Hmm - what’s your opinion on Mapplethorpe’s “Rosie” in relation to your comments above?

I’m going to take this contrarian view.  I understand why Tamburlini would want the films destroyed, I really do.  But if history is to see this so-called artist appropriately, I think it’s necessary for the films to survive and be released after Tamburlini’s death.  Otherwise there’s nothing but the rumor of his possible skeevitude to inform how we see Rivers and his value as an artist.  It’s like destroying evidence.

This is kiddie porn, and I’m not sure why we need an archive for it.

But nolo, if Tamburlini has children of her own who survive her, how horrible would it be for them to see film of their mother being sexually exploited as a child by her own father? The world has no overriding need to have this “proof” unless it’s being used in a court of law. Letting the films be seen exploits Tamburlini anew each and every time.

Anyone else reminded here of the Kendra whatshername coercive sex video Amanda posted about a month or two ago?

I’m feeling lucky to have had the dad I had. He may have been an alcoholic but at least there was nothing skeevy or abusive about him.

This reminds me of the story about how when Freud caught his daughter masturbating, he promptly psychoanalyzed her.  This apparently traumatized her enough that she allegedly* remained a virgin her entire life.

*I’m not sure how this is generally known, unless she was upfront/outspoken about it.

Maybe if he had said “I want to do a film as an art piece titled “Growing” that shows the development of young women” it might be easier for people to see it as an art piece?

I see it as child pornography. I’ve always felt I had a pretty open mind about “what is art”, but maybe I don’t.

This is Roman Polanski all over again. The great artiste exception to the child abuse laws.

And by the way, though I have no objection to nudism and I understand that, for instance, photos of nude infants are generally tolerated, I don’t think nudists should be photographing or filming their children either.  Certainly not when they approach and enter into adolescence.

@Dilan and certainly, certainly not in an explicitly sexual way (which this sounds like to me).

I have to agree with @Orange on continuing the abuse. Wanting to see this or at least supporting the viewing of it will not turn it into art. It will however continue the abuse for the individuals involved and their families. You have to remember abuse doesn’t stop when the physical aspects stop. The mental and emotional ramifications often play out on a much larger scale. No one should want to be a part of propagating that.

Let’s get back to the evidence perspective.  Why is proof only worth protecting in a court of law?  The court of public (and artistic) opinion matters too.  That being said, if Tamburlini’s father had been convicted based on the film, the film would be a matter of public record unless the court sealed it, and even in that case there would be the public record of the conviction—a fact Tamburlini’s children would have to live with anyway.  Put another way, if Rivers had been convicted, there would be a public record for all to see (including Tamburlini’s children) that Rivers had been convicted of making child pornography out of his daughter, regardless of whether anyone ever saw the films again.

I understand, very definitely, the countervailing argument.  Allowing Tamburlini to dictate what happens to the films would give her back some agency over the matter—and that is not a small thing.  I’m just saying there’s an argument that is not in the least favorable to Rivers for permitting the films to survive in an archive.

nolo, taking that approach, we’d have to save an awful lot of child porn and rape porn.  All you’d need would be for the cinematographer/director/whatever to say they consider it part of their ouevre.

I was at an art museum today.  I love art, but if I never see another odalisque I will be just fine.  Would like to have seen Bevilaqua in the flesh and spoken with Blue Eyes.  Did you know Rodin used marcottage?

Otherwise there’s nothing but the rumor of his possible skeevitude to inform how we see Rivers and his value as an artist.

Oh fiddlesticks! How aggravating to think of all the many thousands of rapes and sexual abuses that went unvideotaped and unphotographed over the long years; all we have is rumors to <strike>jerk off to</strike> inform us. 

If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?  If a child was sexually violated, did it really happen if nolo didn’t get to watch?  An interesting philosophical conundrum for the ages.

This reminds me of the story about how when Freud caught his daughter masturbating, he promptly psychoanalyzed her.  This apparently traumatized her enough that she allegedly* remained a virgin her entire life.

Well, she lived with Dorothy Burlingham from 1925 until her death. She might be a virgin, depending on your definition. If you define a virgin as never having PiV then she likely is. I’d suspect she was a lesbian, though. Of course there really is no way to know.

http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/freud_a.html

I think a lot of people here are confusing the concept of preserving the films with displaying them in an art gallery or museum somewhere.  The argument for preserving the films is a very different one from the argument one might make (and I will not) for making them part of a public exhibition.

But if history is to see this so-called artist appropriately, I think it’s necessary for the films to survive and be released after Tamburlini’s death.  Otherwise there’s nothing but the rumor of his possible skeevitude to inform how we see Rivers and his value as an artist.

Well maybe I’m just special, but I’m fully able to see this creep “appropriately” based solely on written descriptions of his disgusting abuse. I don’t need to see the video to make my evaluations. If YOU do, you might want to make some evaluations of yourself. If you can read what the videos included and think “But how will I REALLY KNOW how I feel unless I see the film for myself”...then you either think the daughter and others are lying, or you think the descriptions just don’t sound that bad. Either way, that’s appalling.

The fact that you called it rumor, btw, speaks volumes.

Nolo, I sort of see your point, but I think this raises the question of intent and audience reception. Does NYU want to keep the film as a way to indict Rivers in the court of public opinion? Or do they want to preserve it because it’s “art”? Or just because they want a rare complete archive of an artists work? If it’s ever seen by an audience, what would the reaction be - disgust, titillation, detachment?

You assume that releasing or even keeping the film could help expose Rivers as a child pornographer to everyone. But once something like that is released to the public, you can’t control the reactions to it. For me, the worst case scenario is that this is released, found by child pornographers, and the girls (now women) are re-victimized over and over again. It seems NYU don’t intend to show it, but I think they should go one step further and give Emma the final choice.

Nolo, go ahead and keep walking backwards until you hit the wall. Preserving vs displaying vs archiving vs whatever the fucking hell you call it DOES NOT MEAN SHIT so please drop that argument. The daughter - the victim - wants them destroyed. End of story.

I don’t think nudists should be photographing or filming their children either.

Why not? If it’s not in a sexual manner or position, and they are not being released publicly (at least until the children are of adult age and able to consent to them being released) I don’t really see the problem.

You know, there are some older cockpit voice recordings of plane crashes that got released and which you can listen to on the internet. But I have no problem with the current approach, which is that while a transcript is released as a public record, the NHTSA and FAA don’t release the recording itself; it’s not exactly a pleasant thing if you are, say, the widow of a pilot who was killed in a commercial airliner crash and the tape of your husband screaming as his plane went into the ground is available for anyone to listen to. Indeed, I don’t know if these recordings are destroyed or kept, but I would have no problem at all with them being destroyed.

This sort of thing is subject to the same principle. I don’t think labeling something “art” (especially in this day and age, where practically ANYTHING could be labeled art—I could certainly see some artist doing a multimedia installation featuring the last moments of CVR tapes, for instance) changes the calculus any.

In case you’re indulging the urge to say, “Hey, they’re arty-farty people, and so they don’t live the same way the rest of us do. Those girls probably think fondly of their kooky dad and his artistic interests!”, well, think again.  No matter who you’re born to, this kind of pervy shit feels like abuse.

