DEADMAN TURNER12 July 2008:
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It’s been quite a while since I made an entry here. Among other reasons, I’ve been quite unwell for much of the time. A partial list of some recent musical uploads can be found at the Deadman home-page.
Art, Nudes and DeviantsI provide below some words to a little rap I wrote following the recent outcry over pictures of naked, young girls in art galleries and on the covers of arty magazines. As you’ll see below, the hysterical response from the Australian Prime Minister, and the like, seems to provide a tenue labrum cunei—a thin edge of the wedge—, whereby prigs, prudes, puritans and nanny-staters try to control all aspects of erotic behaviour. Not only do I suggest that one man’s heat is another man’s frisson, or, in other words, what some bloke think be really hot, another cove would argue not, but I apprehend that some pious, self-appointed protectors of innocence have a warped and misanthropic view of human sexuality. I may yet record this one of these days; until, then, imagine for yourself, if you like, a sttandard rap rhythm whereupon you can chant the words yourself. (The stress is iambic throughout, by the way—thus, for instance, a line below should be stressed “ought we to ban each cat- a- logue”.) You’ll notice, I hope, that in my rap you’ll find no sexist or racialist calumniation, contumely or self-aggrandizement. or de gustibus non est disputandum Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
I.ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse'st. (Catullus, C. xvi, 5-6.) “Frankly, I can’t stand this stuff.” (Kevin Rudd) There is no image pure and chaste that won’t find some perverted taste: some men may tremble at those sights of lissome lasses in their whites, and some derive the keenest joy from pictures of a well-dressed boy; some welcome junk-mail with a grin who favour photographs therein, and, shunning models, others stare at images of underwear. Ought we to ban each catalogue which might set even one agog, and should we censor magazines. which could be used for carnal means? Thus, if we prove a paedophile has found some joy in Country Style, and often reads, with foul intent, say, Inside Film or Monument, the Lancet, Mad, the Village Voice, Get Up and Go, Computer Choice, perhaps some quarterly reviews or Australasian Transport News, Down Under Quilts or Marie Claire, ought we to burn them then and there? II. Some folk would censor views of skin in case someone be led to sin, insisting children be unseen until the age of, say, nineteen unless they be completely dressed in what some imam might suggest. Now I, for one, should think it mad to care too much how we are clad and freely own that I’d not care if nearby females wandered bare. (Yes, female nudes are fine by me from, say, thirteen to forty-three— acknowledging that some look fine well past the age of forty-nine.) But I digress. The point I make is this: that if an artist take a picture of a willing lass it should not lead to some crevasse in public structures and laments of how our bodies cause offence. We really should not let some prudes promote such killjoy attitudes. If we ban nudes, then what is next? First goes the picture, then the text. III. Investigations could be made into the literary trade. Some paraphiliacs, we’re told are drawn to many tales of old in Ovid, Homer and, of course, in Vergil, with the wooden horse, and other poets, now obscure, who evidently were not pure. How Zeus appeared to Danaë appeals to urophiles they say; the zoöphiliacs enjoy the myth of how a smart decoy enabled Pasiphaë’s plan to be a taurine courtesan; Catullus’ Carmen 63— oh, keep that fury far from me— has been, bizarrely, known to please men wanting orchidectomies; some epigrams of Martial, too, attract a certain, cultured few; and scholars find depravity inside the Greek Anthology: go read therein* and you might pale at what the poets dared retail. * In some editions of that work translators felt obliged to shirk the task of giving English form to practices outside the norm; they chose instead to put the Greek in Latin, to protect the meek. IV. Like charity, the paederast begins at home; from first to last he tries to find an easy prey and rarely (the statistics say) will venture from his comfort zone; and yet the media intone that careful parents ought to fear the ugly stranger, not those near. A naked picture of a child will lead to—what? A man go wild? No, what they often fear he’ll do, I think, is sin-by-hand thereto; but wherefore modes of private fun would need concern another one (unless a child were harmed, of course, or had been photographed by force) is not so clear to me. Indeed, the goads to yearning, spurs of need, are manifold and passing strange, and there is clearly quite a range of ordinary things which might, to some, bestow a great delight though leaving others unimpressed. Some folk esteem old footwear best, and some will even get their rocks off with a pair of cotton socks, and, as I said before, some stare at photographs of underwear. … De gustibus, then, I conclude, they should not be contemned as rude.† V. The ones whom you call sick might view as perverts those who act like you; if you yourself want liberty, you must allow the same for me. © 2008 |
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6 August 2008:
peddlophilia