God, this makes me sick. Is there no end to the irrationality of humans and the legal system?
If somebody gets in your face and is crazy, you can brush it off. But when it gets into the legal system and puts people in jail and so forth, it's no longer funny.
As Neil Gaiman puts it:
"The ability to distinguish between fiction and reality is, I think, an important indicator of sanity, perhaps the most important. And it looks like the Australian legal system has failed on that score."
Indeed.
On a different subject (?) I think if the famous Wally Wood poster had been published today, Disney would probably try (and succeed) in outlawing it. After all, while it's clearly satire, it could be argued that it is both a copyright breach and defamation of character.
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Changing subject again, that Wally Wood sure could draw.
And new subject again, I found this while searching for the poster... super-risque!
... And again... does anybody know her?
Strangely, she turned up on this search, but not on google itself, so I can't find the page. (And now she's gone again on GIR, so weird.)Leviathud helps out: she is Jojo.
It can't be a coincidence that the more taboo teenage sexuality is made, the younger do the highly sexualized pop idols become...
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More updates: of course there were times within living memory when censorship was much tighter yet.
Excerpt from comment by Pascal:
- I'd be the first to stand up for protecting children from molestation. But imaginary minors?? Isn't there any REAL crime with nasty consequences that takes priority?
- As the Wikipedia article I've cited mentions, there is no objective evidence that "virtual underage porn" endangers real children, and evidence seems to indicate THE EXACT OPPOSITE. Just like legalizing adult porn disintegrated 1/3 to 2/3 of sex crimes.
- Anything that helps prevent real harm to real children, I'll immediately support as a principle, no matter how sickening it could be considered. That would include providing photo-realistic CGI porn depicting raped babies, if it were proven to have a calming effect on a sicko's pulsions and preventing REAL aggressions. As a doctor, I'm trained to overcome the vomiting reflex, especially when stoicism helps human beings in some way or another. Have you ever seen a surgical operation? You get used to it...
- The argument of "immoral" or "sickening" in itself is not only fallacious, it is scarily fascist.
23 comments:
There's a huge difference between the Wally Wood poster and depicting the Simpsons family that way. While I don't agree with the judicial decision, whoever it is that drew it is a sick fuck.
This is pretty bizarre, especially since it's Australia. If it had happened in the good ol' U.S. of A I don't think any of us would be the least bit surprised. Australia I thought was a bit more relaxed and a bit more like Europe maybe.
"There's a huge difference between the Wally Wood poster and depicting the Simpsons family that way."
Um... What difference would that be, again? Because honestly I'm not seeing it.
Very detailed section about legal status in various countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon
"There's a huge difference between the Wally Wood poster and depicting the Simpsons family that way."
Still, point in case, it's a cartoon, not a child.
I just remembered the modern Addams Family movies (I'm a huge fan). I hope the judge never sees what goes on with Wednesday and Puxley. Surely, sitting your brother in an electric chair, or throwing your baby brother from the roof can’t be much better than porn, and these characters are not even cartoons!
I agree, those movies were excellent.
It's a funny thing, there is this mental disconnect in the world at the moment where depiction of any kind of violence is legal, so long as there's no sex involved.
A movie with brutal torture of a minor would be legal, but any kind of sexual depiction, even consensual, there'd be big trouble.
What particular Wally Wood work is that drawing from?
I believe it's from the semi-erotic strip Sally Forth.
So now I'm worried about some things I've watched. "Children of the twilight" is a French film which I started watching out of curiosity, but saw through as train wreck TV. It looks at boarding school girls and their ways.
Also seeing Prosperos Books, a fine Shakespear film, some of the nudes in that must surely be of tender age, though nothing sexual happens how safe is that to see/own? Indeed Greenaway discusses child abuse in Drowning by Numbers.
I'll only start worrying if they ever pull David Hamilton and Jock Sturges books from bookstores.
Re. the boy in Orlando: that "doll" is clearly anorexic. Risqué, indeed! Aren't you feeling ashamed of yourself for showing her, Mister Stobblehouse?
The teen lolita looks a bit like Lindsay Lohan. But I don't think that's her.