Does anyone seriously make this argument? Those girls didn’t ask to be an artist’s daughters. They didn’t choose their family. Kids don’t become comfortable with abuse just because their parents put a different spin on it. If they did, we wouldn’t bother investigating or prosecuting child abuse at all.

And no, I have no interest in seeing the films, and I resent any implication that my argument is based on a prurient interest in them.  But what would you say if victims of the Holocaust (yeh, don’t go and say Godwin at me, because I’m just using an example of horrific victimization) militated to have the films taken by U.S. Army filmmakers of the conditions at the camps at the time of liberation destroyed?  I would understand their motivation, if there was a victim who did not want his or her humiliation preserved for posterity.  But the evidence of the atrocities is important in order to put Nazis in perspective.  The fact there’s probably some Stormfront subscriber out there who’d find the films gratifying is not an argument for destroying the evidence of the atrocity.

Why not? If it’s not in a sexual manner or position, and they are not being released publicly (at least until the children are of adult age and able to consent to them being released) I don’t really see the problem.

Because (1) it’s unnecessary to the practice of nudism, (2) the children can’t consent to it, (3) the children may grow up to wish that their parents had not done it (and may even be traumatized by the exhibition of the photographs), (4) such photographs could end up in the child porn market or on the internet, and (5) parents don’t own their children’s bodies the way they own their own—there’s a big difference, and should be a big difference, between a person’s freedom to do things with their own bodies and what they should be able to do with their children’s.

But what would you say if victims of the Holocaust (yeh, don’t go and say Godwin at me, because I’m just using an example of horrific victimization) militated to have the films taken by U.S. Army filmmakers of the conditions at the camps at the time of liberation destroyed?

Let’s take the more clear-cut example. Holocaust survivor was raped by the sadistic camp commandant, and the rape was filmed. Film was discovered by allied forces liberating the camp along with other evidence of the Holocaust, and was shown to the judges at the Nuremberg Trial. After the trial and conviction of the rapist, victim requests that the film be destroyed.

I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be.

Dilan—as an attorney who litigates air crash cases, I am quite familiar with the history and current restrictions on dissemination of CVR tapes.  I also agree totally with those restrictions.  But I’d add that no one requires the destruction of the tapes.  The NTSB uses them in their investigations, and I’ve argued more than once (and successfully in most cases) that the tapes should be given over to the families who bring suit in air crash cases because they are important evidence.  When I succeed, the tapes come to us, but are never given over to the public.  I would also add that I find it hard to even read the transcripts (which are a matter of public record), and avoid to the extent possible even hearing those tapes myself.  They’re snuff tapes.  This may, however, be the best illustration of what I’m trying to say.  Preserve the recordings, because they are important, but not everyone gets to hear them.

Shit.

If the adult victim of child abuse can’t determine whether or not it’s abuse, what’s the point?

Who better to judge?

Fuck every single entitled, privileged “artiste"and the shitheads who defend their ‘art’.  Destroy the damn child porn and give the daughters a smidgen of agency.

Dilan, I said nothing of “doing things” to the children’s bodies! Of course that should not be allowed, whether it’s photographed or not! I thought we were talking general photographs. My mother is into photography and has many pictures of me. I don’t think a photo is abuse, by itself. If she was asking me about my boobs and taking pictures of my genitals, then yes. But just a photo of doing everyday things like going to the beach? I don’t think that is harmful.

Preserve the recordings, because they are important, but not everyone gets to hear them.

Ok… not everyone, but WHO? Fuck, personally I wouldn’t want ANYONE to see them. If she wants them destroyed, destroy them. It is of HER, after all. When it’s videos of YOU, then you can decide what to do with them.

Nolo:

What would be wrong, however, with destroying them?

You know, any time something stays in the archive, there’s always the possibility of irresponsibility down the line. I got really mad when Rhianna’s post-domestic violence photo was released to the press. You know how that happened? The thing was in a police archive, and some irresponsible person accessed it and leaked it. As a result, Rhianna had to relive what was surely the worst moment of her life over again.

Dilan, I said nothing of “doing things” to the children’s bodies! Of course that should not be allowed, whether it’s photographed or not! I thought we were talking general photographs. My mother is into photography and has many pictures of me. I don’t think a photo is abuse, by itself. If she was asking me about my boobs and taking pictures of my genitals, then yes. But just a photo of doing everyday things like going to the beach? I don’t think that is harmful.

Many people would be very mad if they found out that their parents took nude photographs of them when they were adolescents. They would be even more mad if such photographs came into the possession of others, ended up on the internet, were published in nudist magazines, etc.

Don’t essentialize your own experience. The potential for abuse, along with the fact that nude photos of children have no real social value (unlike, as I said, the practice of nudism), is good reason not to do this sort of thing.

While film shouldn’t generally be shown if the participants doesn’t agree…

...I don’t think the films should be destroyed.  If only because they are the tarnish on his art career.  Once they’re gone, people will be able to ignore that they existed.

I think publishing the photos would of course not be good. I think that about NON nude photos as well. Why do you think a nude photo is more likely to have potential for abuse as a non-nude one? Pedophiles will look at photos of children online full clothed. I don’t recommend making ANY photos of your children available to the public, no matter what they are wearing, if you are worried they might not like it later, or that someone you don’t like will look at it and have nasty thoughts. Don’t think clothing is protecting your child from anything.

I maintain that personal photos of your children DO have social value. Memory is not very good, and photos of your family have sentimental value. If your family is nudist, I imagine the photos will be in the nude. I don’t think clothing inherently protects anyone.

My mother has a photo of me being born. I find it totally embarrassing and awkward. I certainly wouldn’t want it public. But I don’t think it should be illegal to posses the photo to begin with.

At no point is destroying evidence ‘stopping the abuse’.  The abuse was done.  It’ll always be in the history books.  Or should we expunge from every newspaper and history book that it occurred?

If only because they are the tarnish on his art career.

Are you under the impression that there’s a moral difference between you wanting to preserve abuse photos to ruin his reputation versus his fans wanting to preserve them to bolster his reputation (presuming that someone, somewhere, thinks this is good art—and surely someone does)? Because there isn’t.  The real you and the hypothetical fans are identically wrong to argue that the status of his precious art career is more important than this woman’s rights.

I maintain that personal photos of your children DO have social value. Memory is not very good, and photos of your family have sentimental value. If your family is nudist, I imagine the photos will be in the nude. I don’t think clothing inherently protects anyone.

This is, to say the least, inconsistent with the social mores of our society.

So long as child sexual abuse is a serious problem and abusers both get off on and utilize nude photographs of children, it’s perfectly sensible to tell parents that their photographs of their children need to be clothed. Nothing wrong with having a nudist lifestyle, but since nude pictures of your children constitute something that quite a few children would, once they grow up, object to having been taken, and for very good reasons that are socially accepted, it’s quite fine to draw a line between clothed and nude.

And I would continue to state that this principle doesn’t at all interfere with people’s ability to be nudists. You can be nudists and take pictures of your children with clothes on. Doesn’t interfere with the lifestyle one bit.

