tardy

If there's one thing that turns me off a blog almost instantly it's a lack of updates. Some blogs go great for ages and ages and then, gradually over time the posts thin out until you almost forget the blog exists at all.

Lately I've notice that my favourite blogs have been posting far more infrequently than previously (one has been updating pretty regularly but the content has become, shall we say. 'crap?'). I can't speak though because I haven't posted here in ages.

There have been a few things I've really wanted to post but I've been up to my liptons with work and stress, with some pretty major stuff going on.

For tonight though, by way of saying hello again, I wanted tell you about a new word I learned tonight. I heard recently on the radio that there is a film festival carrying on somewhere or other highlighting the 70s and 80s Australian films that are, apparently called Ausploitation Films.

Obviously it's ludicrous to compare the pulp films coming out of Australia in the 70s and 80s with the Blacksploitation films of the same era, but, nonetheless that's not what this post is about.

No.

Rather, it's about when I attempted to learn more about this festival with a little Googling by searching for the term, 'Ausploitation'.

To which Google suggested I might mean, 'Assploitation'.

Two new words in one day.

Can you imagine what those films must be like.

Anyway, the term, I now know, is, 'Ozploitation'.

And the manner in which they move in

Both An Onymous Left and Harrangueman have posted on the lynch mob trying to force convicted paedophile Ferguson out of their neighbourhood.

I agree with their sentiments but I wanted to have a quick look at a topic that has been troubling me in relation to this whole thing and perhaps add another level of debate to the issue.

Ignoring for a moment the anti-paedophile rent a lynch mob, it troubles me that the usually apathetic Australian suburbanite seems quite happy to get up and carry a banner for these events. Even on cold nights.

A bit of it, I'm quite sure is about, 'Mothers' showing how much they extra special care for their kids. A lot of it is probably also about not wanting to be seen as the one community who would accept the guy. If every other place has kicked him out then what does it say about the community that lets him move in. But there must be more to it than that, and here is what I suspect it could be all about.

There seems to me to be a general sense of disempowerment in the suburbs. While, to many of us, and I admit I don't live in the suburbs, it often appears that those who do get a disproportionate amount of welfare from the government, they still aren't happy

If we look at the issues that have managed to get the people out of their kitchens and away from the BBQs long enough to protest in the last few years an interesting pattern emerges.

Immigrants coming into/developing the neighbourhood.
Paedophiles moving into the neighbourhood.
State governments permitting new developments in their neighbourhood without consulting or in direct opposition to the locals.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any other issues that are so likely to get the mobs out and shouting. Iraq managed to get a couple of big demonstrations in CBD areas, but they were highly organised and certainly not spontaneous. There are regular protests and demonstrations by, 'pro life' mobs but they are made up of a small segment of a group with a specific axe to grind.

The common factor in all of the issues above is something happening in a neighbourhood that wouldn't be wanted by the people living there already and which the people who live in the area feel it is ok to carry on about, particularly with the first two. And I'm not suggesting for a second that people think of immigrants in the same way they think of paedophiles. It seems to me that what we are seeing here is something of a tantrum about ownership but it goes deeper than that and could even be about the community.

The community is something that was supposed to have been eradicated years ago. Individuality and personal aspirations was supposed to have taken over from any sense of community ownership but, perhaps what we are seeing is an innate human drive to control their immediate community.

I can understand the base human instinct to not want a paedophile moving in next door. Not because the man is likely to abuse my friend's children but because this isn't the sort of bloke I would want living near me, and the fact that he has been moved here by some grey authority from the Government makes it even worse. My common sense tells me the man has to live somewhere, but nonetheless some deep instinct within me screams that I want to choose who moves into my neighbourhood and, bloody hell, the manner in which they move in. But, then the brain kicks in again and I figure they have to live somewhere and I've got more important things to worry about.