Neil Gaiman said it right. I have a few(!) comments to add. Okay, so maybe a tad more than a few:
- I'd be the first to stand up for protecting children from molestation. But imaginary minors??? Isn't there any REAL crime with nasty consequences that takes priority?
- As the Wikipedia article I've cited mentions, there is no objective evidence that "virtual underage porn" endangers real children, and evidence seems to indicate THE EXACT OPPOSITE. Just like legalizing adult porn disintegrated 1/3 to 2/3 of sex crimes.
- Anything that helps prevent real harm to real children, I'll immediately support as a principle, no matter how sickening it could be considered. That would include providing photo-realistic CGI porn depicting raped babies, if it were proven to have a calming effect on a sicko's pulsions and preventing REAL aggressions. As a doctor, I'm trained to overcome the vomiting reflex, especially when stoicism helps human beings in some way or another. Have you ever seen a surgical operation? You get used to it...
- The argument of "immoral" or "sickening" in itself is not only fallacious, it is scarily fascist. The second we start outlawing things that we dislike for ANY reason, things that do not directly harm anybody, Pandora's box is fornicated wide open, and out squirts the pus of liberties oppression. How many people would dare defend brocoli with liver as something "not revolting"? Yet nobody will make a law! "Please, think of the children."
- These laws are already very worrying from the immediate potential applications. Such laws (in the USA, for instance) declare that one's a rapist of minors, the second a legal-age adult pretends to imitate an underage person, even imaginary. So, if you commit the fatal mistake of grunting "who's your daddy?" during a session of passionate sex, WHAM! your goose hatchling is cooked. A good half of all fantasy kinky sex between consensual adults can immediately be outlawed, and with such radical intimidation as the threat of legally taking your children away for ever, while sending you in prison under charges that are likely to get you lynched by other inmates. If that's not State bullying, what is?
Oh, I forgot: these concessions to our individual liberties will help us catch Osama and Zarqawi!
The mad people have taken control of the world.
I am reminded of the social movement that happened in France when the legal status of abortion was discussed and it ultimately got legalized. A large number of doctors, together, publicly declared that they had performed abortions, and under the current law they were considered as murderers.
This isn't really different: in the face of hypocrisy and insanity, we sane and free citizens must unite and deliberately challenge the iniquitous laws with civil disobedience.
Remember when being a "nigger" made you an outlaw, especially if you dared sit on the bus?
I believe my attitude is fully coherent. I'm fundamentally against violence, of any sort. Assaulting real-life children is an intolerable violence. And so is criminalizing the fantasies of some people who aren't being violent to anyone (except maybe consenting S&M adults!).
In Lebanon, I know only too well what violence the Government, or any de facto power, can impose. This is a country where porn is outlawed, yet the internet isn't filtered (thank Allah for small mercies!), where mildly erotic magazines like Playboy are sold under an opaque wrapping "exclusively and strictly to adults", and where some "women" are married and become mothers before they reach the age of nine years. I've seen one on TV. Live.
This is a country where anybody has the democratic right to call a political figure by the most abominable names... provided said anybody is a member of an armed militant movement supporting another influential politician. A country where the wants of the powerful automatically, and literally, become law. Because they vote laws for it.
A country where the best means to have some resemblance of freedom remains the general anarchy. Driving on our roads would make an awesome and thrilling videogame!
Oh, and I have a very interesting legal counter-argument for that judge: what REAL age are the Simpsons children? They never "age" in aspect, but they've been around since 1987. So, I'm argumenting that Lisa Simpson is actually of very "legal" age, according to officially documented evidence! Her "initial" age notwithstanding, she's over 21 today. Yo.
When I was 15 in high school, I made several X-rated drawings, and they were the hottest stuff I could procure at the time. Was I technically exposing a minor -myself- to pornography?
And what about consensual sex with myself, for years before that?
My, the conundrum possibilities are endless. How come then I don't find any of this funny???
):-P
Alfred Korzybski created "General Semantics" in the early part of the 20th Century, in part, to help us clarify our thinking and, help us separate our emotional reactions from the reaction to symbols to more a reaction to reality. (This is a gross simplification.) He said "the map is not the territory." That is, the symbol or words used to describe something are not the thing itself.
Thus, a drawing is not a person. It is not sane to treat it emotionally (or legally) as if it were.