How striking the similarities are between the defenders of NYU and the defenders of the Catholic Church abuse cover-up—and no, I’m not reaching (and no, reaching is not even possible in a thread where nolo has already whipped out the holocaust card.)

What I mean is that while the church wanted the right to hide abuse and NYU wants the right to force display [1] of abuse,  they are in no way opposite impulses, because what it is about is having ultimate control over who knows what.  Who has the power to dispense knowledge, who is allowed to tell.  Who’s in charge. 

Like Crissa says, the abuse happened, so kids, your part’s over and done, it’s not about you anymore.  It’s not about you and what happened to you. It’s about the important people now. It’s about the reputations of powerful people,  what they deserve and the damage that can be done to them and whether or not we decide it should be done.  The damage that can be done to you, irritatingly vocal ex-child,  is beneath notice.

[1] And that is what they are doing.  They want to keep it in the archives?  That means displaying it to archivists.

@Alison—when there are crimes of sufficiently significant magnitude, prosecutors do not have to (and do not) honor the “will” of the victim when it comes to preserving evidence or pursuing a conviction.  It’s because the crime is bigger than the harm to the individual victim.  I think this is similar, and I raised my point politely, and I thought respectfully to the victim’s point of view.  Why you should seem so provoked by that is your business.

when there are crimes of sufficiently significant magnitude, prosecutors do not have to (and do not) honor the “will” of the victim when it comes to preserving evidence or pursuing a conviction. 

Did you miss the part where the criminal in question has been dead for eight years?  Prosecutors do have to (and do)  honor the “laws” of nature when it comes to building a credible case against a corpse.

You might get further in your noble quest to find some angle whereby gawking at rape videos or abuse photos or whatever is A-OK because the ends justify the means if you could stand to admit that in this case it is not A-OK, because there are no ends except ‘we feel like it’.

I don’t know any nudists and so this isn’t the most informed opinion, but I’m confused. If its ok to be nudist, and to raise your kids in a nudist lifestyle (I’m sure some people would argue that it isn’t, but no one here seems to have said that)... IF its ok to raise a nudist family in the first place, why should it be wrong to take family photos? Are they supposed to run and put on clothes every time they want to take a photo? Or are they just supposed to never take family photos at all because their lifestyle is somehow ok to experience but too disgusting to record? I don’t know any families where the kids run around naked, but I do know families with little kids and we take photos of them all the time, because they do cute things and it’ll be nice to have family photos years later. I don’t distribute them publicly, but the photos are taken and exist for family members now and years down the road. If you think that nudist families shouldn’t be allowed to do that, then I suspect you really don’t think nudist families should be allowed to exist in the first place. I don’t really know what I think about the idea of nudist families in the context of American society, but the position that they should exist but should not take family photos seems logically inconsistent to me.

[I’m not actually sure what I think about that—I guess I’m thinking it might be nice if our society was free enough for that not to be a big deal, but given that our society isn’t really that way, there are high odds that the kids will be embarassed about it later in a way that they might not be if they, say, grew up running around nude in the jungle in a country where everyone does that and it isn’t something that is as rare as nudism in america.]

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Some people might prefer a more free society where everyone is more accepting and open about their bodies. Its even remotely possible that this guy did mean his videos as “art” and not as abuse. But in the context of the society his daughters live in, its impossible for it not to be perceived as something harmful and embarassing for them. Given that they were underage and not professional models with signed consent forms, I think they are the ones who should morally be the owners of this film, and if they want to take it and destroy it, that’s their call. I don’t know the law on it, but I think the right thing to do is to give the videos to them. Aren’t they his heirs, anyway? Is there some different law for inheritance of an artist’s work, or did the guy sell these videos before he died, or what? I would have thought they’d inherit them automatically, with the rights to do whatever they want with them.

nolo @22:

because this is just too repugnant to ignore: “But the evidence of the atrocities is important in order to put Nazis in perspective. “

Yeah.  You know who made that case early and often? You know who knows that fact better and more intimately than you possibly could?  Holocaust survivors is who.

I have known many an elderly Jew who refuses to go anywhere near a Holocaust museum because they don’t need to see that ever again until they die.  But I have not known one who ever suggested that other people shouldn’t see it, learn about it, and remember it.

Why, it’s almost like Holocaust victims are just like other victims of atrocities, including sexual abuse survivors: rational adults with every bit as much ability to weigh their own pain against the good of the world that you, nolo, possess.  If a valid reason for allowing the record of their suffering to be made public has occurred to you, nolo, you may rest assured it has occurred to them.  And they care.

That’s why we (meaning that part of “we” who are not callow ‘contrarians’, that is to say, feckless dicks) understand that when that rare, exceptional atrocity survivor stands up and says that no, in this particular case, the specific harm done to her outweighs any good that might be done for the world, we respect her judgment and do as she asks.

I’m very tired of the notion here, expressed by several, that I have some interest in gawking at the films.  I have an interest in preserving the record about the man who made them, and not for prurient reasons, but for reasons of historical and artistic justice.  I simply have made the case, with which one may do what one wishes, for not destroying the record of his creepiness.  I’ve done so fully acknowledging the interests of the children he exploited.  I’m done here.  Oh, and in case anyone was guessing otherwise, I’m a woman and I’ve been a feminist probably longer than some of you have been alive.

OK, I’ll jump in here with a hypothetical.  Rivers becomes BIG as an artist, perhaps Matisse big or Picasso big.  Perhaps there was a significant period of obscurity, though.  The biographers have acknowledged the existence of nude and sexually suggestive films of his daughters.  But it is now 100 or even 200 years later.  Based on that, there is argument among art scholars about whether he deserves to have his paintings up with the greats - some argue that he was little more than a skeevy, purveyor of child porn pervert.  His defenders claim that the films were artistic and claims to the contrary are overblown, from uptight, conservative fundie prude types - yes, even the description transcript is alleged to have been written by such a person.  And the guy gets a posthumous pass.

On the other hand, if the film exists, there’s the chance to have it available only to legitimate scholars who can then say “oh, yeah, he was a skeevy perv,” and find another topic for their monograph rather than glorify him.  ANd yes, one can police such use pretty well.  Museums have been doing it for years.

Which weighs more - the daughters right to the film of herself, or the truth years down the road.  Tough one.

Nothing wrong with having a nudist lifestyle, but since nude pictures of your children constitute something that quite a few children would, once they grow up, object to having been taken, and for very good reasons that are socially accepted, it’s quite fine to draw a line between clothed and nude.

I think that’s because nudism isn’t really accepted socially in our society in the first place. It might be vaguely tolerated as long as kept out of the way, but most people are really uncomfortable with it. I’m pretty uncomfortable with the idea of a nudist family myself, so of course by extension I don’t like the idea of them taking pictures and keeping them around. I just think that if anyone truly thinks that a nudist family is a good way to go, they shouldn’t object to them taking photos just like any other family.

I simply have made the case, with which one may do what one wishes, for not destroying the record of his creepiness….I’m a woman and I’ve been a feminist probably longer than some of you have been alive.