But I'm an empowered person. I have money, property and assets, I am educated and am personal friends with two mayors and a number of MPs, I know that my opinions count and that I have a level, even if only a fairly small one, of control over the destiny of my community. Very little threatens me and, frankly I like immigrants if only because they bring money into the community and a whole new sales potential.

If I had none of the above and felt totally disempowered and that my lifestyle or environment could be changed at any moment at the whim of the governments, without consulting with me and making it clear that they don't care what I say or think about the matter then I would feel threatened I am quite sure.

One of the bizarre ironies I have noticed is that in the main town I have businesses in there are two or three known convicted paedophiles living in the community. There has never been a big outcry against these men and for a long time I wondered if the town itself was an aberration. All of these men, however originated in the town and when, a little while back now the state government made it clear that they were looking at moving a convicted paedophile to the area who had previously lived elsewhere there was a quick backlash.

In the end the man in question said he wasn't interested in living here anyway and so we will never know how much trouble the locals would have caused.

I should note, at this point that I don't know who the paedophiles in the community are, and I have no particular interest in knowing. Also, I can write only based on information regarded as common local knowledge, and that common local knowledge, in my experience very often stinks.

Nonetheless, it seems likely to me that a lot of what we are seeing is a general backlash against the governments forcing upon a community something that the community doesn't want. While I'm sure that people can't stand paedophiles, I am repulsed by them, I wonder how much of the outcry about men such as Ferguson is also about the lack of ownership people have over their own communities destiny.

If I am right then a way to begin minimising the mobs that appear to hound these men from their homes could be to bring in policies that help empower communities in other ways.

If that doesn't work then we have to consider other options. A national public register obviously isn't an answer because it will simply make it easier for the shock jocks to work out where to send the mobs. Obviously there is a problem here with community expectations on what should be done with paedophiles and what actually is done with them. He is one of the few paedophiles who seems to have a genuine potential of re-offending, and it seems to me that he really shouldn't be out on the streets.

However, considering that paedophilia appears to be a growing problem within the community and could even suggest a more fundamental cultural crisis than the individual cases themselves, it seems to me that there is really very little actual understanding of the problem in the community. Perhaps it's time that we took a long hard look at this terrible phenomenon.

The knee jerk attacks against artists such as Henson and Papapetrou and the hounding of known paedophiles by, 'Mothers' isn't reflected in our societies tolerance of the sexualisation of children. That very fact makes me wonder the most whether the lynch mobs have more on their mind than just the protection of their children. While the, 'Mothers' are outside protecting their children by hollering outside Ferguson's house it seems extremely likely, based upon non-scientific polling that their children are at home looking at internet porn and, 'sexting' naked images of themselves on their mobile phones.

And now for something completely different.

The father of the young Olympia Papapetrou, Robert Nelson says the photos were only taken after considerable research into child abuse.

How often do people who own child porn claim they downloaded the stuff for research purposes only? I don't know, but it seems to be a defense I've heard a few times. Just saying.

More importantly, Brendan Nelson says,

"I will be asking the police authorities to investigate whether there is any breach of the law as it stands by the publication of these photographs."

WTF is wrong with guy? I have as much authority to ask the police to investigate these photos as he does. Nobody cares what you think Brendan, go home and shut up.

The set up.

For some reason, best known to themselves, a number (and certainly not all) of artists are absolutely determined that they be allowed to photograph naked children.

The decision to put the naked photo of Papapetrou's, then six year old daughter on the cover of an art magazine is both exploitation and a trick. Exploitation in so much as the magazine obviously hopes to get a fair bit of coverage of the, now fairly old photograph and a trick because the decision to publish the photograph deliberately sets up the public to respond in a particular way and in turn have the rug pulled out from under them.

And so now, from stage left, enters the daughter herself. She's eleven now and is absolutely offended by Rudd's assertions that the image is disgusting. I don't want to say this girl is weird, but she is a bit weird isn't she? And of course she's going to refute Rudd's opinion, to agree would be, in effect saying her mother is a purveyor of dodgy, 'artwork' and can someone please call the child protection services. The point being though, 'see, how can you argue that the thing is bad when the much older girl now agrees with it'.

