The more we exclaim how horrified we are by child molestation, the more we can permit ourselves to linger, in a way that's not far from lascivious, over images of childish bodies [...]
Da was once talking to me about cycles, and the way that society goes through phases of alternate prudery and promiscuity through the years. Victorian prudery went hand in hand with a love of mawkish sentimentality, penny dreadfuls, morbid fascination with the sordid. Then came the Land Girls of the war, followed by the prim moral codes of the 50s which were exploded by the liberated 60s and the feminist 80s. I didn't really believe Da when he said that society could well come full circle and become prudish again, but I think he's right. "Political correctness gone bonkers" is to the 2000s what sushi was to the 80s. I really think this fascination with child abuse is fairly recent, and indicative of a circuit completed.
Dead interesting article: http://slate.msn.com/id/3144/
Extract (James Kinkaid studies)
The more we exclaim how horrified we are by child molestation, the more we can permit ourselves to linger, in a way that's not far from lascivious, over images of childish bodies [...] Talking about abuse not only permits guiltless voyeurism - it also gives shape to inchoate feelings of childhood hurt, it tells us why we are the way we are and gives us someone to blame, and it deflects a sense of cultural or moral decline onto a group of particular individuals [...] "Eroticizing exists in symbiotic relation with sanitizing, and the veiling and the exposing exist in an encircling doublespeak."
"Flowers in the Attic" by Virginia Andrews
"The Little Matchgirl" by Hans Christian Andersen and Edward Gorey's "Hapless Child"
Margaret Keane & co, Big-Eyed Art