You’re not the first woman to posture about how a dead man’s reputation is more important than a living woman’s wishes and I assure you, you won’t be the last. It doesn’t matter how old you are; some of us may outlive you, but none of us here will outlive your attitudes.  You can be proud of that, if you like.

On the other hand, if the film exists, there’s the chance to have it available only to legitimate scholars who can then say “oh, yeah, he was a skeevy perv,” and find another topic for their monograph rather than glorify him.

...Have you ever met any scholars?

Or, fuck it, maybe you’re right, maybe both misogyny and great-man hero-worship are working-class ailments and the academic elite will be as pure and noble in 200 years as it is now, and has always been.  Why not!

And aside from that, why you think being a perv should disqualify anybody from being the subject of a monograph I cannot imagine. It doesn’t now, and it shouldn’t ever.

At no point is destroying evidence ‘stopping the abuse’.  The abuse was done.  It’ll always be in the history books.  Or should we expunge from every newspaper and history book that it occurred?

No. MORE abuse is committed every time someone views it without the permission of the woman who was forced to take part in it. Destroying evidence very much “stops the abuse”—-not the original victimization performed by the “artist,” but the potential for ongoing abuse in terms of forcing her to go through her life with the awareness that pictures of her body are out there and will likely at some point be available for public viewing.

You’re strawman-arguing. Expunging the statement that it happened is different than preventing people from viewing it, especially when the whole point of this woman’s complaint is that she was forced to appear in it. A police report, a newspaper article, a paragraph in a history book—-these are vastly different than the video itself. They are inferior secondary sources, to use a history term, which do not convey the objectionable content that she has proclaimed to be a continued violation of her privacy.

One final clarification before I stop being all over the thread like a cheap suit:  You probably meant, phylosopher, that in your hypothetical they could write a monograph on Rivers without glorifying him, not that they would not write about him at all, and that is perfectly true.

However, it is not true now, never has been, and never will be true that museums and archives have some method of screening for “legitimate” scholars that screens out the perverted, the stupid, the abusive, the hateful, and the fans of all of those.  That isn’t how academic credentials work and it isn’t how museums work either.

Let’s say an artist took pictures of someone through a peephole/hidden camera, without their knowledge, and then used those images in an art installation. Would those people, who did not sign model releases, not have the right to demand the images be removed?

The issue is not one of art nor strictly of porn. It is one of consent. They did not consent, legally could not consent because they were not old enough, to these images of themselves being taken and used. They have the right to demand the images be destroyed.

I don’t understand the controversy, frankly, and NYU is just racking up a lot of bad publicity.

Apart from the art vs child pornography vs. preserving the folkways of DFH parents, the reason to destroy the archive is that pervo dad is dead, and the only person left to care is the daughter(s). I sure as hell would not want a documentary record of my sex organ development in the wild.

Further, while the definition of what is appropriate may vary between families. the film depicts intimate family moments. Her privacy does not need to be violated any more, and no excuse (which basically boils down to simple curiosity) would justify violating it one additional iota.

Another thought: Let’s say Larry Rivers worked for a Goodyear dealer, changing tires, and took pervoid films of his wife and daughter in his free time, editing them down to be indistinguishable from Larry Rivers’ Growing.

Would NYU be arguing to preserve the tire guy’s film as “outsider” or “naive” art?

The issue is not one of art nor strictly of porn. It is one of consent. They did not consent, legally could not consent because they were not old enough, to these images of themselves being taken and used. They have the right to demand the images be destroyed.

emjaybee wins.

This is not really about “Art” or a great man or “Truth”.  This is about consent and rape.  The daughters could not and do not consent: therefore the film needs to be destroyed according to their wishes.

Any other argument basically boils down to the same shit; women ain’t shit, and whether or not they consent doesn’t matter when a Great Artiste is involved.  Or any man, for that matter.  Any man is better equipped to decide on whether abuse/rape/incest has occurred rather than the actual victim, since the ‘victim’ is just a female.

Fuck it.  She wants them destroyed.  She was the one who was victimized and will continue to be victimized.  Why the fuck is this even a question?

FWIW, not saying it’s even a main issue, but the arguments of consent raise some pretty severe pro-oppression arguments.

The argument some of you are giving in support of the girl here more or less support severe police state actions. You know how police departments are arresting, charging, and then suing people who dare record law enforcement officers abusing their authority: that they did not consent to the recordings, that it is embarrassing and can haunt them for years.

An appeal to rationality and attempting to set a policy on creeper artistes from this case seems inadvisable. I would say better is an appeal to humanity: that this is hurtful and that harm caused here is so clear, it outweighs any possible merit it might have otherwise, and that destroying it as requested is the right thing to do on humanitarian grounds.

Oh bullshit, karpad.

The victim in a police abuse case is NOT the police officer.  The victim in child port IS the child/adult.

The psychology department in a university near me does work on child pornography. As far as I know there is one tenured guy, some post docs and probably a few phd students and they make up the criminal psychology research group. No one else is allowed to look at the child pornography and I understand they have kind of a large quantity of it. I’m pretty sure that if anyone turned up claiming to be an out of town academic wanting to see some footage they would have their credentials checked pretty thoroughly and if they didn’t check out a call to the cops would be made very quickly and even then there would probably be major issues. Probably the cops would be the ones checking the credentials. Just because a university has something doesn’t mean its open to anyone with a library card.

I don’t see nyu throwing the tape in fire because the natural inclination of a university is to hang onto everything, unless of course a court says throw it in the fire. I think I’m in favor of in the fire but right now it doesn’t seem likely. Maybe they could make a censored copy and destroy the original so when someone doing research on this guy gets some encounter with how fucked up he is they can write about him in the terms he deserves. Maybe they could just keep the audio and destroy the pictures. Its not exactly an ideal solution but that would have been arresting him the moment anyone heard anything about it.

I don’t know any nudists and so this isn’t the most informed opinion, but I’m confused. If its ok to be nudist, and to raise your kids in a nudist lifestyle (I’m sure some people would argue that it isn’t, but no one here seems to have said that)… IF its ok to raise a nudist family in the first place, why should it be wrong to take family photos? Are they supposed to run and put on clothes every time they want to take a photo? Or are they just supposed to never take family photos at all because their lifestyle is somehow ok to experience but too disgusting to record?

Neither. Rather, taking photographs of naked children is harmful and potentially violates or could lead to the personal autonomy of the children, whereas running around nude does not.

That’s “child porn” not “port”.

The film itself is the crime.  It was made without the daughter’s consent, and continued viewings continue to victimize her without her consent.

Police abuse is the crime, not the video of the abuse.  Whining about being taped while committing a crime is different than being forced into pornography against your will.

More and more police are being forced to tape themselves anyway:  In interviews, in the patrol car, on the TASER.  It’s going to be part of the job. 

Child pornography will never be a legitimate job.

How does getting consent lead to oppression. Surely that would lead to the opposite of oppression?

taking photographs of naked children is harmful and potentially violates or could lead to the personal autonomy of the children, whereas running around nude does not.

Family photos should be kept within the family, not posted on the Internet.