A completely stupid argument since most of Henson's children were older than 11 anyway.

One commentator at the ABC website summed up how the trick worked by clarifying it nicely in case you had missed the subtlety.

"Now watch the anti-art commentators hit the panic button as they realise half their argument is destroyed. They'll try to say she was forced into making these statements and that she's not mature enough to make these decisions herself. How about giving her some credibility? How about acknowledging that she has no regrets about it? How about acknowledging that her parents may have raised her as a strong willed, semi-independant person? How about admitting no harm has been done whatsoever and just give up your pathetic argument?"

Anyway, load of crap, you can't compare the images of Papapetrou to Henson in a discussion on where the line between child porn and art begins and ends. My understanding is that this is the only image of a naked child in any of Papapetrou's public series, the others being fairly lower end art photographs with plenty of clothes. Importantly there is no undertone of sexuality in the image.

Unlike, of course Henson's work which is almost entirely made up of what appears to be highly charged erotica and naked children in often sexualised scenarios.

The story is, however a lot more effin weird than at first glance.

Recognise this image?


If you are interested in art then at some point you will likely have come across this photo, a far better and earlier version of Papapetrou's work. Papapetrou's image is presumably meant to be something of a homage to Lewis Carol's controversial photograph of the seven year old Beatrice Hatch. The Papapetrou version comes from a series titled, 'Dreamchild' produced in 2003 which includes a number of homages to Carol's works.

While it has often been suggested that Carol may well have been a paedophile there is no definite way of knowing for sure. His photographs, including the example of Ethel Hatch below have been presented as evidence that Carol was a paedophile but, as has been pointed out by many nude images of children in Victorian art were certainly not rare, Christmas cards were often decorated as such and the idea of the naked child seemed to have more to do with innocence and nature than anything seedy.


I don't want to go into the whole story here, but I encourage readers to look it up. It's an interesting example of how confusing the whole art/porn debate can be.

Anyway, here it gets even weirder. Carol's photos have long been assumed to be inspired by Manet's famous, 'Olympia'. Without a little background knowledge the photos appear to have nothing whatsoever in common with the painting. The painting of Olympia, a prostitute was highly controversial at the time, not because of the nudity, hell that was already done to death, but the way the subject stares, almost defiantly directly toward the viewer.


Olympia acknowledges the viewer's thoughts when looking at her body and interacts with the viewer by staring back. Papapetrou has, it would seem deliberately combined two of Carol's photographs, the painting of Beatrice for the pose and the full frontal nude of Ethel for the face, and thus lends indirectly from Olympia's defiant stare by Manet.

So why didn't Papapetrou simply do the Ethel, full frontal version?

It seems likely to me that she wanted to do the photograph, because she is obviously inspired by Carol's work, as evidenced in many of her other photographs including scenes from Alice in Wonderland etc. However she didn't wish to show her daughter or any other child in an obviously sexual way.

Unlike Henson, Papapetrou appreciates that it is wrong to take photographs that exploit the naked child. In another example of her copying Carol's work she has placed clothes on the models where Carol did not, but where if she were not to have done so would have pushed the image into the Henson style.

If the media and people who oppose genuine child exploitation fall for the trap of condemning this image then they will have their argument torn to shreds and it will be very hard for them to take on a future artist. It has to be about more than just attacking any photograph of a naked child, to do so makes any father who has taken a photograph of their child in the bath a suspect.

Papapetrou usually protects the innocence of her models, even this photo doesn't really show much. She is no Henson and shouldn't be used as an example to prove Henson is in the right. The girl and the mother are almost certainly being exploited now however by the artists who do want to use them to help bolster their argument for photographing naked children.

It appears to be simply a strange twist that Papapetrou's daughter is named Olympia.

All this to stop another Chasers stunt?

So, the Popes coming to town and the NSW government has enacted laws making it an offence to offend the Catholics or, indeed the Pope in particular.