Sadly, his teachings seem to be ignored today.
FYI: the anybody know her girl is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JoJo_(singer)
my webfu is strong.
Ah, thanks.
It can't be a coincidence that the more taboo teenage sexuality becomes, the younger do the highly sexualized pop idols become...
I'd love to see an angry mob of concerned citizens rush on that judge's home, "arrest" him and search his home for "contraband" photos (maybe of his own children nude in the bath or running nude through the garden) and "contraband" videos such a cartoons where cartoon characters are killed (snuff movies!) and punish him for being in possession of such "contraband". I'm so sick of the so-called authorities fear mongering and bullying the citizens with this crap, and I think it's high time a jolly good lynching is carried out on some of these "authority figures" to send a firm message to the rest of them to back the hell off. It's not like they listen to us when we voice our opinion in forums or through referenda, so violent retribution is the only way to make them take notice.
They never "age" in aspect, but they've been around since 1987.
1989. The first episode was a Christmas special. The first season really began in 1990. Lisa would be 26, Bart 28. (Oddly, the show isn't clear on how old Marge and Homer are. Homer was 36 at one point, 38 later on.) They did an episode called "Behind the Laughter" and said that the kids were force fed drugs to stunt their growth.
Case in point: this site is dedicated to Lolicon, and this particular story features the authors themselves:
"Days of Palcomics"
WARNING : about as NSFW as an AlQaeda pamphlet! Maybe even worse.
In this story, especially clear in the page I linked to, the site's team members and fans, all adults, are each portrayed by their fantasy avatar, and about to engage in a VERY explicit imaginary roleplay orgy of infantilism, furry, and borderline bestiality. According to the law in many anglo-saxon countries, such fantasy about adults being "children", when put in graphic form, becomes an official crime, and labels you as equivalent to a child predator deserving hard time.
I like Bruce's contribution a lot. I read Van Vogt's null-A trilogy many years ago, and unlike many of its critics, I was essentially enthusiastic about the "sanity training for all" aspect, not the "superhuman abilities". Although, I have to admit, Gosseyn's power was cool-to-death too.
Somehow, the principle of General Semantics seduced me irresistibly, at a very young age. (Uhm... this is not the way it sounds!!!)
I felt that such a training of the mind should be made mandatory in schools.
But who am I kidding? No politician could tolerate such a blasphemy against the Most Holy Rules of Manipulation of the Masses! Not to mention the Religions.
Leviathud said...
"My webfu is strong."
Indeed it is, oh venerable geezer.
Eolake insinuated...
"It can't be a coincidence that the more taboo teenage sexuality becomes, the younger do the highly sexualized pop idols become..."
NOOOO!!!! You think??? :-(
Remember that Gospel saying, "Judge not, that ye be not judged"?
Well, the original language version (Arabic is much closer to the source Aramaic than King James' old English) can in one formulation be understood otherwise: "The way thou judged, so shalt thou be judged". Possibly meaning, that the judgemental standards that one lobs at the world may one day (Judgement Day?) come back to bite them in the visage. Suggesting that according to Jesus himself, the understanding and lenient people shall themselves fairly earn similar treatment, and so shall bilious gossiping hypocrite bigots.
But what do bigots know about Jesus?...
Seems to me like those "very straight" moralists condemning virtual fantasy are not just assessing what perverts might be thinking and feeling. Methinks they sound frighteningly as if they, themselves, had an identical way of thinking. As if themselves, they too immediately viewed a naked child as something sexual and intensely tempting to anybody, "nudity is sin"!
I have a little child being potty-trained at home right now. Am I abnormal for just finding that often naked child cute, and asexual? They seem to want and make me feel weird, like I'm some bizarre freak, because to me the main sexual excitant is another person's desire. And I know that children are devoid of sexual desire. Even teens at puberty, they have an awakening sexual drive, but they don't know yet what desire really is, they need to learn it during these formative years.
Unless some rigid-asses decree that you must remain pristinely ignorant until you turn 18 (or 21), and experiment nothing until you are married, and even then all top-hush-hush and in secret between the two of you. In the dark. Yes, I'm sure THIS will make for marital happiness and (pardon the obscene notion) sexual fulfillment.
