A moral panic over sex gripped Australia this week. And like a wooden doll with a wobbly head our Charlie Brown PM was – as always – at the ready with something earnest to say.
On Thursday Kevin Rudd was demanding a full investigation into just what Tania Zaetta had been up to with his troops. (Yes, it was all about Tania – she was the one named and shamed, not the troops.)
Then by Friday he was waxing lyrical about the work of one of Australia’s most highly regarded photographers, saying his art was ”absolutely revolting”. In response to Bill Henson’s artful depiction of puberty, Rudd said, ”I have a very deep view of this. For God’s sake, let’s just allow kids to be kids.”
Just when it would be best if the PM left God out of it, he can’t.
With his godly appeal he seems to think he’s got all fair and sensible citizens on his side. But he doesn’t.
In an extraordinary scene with overtones of a bygone era, some burly members of the NSW constabulary closed down an exhibition of Henson’s latest work at a gallery in Paddington, just before it was due to officially open. Those left standing outside in the cold were no doubt wondering if the locked door and the police presence was some kind of joke. It wasn’t.
The Henson works are under police guard and the gallery’s website has been shut down, presumably by big brother. Apparently police want to interview a 13-year-old girl who posed nude for Henson. And they want to speak with her parents.
Henson’s work has been exhibited around the world, including at the Guggenheim in New York, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Venice Biennale and he’s represented in a number of major collections, including the National Gallery of Australia. The artful chiaroscuro of his images are prized for their erotic charge; as is the artist’s fascination with that transitional moment of puberty before sexual awakening. Love or hate his work, there is no denying Henson’s skilful mastery of his medium. And no denying too that his work is not to everyone’s liking.
It’s been a while since Australia has enjoyed a public stoush about censorship and ”What is art” So we’re perhaps due for one. But why now? And why this? Particularly when his photography has been using pubescent children in controversial poses for a long time.
Professor Joanna Mendelssohn, of the University of NSW, said on the ABC yesterday that she’d seen Henson exhibit works 10 years ago that were ”remarkably similar” to the stuff that was banned this week, but then there was ”not a peep, not a murmur”. Again I ask, why now?
And why the hysteria this week over the antics of Zaetta, when she was in fact employed by the Government to flirt with the troops? She wasn’t chosen by the Australian Defence Force to go on an entertainment ”tour of duty” for her acting or singing skills. Surely she was chosen to add a bit of glamour and to sex-up an otherwise drab scene, which by all accounts she did very well. But if a few of those in uniform allowed their hungry libidos to overwork their imaginations, why should anyone be shocked or surprised at that? What’s more, why is she made out to be the whore in this scandal, with a massive media focus on her scantily clad snaps?
Zaetta has strenuously protested her innocence. She says she didn’t have sex with any of the troops and that the charge against her is ”the most ridiculous story I’ve ever heard”. Unfortunately, her protest of innocence is heard as little more than a squeal.
When the ADF investigation finds Zaetta is telling the truth, it will be too late. The damage is done. Her reputation is now sodden with sluttish overtones, thanks to a massive black hole in the ADF’s ethics department. The story that has made her a household name overnight is all about ”did she or didn’t she”? Why isn’t anyone publishing photos of various soldiers and shouting, ”Did they or didn’t they?” Certainly the ADF will examine how this nonsense was leaked. But much more important is why was it leaked, and why was she named, when none of the troops were? Why play a game of ”out the vixen” and ignore the hounds?
Why did the author of the ”hot issues” brief make a startling accusation against a woman and her reputation, and not bother to include the identities of the ADF men allegedly involved?
There is no single answer to all these questions. But I have an uneasy suspicion that a newly energised and dictatorial morality is creeping into public and political spaces – where it doesn’t belong.
Amid increasingly overt sexualised images of women and children in pop culture and advertising media, the emerging response is to clamp down. In the backlash against such omnipresent sexualisation, women are the key target. And to purge our community of what seems like a sexual onslaught, women are being polarised into two categories: either ”whore” or ‘God’s police”, as Anne Summers once put it.
Tania Zaetta has been thrust into the ”whore” category before she’s had a chance to defend herself. She was a ripe target, at a time when a social undercurrent is calling for some sort of moral purging.
It’s this climate of clampdown that has also resulted in the sudden censorship of Bill Henson’s work, even though the same style of photographs have passed mostly unnoticed in recent years.
The trouble with this kind of moral panic is that it spreads quickly, like a virus. One needs to be vigilant not to catch it.