@soprhronisba—you act like I’m trying to defend a dead man’s reputation.  I want to see it trashed, for the benefit of other potential victims whom I would like to see NOT be victimized.  Sometimes, to benefit potential future victims, the focus needs to be on the perpetrator of past victimizations, if for no other reason than to assure that no one will romanticize the perpetrator’s less obviously creepy work and use it to justify their own creepiness.  Give the idea some thought.

Who looked out for the adolescent Emma Tamburlini’s interests? The father who made the film had a clear conflict of interest, because he benefited from exploiting her budding sexuality. He should have had to ask a court to appoint a guardian ad litem to represent Emma’s interests.

soprhronisba—you act like I’m trying to defend a dead man’s reputation.  I want to see it trashed

No, I said the opposite. I said repeatedly was that you care more about his reputation than you do about her life. You have made that explicitly clear.  I said that your trashing of his reputation is morally equivalent to any fan’s defense of his reputation because you both care more about what you can do to his reputation than what you will do to his daughter.  You are showing me how right I am.  You want, you want—I don’t care about your precious want.  I care what this woman wants.  She matters more than her father’s reputation does and her wants matters more than yours.

All this bullshit rationalizing speaks not only to how men and their art are always- always always always- valued over the real lives of real women, but to the very real ownership inherent in father-child relationships. To those doing the rationalizing: If Rivers had been their stepfather, would that make a difference? How about an uncle? Their brother? A family friend? Why/why not? Jesus Christ listen to yourselves.

Sort of like if you want to get away with beating a woman, marry her first. If you want to get away with raping a woman, record it and add some credits. If you want get away with abusing young girls, do it to your own kids and call it art.

nolo, the point is shouldn’t that be the victim’s call? Not every victim wants to a poster child for surviving abuse. Their wants should come first. Before yours or anyone else’s including other potential victims. Their bodily autonomy was already taken from them once, you are advocating to do it again.

Rape as performance art? Sure. Rape camps as installation art? Why not. Apparently tagging something as “art” gives it immunity to anything—maybe we should say that Americans are only torturing prisoners ironically as part of a meta statement about evil and human frailty or some shit like that. Put a plaque in front of Guantanamo that says “Untitled.”

OTOH, as an academic type myself, I really hate the idea of getting rid of information that may be of scholarly value. So I understand nolo’s instinct to preserve* (I’m a total info packrat) but in this case I think basic humans rights and an opposition to abuse have to trump the “right” to keep anything we find interesting. I’m not going to say that nothing is more valuable than the health and comfort of a human being, but I’m not convinced that this video is anywhere near valuable enough to even be worth considering prioritizing over a woman’s right to self determine.

*I didn’t read hir comments nearly as harshly as others seem to have…

Family photos should be kept within the family, not posted on the Internet.

But I think some people are saying that nudists shouldn’t take family photos at all* , not that they just shouldn’t post them online.

*(at least not while nude, which, if you’re actually nudist, seems like it would out most family moments, and make you like the person who insists on taking off your kid’s glasses before every photo so that they are all posed and stilted and inaccurate. Unless I just don’t understand what nudists do, and they actually wear clothes most of the time.)

If your parents having nude photos (kept private) of you potentially victimizes you, why doesn’t your parents and other family members and family friends seeing you in person running around naked as an adolescent potentially victimize you just as much? Seems to me that as long as the photos are not released outside the family, both situations have pretty much the same potential for making the kid feel humiliated later in life when they grow up and find out that most of our society doesn’t approve of people past a certain age being naked in front of their families.

Indeed, if there are nude photos of the child me in a shoe box in my parents’ closet, I dont’ see how that would hurt me.

“OTOH, as an academic type myself, I really hate the idea of getting rid of information that may be of scholarly value. So I understand nolo’s instinct to preserve* (I’m a total info packrat) but in this case I think basic humans rights and an opposition to abuse have to trump the “right” to keep anything we find interesting. I’m not going to say that nothing is more valuable than the health and comfort of a human being, but I’m not convinced that this video is anywhere near valuable enough to even be worth considering prioritizing over a woman’s right to self determine.”

This.

Hector B.—yes, but if you were sexually abused by those same persons, you might feel differently.  So it’s up to you how those photos are handled, which is the entire damned point.

You can be nudists and take pictures of your children with clothes on. Doesn’t interfere with the lifestyle one bit.

Seriously? Dilan, I don’t think you know any practicing nudists.

There are pictures of me nude, and topless, as a baby and child.  Are those child porn?  No, they are family snapshots.  If for some reason I wanted them destroyed, I’d destroy the ones I have, and my family members should give me their copies so I can destroy them, or cut my image out if others are in them.  But until then there’s nothing wrong with them.  It’s my decision, it’s me in the pictures.

Family snapshots of naturists are in the same category.  You don’t share them with others who wouldn’t already be seeing the same thing “live,” and when the subject becomes an adult the photos should be controlled by them.  But they are not a crime all by themselves.

People who think of naturist/nudist spaces as hotbeds of sexual profligacy and child porn are misinformed.  Yes, bad things happen there, too, but there’s probably *more* policing of questionable adults because of the vulnerability of naturist communities to that kind of assumption.

This reminds me of when the existence of videos of people being raped in Abu Ghraib was discovered.  A bunch of (mostly male) left pundits were clamoring to have them released to the media.  This is absurd.  Have them professionally transcribed if we need to have a record of some kind, but Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick, releasing rape footage?  Are these women not actual human beings?

The Rivers films are child porn.  They can be ten other things, including great art, lousy art, wrappers for heroin with trace evidence on them, or a film with exciting new evidence on the real mother of Trig Palin in the background.  Doesn’t matter.  It’s also child porn, and if it’s not being used in a trial, and the subject wants it destroyed, then destroy it.

Sophonisba @#47- I know that I can’t get into and get my hands on quite a few rare artifacts, that I can’t go to the local art museum and get into their back room collections without (according to them):

# Upon arrival in the Libraries the researcher must complete an “Application for Access to the Archival Collections” form, describing the research project and indicating the collections to be consulted.

# The archival material must be consulted in the assigned locations in the Libraries reading room and may at no time be removed. No smoking, eating or drinking is allowed in these areas.

# The Archives attempts to make the original documents available to patrons; in a few cases the fragility of the originals has necessitated a microfilm, photograph, or photocopy surrogate for patron use.

# Collections may be unavailable for research due to: incomplete organization or description; possible violation of right to privacy of living authors or correspondents; or The Art Institute of Chicago’s reservation of first rights to publication of current projects. 

SO this IS how a museum or library works,- says them.

Any other argument basically boils down to the same shit; women ain’t shit, and whether or not they consent doesn’t matter when a Great Artiste is involved.  Or any man, for that matter.  Any man is better equipped to decide on whether abuse/rape/incest has occurred rather than the actual victim, since the ‘victim’ is just a female.
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Comment #51: Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes on 07/08 at 10:55 PM

Would, or how would, these comments change if Larry Rivers were Loretta Rivers, artist and the mother of Ms. Tamburlini, who made the films?

First:  I work at an archive (not NYU’s), though I myself am not an archivist.

