I know of) that proves that lolicon and real child pornography have the same effect on paedophiles, so you can't assume there's a link between being sexually aroused by a lolicon drawing and the actual thing. Even a person that can't perceive the difference between reality and fiction (what you argue that is a characteristic of all paedophiles) might see lolicon and actual child pornography as different things. Until there's conclusive evidence of lolicon having exactly the same effect from a mental perspective as real child pornography (and therefore, being able to prove that someone is a paedophile by being aroused by it, as you claim) compared to "regular" pornography (drawn or real), I believe there's enough reasonable doubt to not assume the person is a paedophile. In addition, while the fantasy example I used was indeed an extreme, the point still remains, which was basically that in a fictional world, fictional rules apply (no "cherrypicking" !). You can't prove that a character that doesn't exist has a certain age and many lolicon images have inconsistent or ambiguous body proportions which make their nonexistent biological "age" to be subject to interpretation.
Also, regarding your example about a paedophile, I urge you to consider that the biological process of our bodies is not "black or white", nor is our perception of them. In order to prove that a person is a paedophile you have to be certain that the person is only sexually attracted to pre-pubescent individuals and not cases in between that are rather ambiguous, just like in your example. Surely an 18-year old person has at least some traces of their age, even if it looks mostly pre-pubescent, not to mention the fact that the whole concept of choosing 18 as the age of consent is predicated on the notion that any individual at that age should be ready (from a biological point of view) to engage in a sexual relationship.
As far as evaluating whether something is art or not, I'll have to respectfully disagree, again. While I admit that I'm certainly unqualified (AKA a complete ignorant...) to discuss the definition of art, I do know that... there's not one definition of art. There's just many, many, many (a lot) of definitions by "experts" or "erudites" through time and their subsequent discussions of them, including varied perspectives/points of view, which is logical to assume that are affected by the overall views of the respective culture and time. With this in mind, there's indeed some definitions that are much broader than others and I would go with those because of their capacity to encompass different perspectives about a concept so fundamental to all cultures. Like for example, Britannica Online's definition: "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others", which is available on Wikipedia.
Personally, I consider the idea that only those that can "interpret" (in a specific form, like what you described) art are able to recognize its value to be pure elitism. Yes, artistic value always depends on interpretation, but that interpretation is not subject to any particular process, cultural view (including moral views, of course) or school of thought. While a certain knowledge might be required to understand some artistic elements from the creator's point of view or its process, the overall value of the work doesn't depend on it. In fact, what can be considered meaningful by an individual could be considered irrelevant for another and someone might even discover new elements of the work or have a different perspective than what it was intended by its creator. I would even argue that interpreting art doesn't have to be a purely rational exercise like you are proposing.
Besides, even with your interpretation of art, we would have to analyse porn, lolicon or other hentai works on a case by case basis in order to determine whether it qualifies as art or not, instead of just assuming that everything that's labeled as "porn" is devoided of artistic value like you were doing.
Regarding drawings, use Erwin Panofsky's iconological method.
From what I saw on Wikipedia his ideas seem to be about understanding art to different degrees, not defining/identifying it. Nevertheless, his views would still be opinions, no matter how knowledgeable or respected are. Art is not a science, nor it should be. For the record, I'm not arguing against his views, just claiming that they're not the only valid ones.
(note, portraying children in sexual scenarios is illegal, even if we're dealing with a genuen work of art).
Yes, although cases like Lewis Carroll's photographs are quite arguable as nudity alone is not necessarily sexual... (and assuming parent consent was given, even if this is also arguable in itself) But I don't have a conclusive opinion about that so I can't argue in favor or against it.
PS: Thanks for the welcome. ^_^