It's a conspiracy, a genuine one, from sexually repressed people, the same who are notoriously involved in far more numerous "moral" scandal affairs than others, to try and FORCE their schizophrenic paranoia on others, on the whole world. Very interesting, psychoanalytically. Their whole core conception of God and the Parents (which are symbolically the same notion) is that of an abominable vengeful tyrant that swears all this terrifying cruelty is done in the name of Absolute Love.
These people have a very worrying conception of Love itself.
We always judge outwards in a manner that mirrors our perception of ourselves. The balanced are relaxed, understanding, forgiving, laid bak. The anguished spread fire-and-brimstone hammering fear thicker than mayonnaise on a New York hot-dog.
If the tiniest bit of rational sense was applied to lawmaking, instead of anti-Korzybskian emotional brainwashing, such absurdities would never happen.
Kiwi Henry's right. Odds are heavily in favor of that rigid-as-cast-iron judge having very repugnant skeletons in his own closets. The kind that are so naked, they even stripped from their skin and flesh!
Classic distraction tactics: keep 'em too busy hunting scapegoats to get curious about what's lurking right next door. How many times does a leading figure of frantic morality campaigns have to get caught with their pants down, hitting on men in gay meeting places, hiring underage hookers, using child porn (or the real kind), before people stop believing their "do as I say don't do as I do, Jesus he knows me" shtick?
The ogre from the fairy tales? It's the child molester, that lives right among us, seemingly as normal in appearence as you and I, until hunger strikes. Same for the werewolf, except that one is symbol of serial killers.
I intimately dislike violence (I've already said that on this thread), but it has already started. Without angry citizen mobs. Violence against normal-minded citizens, to intimidate them into obeying the psychosis of those who have or covet power and world domination. What is, I ask you, the fundamental difference between such intimidation methods and an Osama BinLaden, planting bombs against random innocents to demand that the whole world converts to Islam, dismantles Israel, and appoints holy him as planetary Caliph? I see none.
Censorship of classic art at a very official level has already started. Oh, please, avert your innocent eyes from the Naked Truth!!!
Anon,
According to their Wikipedia article, the Simpsons first appeared on TV in 1987.
[offtopic comment to my comment]
Case in point, point in case... I do get creative with language sometimes, guess my Spanish betrays me :-)
According to their Wikipedia article, the Simpsons first appeared on TV in 1987.
That article says that the original run of the show began in 1989. The Tracy Ullman shorts don't count.
Well, the original language version (Arabic is much closer to the source Aramaic than King James' old English) can in one formulation be understood otherwise: "The way thou judged, so shalt thou be judged".
God is really lazy. You'd think he could do his own authorized version in every language. Call me crazy but that should be within the capability of someone all knowing and all powerful.
Plus I'm okay with being judged by the same standards I judge other people.
Kiwi Henry's right. Odds are heavily in favor of that rigid-as-cast-iron judge having very repugnant skeletons in his own closets.
That might be easier, but it's not actually all that likely. It makes about as much sense as saying that those who favour legalizing marijuana or prostitution only do so because they want to partake themselves. Not that I'm saying I agree with that judge's decision (I don't).
Congrats australia, you now have an actual thought crime! Imagine-
A person, a pencil, a piece of paper.
Person takes pencil and draws nude children on paper.
He/She is now officially a criminal.
Just. Ridiculous.
"The Tracy Ullman shorts don't count."
Hey, they count as far as EXISTING is concerned!
Whose side are you on, anyway? :-P
"Plus I'm okay with being judged by the same standards I judge other people."
Makes you feel glad to be a lazy judge, doesn't it? :-)
Watch out, Anon, you might get prosecuted for a crime equivalent to explaining how to make a bomb!
What was that again? A person, a pencil, and a piece of paper? Nothing else?
I mean, um, er, I just want to make sure I know what to AVOID. Yeah, that's it. [Ahem!]
I still can't understand how Tracy Ullman managed to get another show after "Three of a Kind". Lenny Henry seems to be the only member of that show who survived.
Pascal: Whose side are you on, anyway? :-P
The side of truth, baby, always! :-)
Either way, whether '87 or '89, they'd be above the age of majority. And they're cartoon characters voiced, written, animated, etc. by adults.
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