After reading the article and the comments from NYU, it looks like there’s actually a very good chance that they will end up turning the film over to Tamburlini, especially since there’s already a history of controversy about its ownership and Tamburlini made a request to the previous owners to destroy it.  They will probably have one more meeting with Tamburlini to get all of the legal details in order, confirm that she absolutely, positively wants it destroyed, and then turn it over to her or, if she’s willing, destroy it on her behalf.

The former owners were, frankly, assholes about it because they were the foundation that Rivers set up to preserve his work.  NYU doesn’t have that same focus, so they aren’t going to care deeply enough about preserving each and every piece to fight Tamburlini over a single piece of art.  Plus there’s a difference in attitude between (ahem) amateur/private archives and professional/institutional archives.  Amateur/private archives tend to be very secretive and possessive while often not having the vaguest idea how to actually archive and preserve things properly.

Despite what some people seem to be claiming, NYU can easily keep the film away from even archivists’ eyes while still preserving it.  Remember, we’re talking about a film (possibly a video, it wasn’t entirely clear), so it’s a piece of art that requires technology in order to view it, which means that you damage it with every viewing.  If all you want to do is preserve it, it gets put into a storage case and set on a shelf in a vault.  Every few years (if that), a collections specialist takes it off the shelf and physically inspects the medium for damage.  They don’t watch it, because that would damage the film—they would just inspect the celluloid or magnetic tape.

If Tamburlini wants to preserve the film but not have it available to scholars, that’s easily done as well.  We have some art in our vaults that we basically pretend doesn’t exist because we’re storing it on behalf of the artist or owner but, since we don’t own it ourselves, we can’t legally show it to anyone else.  It’s not like a regular library where you just wander in, show your library card, and browse through the stacks.  Any art you want to view has to be brought out to you by a researcher who supervises you while you look at it.  We’ve actually had authors who’ve written several books based on our collection ask if they can just browse through the vaults unsupervised and the answer is always, always, “Fuck no!”

The archive’s first instinct is always going to be to preserve the film because their mission is to preserve things, but NYU will bend and hand it over if Tamburlini remains adamant.  NYU just wants to cover their ass in case the Rivers Foundation tries to sue them for doing it.

Would, or how would, these comments change if Larry Rivers were Loretta Rivers, artist and the mother of Ms. Tamburlini, who made the films?

Well for a start, I’d be willing to bet good money there wouldn’t be a sea of excuses for Loretta Rivers and clamoring about how important her art is, the way there is for Larry Rivers.

I don’t think you quite get this feminism stuff, Phyl.

There are ways to damage the future reputation of Rivers while still honoring the wishes of Tamburlini. I know secondary sources wouldn’t carry as much weight with future scholars, but there would still be court records, there would still be descriptions of the film, transcripts or whatever, and there will be some record, I’d hope, of the present situation where Tamburlini is asking for the destruction of the original. All of this can speak against Rivers in the future without the film itself having to do it. And if the future scholars would like the film, to analyze or whatever, well, too bad, they can do without. Many scholars throughout history have had to make do with less than perfect evidence, due to theft, fire, vandalism, or whatever, and they’ve been fine.

Personally, I’d hope that the future scholars would be happy to make the sacrifice, if it’ll help Tamburlini sleep at night. Maybe people of the future will think it weird that we had to have this conversation in the first place, that this was even a question.

So there are no female artists considered “important?”  ANd I’m the one who doesn’t get the feminist stuff?  Uhhh, OK, then.

But, just to give you a few more for instances.  What about this picture by Cassat? http://www.titalus.com/art/Hum113/Impressionism/Cassatt.jpg  Obviously a female topless picture before the age of consent.  If the now adult had felt violated - should it have been destroyed?  Or what about this one - heck, it’s probably been reproduced thousands of times.  http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Baby-And-Spaniel-Posters_i406277_.htm

Not every victim wants to a poster child for surviving abuse. Their wants should come first. Before yours or anyone else’s including other potential victims. Their bodily autonomy was already taken from them once, you are advocating to do it again.

Which leads to the obvious question: what happens if you or a member of your family are the next potential victim, and you find out that the reason the attacker was free to do so was because a previous victim refused to cooperate with authorities, forcing them to drop the charges?  Do you be so forgiving?

This is related to the domestic abuse thing.  Many jurisdictions have laws on the books that state the police do NOT have to take the opinion of the victim into account before proceding with arrest and prosecution because so many battered spouses (mostly women, but a few men), for whatever reason, don’t want to admit they are abused, or don’t want the abuser taken away, or whatever, even it is clearly in their own interest that the scuzzball be hauled off.  Are you against those rules as well?  After all, I’m positive there are people who don’t want to be the poster children for domestic abuse either.

The fact is this is the sort of thing that prosecutors and police sometimes do agonize over, and many will not put an unwilling victim on the stand if they can help it (someone else was assaulted and does testify), or will let the case drop.  I’ve talked to Crown prosecutors and police officers who know damn well a woman was sexually assaulted, but because of lack of other evidence beyond her testimony, which she decides not to give, they’ve got nothing and have to drop the proceedings.  At least until they (almost inevitably) do it again.

In this particular case, sure, it’s merely a self-made documentary of a skeevy perv who is beyond any sort of prosecution or punishment, and most importantly, harming anyone else, and the victim wants it gone, so there’s no need to save it.  Burn the thing.

If he were still alive and someone wanted to prosecute him for abuse, or investigate whether past actions rose to the level of abuse, entirely different story even if her desires were still the same.  In that instance the needs of society, to get the jerk off the streets, could very well trump the desire of the victim.

Part of being part of civil society is the understanding that sometimes you don’t get what you want.  And sometimes victims do have to suffer through it again.  In that case, I can speak from (admittedly very limited) experience.  Being asked questions about something you’d rather forget (and actually had mostly managed to not think about any more) was humiliating, and the people asking me the questions knew that, but they needed to know.

If your parents having nude photos (kept private) of you potentially victimizes you, why doesn’t your parents and other family members and family friends seeing you in person running around naked as an adolescent potentially victimize you just as much?

If your boyfriend keeping a sex tape of you potentially victimizes you, why doesn’t your boyfriend actually having had sex with you victimize you too?

Or maybe, just maybe, there’s something different about photography.

Oh, wait, I know!  It’s not ephemeral!

Seriously? Dilan, I don’t think you know any practicing nudists.

If nude photography of children is really part of the nudist lifestyle, then I would not have any problem with locking them all up as child pornographers. Seriously.

Again, parents don’t own the children, and shouldn’t be doing things that treat their children as a property interest for them to control.  Photographing them nude is such a thing.

But I don’t, in fact, buy that nude photography is children is part of the nudist lifestyle. It’s perfectly possible for adults to run around naked with their families without taking pictures of everything.

People who think of naturist/nudist spaces as hotbeds of sexual profligacy and child porn are misinformed. 

I don’t think that. Rather, I think that parents have the right to photograph themselves naked but not their children, because their children don’t have the ability to consent to the matter.

If your boyfriend keeping a sex tape of you potentially victimizes you, why doesn’t your boyfriend actually having had sex with you victimize you too?

Because most people don’t routinely cut all ties with their family members the way people routinely cut all ties with ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends.  If they do, it’s usually for a very good reason, like they feel their family members exploited or victimized them.