"The laws, which operate until the end of July, have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music, critics say."

Luckily I don't live in Sydney because my entire wardrobe contains only t-shirts with anti Catholic slogans.

I mean, seriously this is the first law I have known that is so downright inflammatory I actually wish I was in a position to go and break it. This will just encourage someone to hire a crop duster and drop thousands of condoms on the Papal entourage in direct defiance of this, and presumably other laws. If this is the sort of thing that passes for a law these days then I no longer have any faith in the credibility of any law.

Anyway, it all makes sense when you read this bit.

"EXTRAORDINARY new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for "causing annoyance" to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today."

Hmmm. Strip searches, youth, lots of priests milling around.

If that isn't a recipe for disaster I don't know what is.

Great, but how about an apology?

Nice to see some of the supporters of the Franklin Dam admitting they were wrong on 7.30 report tonight.

Watching the earlier footage when they are almost weeping into their beers as they listen to the High Court decision to uphold the Federal Government decision to block the dam I am reminded how pathetic some of these people really are. One woman weeps bitterly in the footage, angrily spitting out,

"We only just got married and we thought we'd have a good life here but now that they've stopped the dam we've got nothing."

These people genuinely believed it was a good idea! I mean, WTF was wrong with their heads? Others, construction workers in particular I am told, were quite violent and genuinely wanted to hurt the greenies, something we know these pricks are capable of from other similar environmental standoffs. And why have they been moved to admit they were wrong?

"DARRYL GERRITY, WEST COAST MAYOR: When you look at the hydro's efforts on the west coast now, where you see they build a dam and then nobody's there. It's operated from Hobart, there is no workers at the dam, it's not a good employer after the construction period has left"

It's all fine and dandy admitting they were wrong all these years later, now that it's clear they wouldn't have benefited but how about a mother effin apology for trying to push it through in the first place? How about an apology for the threats, the police, the arrests? Yes, so you've got the guts to say you were wrong, now perhaps it's time to say sorry to us. To all of use, and the future generations of people who you tried to screw over for your own personal greed, you owe us all a fucking apology.

What really pisses me off is that the same sort of bullying tactics are used by infant adults all around Australia to this day against progressive and smarter people than themselves. While I haven't seen first hand the retaliations against logging protestors in Victoria and Tasmania (I have heard the stories and seen some footage), I have seen the same sort of dumb hick mentality in many towns whenever the, 'tree hugging hippies' are trying to stop them doing something stupid.

The Franklin Dam near-atrocity should have been the beginning of the end of that sort of mentality. But it's repeated every day in small and big examples. One battle may have been won but the war just continues on.

In the case of the Franklin Dam, yeah, you were wrong, but that's not good enough. Say sorry, you mother fuckers.

Learn to love the chub.

A lot of people are refuting the results that Australia is now a fatter country than the good ol' US of A.

The main observation seems to be that there are some real fat bastards in America. The kind who need to wheel their guts around in trolleys, we don't tend to see so much of that in Australia. So therefore, we aren't really fat at all and can go back to eating KFC like our lives depended on it.

The problem with that theory, to me seems to be that there are degrees of fatness. Certainly the septics might be better at the whole freak of nature fat thing but does that mean we aren't also pretty fat, but in a more understated and not so morbid way? In this case it's a matter of quantity over quantity, so to speak.

Frankly I think the whole issue is a load of crock. A bit of weight can be quite cute, and considering the overwhelming barrage of thinness in the media I think it's a testament to the free thinking nature of so many of us that we don't all end up anorexic.

So, stop worrying and learn to love the fatness.

A young man I know quite well, by the way, swears that men may well choose to be seen with thin women because they think it will make them look like a winner, but that deep inside they would rather a bit of curve.

He also points out that sex with thin women isn't as good as their chubby friends because there's too many, painful sharp edges.

Now I think of it, he's a bit of a prick who likely doesn't have the experience to be able to make such bold statements.