If my husband and I had made a voluntary sex tape together, his possession of it only becomes exploitative if the relationship breaks up because I would then feel like I had retroactively withdrawn my consent.  It only becomes exploitative as soon as I feel it’s exploitative.

By the way, this nudism thing strikes me as the left-wing equivalent to the FLDS church. Society has an overriding interest in protecting children from very dubious things that their parents want to get them involved in.

If my husband and I had made a voluntary sex tape together, his possession of it only becomes exploitative if the relationship breaks up because I would then feel like I had retroactively withdrawn my consent.  It only becomes exploitative as soon as I feel it’s exploitative.

That’s true. But how come nude photos taken by one’s parents don’t become exploitative the moment someone feels that they are exploitative?

And more importantly, isn’t one of the central purposes of the rules against kiddie porn to protect children who may not feel exploited at the time certain things are done but may feel exploited and traumatized later on knowing the images are “out there”?

Remember, as well, that if your husband and you make that tape, you are consenting adults.  Again, the principle here is do whatever you want to yourself and your consenting adult partners, but you don’t get to do whatever you want with your children.

Society has an overriding interest in protecting children from very dubious things that their parents want to get them involved in.

So seeing naked people is so automatically bad and wrong that we should only let consenting adults be nude together?  Children should always be fully clothed in all situations until we feel they’re mature enough to handle seeing their own naked flesh?

You’d better hie yourself over to the South Seas and inform all of those women in small villages that they need to cover up because they’re damaging their children by walking around topless.

But how come nude photos taken by one’s parents don’t become exploitative the moment someone feels that they are exploitative?

They become exploitative the moment that the people depicted feel that they are exploitative.  You don’t get to decide on someone else’s behalf that they’re being exploited.

I’m guessing you completely approve of the fact that these parents had their kids taken away because a photo developer at Wal-Mart thought it was pervy of them to take photos of their kids in the bathtub.

I think to dismiss something as “art” because it might be deemed abusive would cut out a large swath of what we define as art.  Mapplethorpe, Gauguin, Richard Prince’s print of a young, nude Brooke Shields, even Sally Mann’s photographs of her children.  This issue is not new within the history of art and as an art historian and feminist, I often feel divided, as I do on this issue. 

I think, perhaps, the issue is context and clearly his daughter needs to be part of that contextualization (and any decision about preservation).  Is Tamburlini part of the estate decision making process? Also to dismiss the issue of “is this art” is too simple—the conversation of abuse/victimization needs to be part of our cultural decision-making, when we separate those two then the value of “art” overrides any ethical standards.

By the way, this nudism thing strikes me as the left-wing equivalent to the FLDS church. Society has an overriding interest in protecting children from very dubious things that their parents want to get them involved in.
Comment #83: Dilan Esper on 07/09 at 01:47 AM

How easily we’ve moved from nudity/naturism is OK to it’s a “dubious” thing.  Make sure you collar is buttoned up REAL tight, Dilan.

Again, parents don’t own the children, and shouldn’t be doing things that treat their children as a property interest for them to control.  Photographing them nude is such a thing.

I know for a fact that my parents repeatedly diapered me as a child, those pervy bastards! That is waaay kinkier than nude photos. Haul ‘em away! :p

To be less snarky, I’m saying that there is a gradation of what’s appropriate parental behavior. Photographing your naked baby without its express consent? I’m cool with that. (Babies can’t give meaningful consent—if the kid grew up and had a problem with it later then yeah, it wouldn’t be okay anymore and the photos should be handed over.) Photographing your protesting teenager? NO. Teenagers can give meaningful consent, for the most part, and that should be respected.

They’re really vastly different things and it’s not helpful to lump all ages and parenting behaviors in together.

because it might be deemed abusive

Nice hiding behind the passive voice. “Deemed abusive” by? Oh, well, maybe by anyone who thinks there’s something creepy about pressuring your teenage daughters into letting you photograph their genitals. Gosh, somebody might “deem” that abusive!

Keith M,
I lived in one of the counties that first gave prosecutors the ability to proceed against a domestic abuser without a complaining witness. In those cases victims aren’t forced to testify against their partners.  The prosecutor uses the evidence they have (photos, previous complaints, pattern of abusive behavior, eye witness, etc.) to try the abuser. The only time the victim would have to relive what happened in open court is if she chose to testify. Unfortunately, some testify on behalf of their abuser so then the prosecutor is an untenable situation of trying to impugn the testimony of an abuse victim, often with their own previous statements to police. That is horrible but I think necessary part of prosecuting abusers.

Nolo is advocating that this woman’s wishes be run over not to prosecute him, not to prevent him from victimizing anyone else. Just to damage his reputation further and because she believes it might change some child pornographer’s, mind when he’s hiding behind the label of “artist”. Thereby,  protecting his potential victims. When I mentioned potential victims I was referring to her statement,

Sometimes, to benefit potential future victims, the focus needs to be on the perpetrator of past victimizations, if for no other reason than to assure that no one will romanticize the perpetrator’s less obviously creepy work and use it to justify their own creepiness.

What she seems to be ignoring is that rapists rape because they like to rape. Child pornography makers and consumers are in it because the like it. They aren’t suddenly going to see this awful “documentary” (one which would probably arouse them) and say, “OMG I’m soo creepy. I should totally stop.” They’ll get off on the girl being dominated and then get off again because the video is out there against her will.

Ignoring her wishes isn’t going to stop a rapist or child pornographer from victimizing women and children. So that argument is a straw man used to try to guilt the victim, and make her seem cold and heartless. Then it’s easier to see her as less than human and dismiss her.

I’d also add that when a male survivor of childhood sexual abuse comes forward years after the abuse, as has happened with the victims of Catholic priests, it’s generally accepted that he went through a horrible trauma that must still difficult for him, so he’s often lauded as a brave survivor. It’s understood how difficult it is to come forward at any time.

But when a woman does the same thing, like Teri Hatcher and Deena Deardurff Schmidt, there are many accusations that she’s lying because she waited so long, or that she’s personally responsible for his sexual abuse of his other victims. There’s a lot of attempts to shame and guilt them. Which feeds right into to the victim-blaming (especially female victims) part of rape culture.

I attended NYU and had my run-in with the art students there and I can assure you, as far as insufferable college art departments go, NYU had to have placed in the top 10. I’m quite sure there are a bunch of professors there explaining that the outrage generated by the child abuse is the actual art and that the films were just there to facilitate that.

Bagelsan, I’m not sure that “if former baby protests about photos, hand’em over.”  Assuming photos are not porn, as in cute baby in bath type, the kid doesn’t remember them being taken, the parent isn’t selling them and the kid is pretty obviously NOT recognizable - sorry, those are the PARENT’S memories, too. ANd the parent wants them. 

More hypothetical detail, kid grows up to become a religious fundernut in some sect that thinks photos are capturing the soul or sinful or whatever. So parent who has cherished photo albums, and (ugh, but some folks find a lot of pleasure in it) scrapbooked them lovingly must destroy them?  Really?

It seems to me that Rivers knew from the beginning that his daughters really didn’t want anything to do with the situation. I would probably reserve judgement on whether it’s porn or not (though it does sound it) and focus entirely on the fact that he was proceeding despite the girls’ objections. Such persistent violations of a child’s privacy are abuse no matter what the context is (barring, that is, severe behavioral problems, which don’t enter into this story at all).

Art, perhaps. But also cruel, creepy, egotistical, and outright destructive.

Bad Jim:

Applause, applause.

<blockquote>I’d also add that when a male survivor of childhood sexual abuse comes forward years after the abuse, as has happened with the victims of Catholic priests, it’s generally accepted that he went through a horrible trauma that must still difficult for him, so he’s often lauded as a brave survivor. It’s understood how difficult it is to come forward at any time.

But when a woman does the same thing, like Teri Hatcher and Deena Deardurff Schmidt, there are many accusations that she’s lying because she waited so long, or that she’s personally responsible for his sexual abuse of his other victims. There’s a lot of attempts to shame and guilt them. Which feeds right into to the victim-blaming (especially female victims) part of rape culture.
Comment #93: shakahi on 07/09 at 06:04 AM ,/blockquote>

I would say that’s definitely not a fair comparison, especially in more homophobic areas.  There isn’t a stigma to having hetero sex*, that there is with homsexual sex, even if the homosexual sex is consensual.  In very few areas do we find the belief that heterosex changes one’s orientation while many still think that male/male sex MAKES one a homosexual or at least less of a man Yes, that attitude is beyond stupid, but it exists, probably more widely and subconsciously held than we realize.

Most folks have had 40 or so years of the female rape victim IS A VICTIM.  I think that makes a difference in our expectations.     

*And yes consensual sex =/= rape, but I’m talking about attitudes here even subconscious ones.  ANd not necessarily my attitudes before we play pile on.

KeithM,

Your analogy is terribly flawed. Prosecuting a batterer without his victim’s consent isn’t the same thing as *continuing to abuse* an abuse victim. As sophonisba and others have pointed out, showing pictures of someone’s violation is itself a violation—-it just adds to the number of people who get to see the victim naked without her consent.

Does the battered woman have to strip in front of the court? Does she have to show videotapes of what happened to her? If not, then it’s not comparable. And that’s leaving aside the fact that the guy in this case is dead, because that’s not actually the issue. The purely hypothetical future victims (however likely the guy is to victimize again, it’s still hypothetical) have to take second place to the bodily integrity of the real current victim. Maybe he’ll victimize again? Well, maybe he’ll get hit by a truck tomorrow. We can play with the “maybes” all day long. Meanwhile, we have a real flesh-and-blood victim here.

phylosopher: nothing you have said has made even a shred of sense. Are you seriously trying to claim that it’s harder for a male victim to come forward than a female one? Oh puh-lease. Try talking to one sometime. Try paying attention to the treatment of male victims vs. female ones. Your credibility here is negative.

As far as the “naked pics of the baby” is concerned: it doesn’t matter if they’re the “parent’s memories too.” Too bad. I think we have to draw a bright line and say that naked pics have to be destroyed if their subject wants them to be, unless they gave meaningful adult consent at the time.

Yes, I understand that it’s acceptable and generally harmless to photograph babies nude. But I can imagine all sorts of situations where it might be skeevy to hang on to a naked picture of a five-year-old, for instance. Child molesters go after children that age. So where do we draw the line?

I think it’s simplest just to say that underage pics of minors must be destroyed if the subject wants them to be. The photographer shouldn’t be prosecuted if the child is at an age (like a baby) or in a context (like a nudist camp) where nudity is socially acceptable, but the pics should be destroyed if the subject wants. People keep saying “what’s the big DEAL?” about nude pics of babies. Well, what’s the big DEAL if a few very rare, highly sensitive people decide they want their parents’ old pics destroyed? It’s highly unlikely that anyone would do this for pictures of themselves pre-puberty, unless there was actual sexual abuse involved. Those few cases where the subject is just being silly won’t outweigh the social value of making a firm standard about consent and preventing cases like this.

Does she have to show videotapes of what happened to her?

And are those videotapes sexual in nature? Do they show her private parts? Again, if not, then it’s not comparable.

Indeed, if there are nude photos of the child me in a shoe box in my parents’ closet, I dont’ see how that would hurt me.

That’s not even that unusual, with very small children, is it? Hence the classic embarassment of “naked baby photos”. I assume the difference is that nudists would have much older children and adolescents still going naked.

There are pictures of me nude, and topless, as a baby and child.  Are those child porn?  No, they are family snapshots.  If for some reason I wanted them destroyed, I’d destroy the ones I have, and my family members should give me their copies so I can destroy them, or cut my image out if others are in them.  But until then there’s nothing wrong with them.  It’s my decision, it’s me in the pictures.
Family snapshots of naturists are in the same category.  You don’t share them with others who wouldn’t already be seeing the same thing “live,” and when the subject becomes an adult the photos should be controlled by them.  But they are not a crime all by themselves.

That makes sense to me.

Again, parents don’t own the children, and shouldn’t be doing things that treat their children as a property interest for them to control.  Photographing them nude is such a thing.

I still think this is just because “we” think the nudist lifestyle is shady in the first place. If you truly, honestly, believe that hanging around nude is not a big deal, then taking photos of nude kids is not treating them as property any more than taking photos of kids with clothes on is. For example, imagine you grew up in a hot jungle where everyone went naked all the time and it was no big deal. Now imagine you had cameras. Why would it be a problem to take photos? Why should you run and put on clothes when there’s a camera if you don’t feel a need for them in the first place?

Having NOT grown up in such a hot jungle with no clothes, I am very uncomfortable with the idea of my parents being naked around me, or me being naked around them. But I recognize that that’s because of my cultural background. On the other hand, I have no problem with my parents seeing me in a swimsuit, or with the existence of family photos of me wearing a bathing suit at age 13, because that’s not a big deal in my cultural context. Someone from a different society (say, one with burquas) might think its a very dangerous thing to take photos of adolescent girls in swim suits. But I think that in the right context, its not a problem at all. So if you really truly have a nudist context, nude photos wouldn’t be an issue either. I just personally suspect that no one here really does love the idea of a nudist context, and that’s why they’re drawing the line so differently for that than they would for swim suits at the beach (a context we’re probably all fine with).

Anyway, I’m sorry, this has gotten very off-topic. I’ll reiterate again that I think that in any case, when the child grows up they should be the one to inherit photos of themselves, and do whatever they want with them, including destroy them.

@94 - That reminds me of why I hate modern art museums. “The confusion of the visitors is the art! See! Its art!!!”

Phylosopher, they may be the parents’ memories, but they’re the KID’S body, and no one owns the body of anyone else. End of story. If the kid objects, the only moral course is to destroy said pictures.

In the scientific world, there’s very strong precedent for throwing away information obtained in unethical fashion (sometimes that precedent is ignored, but it’s still there). The entire body of work done on nonconsenting subjects by citizens of a particular european country in 1939-1945 (I’m avoiding Godwin here) is pretty much off limits for citation. Some of that is an operational issue: lots of people were doing really nonscientific work with miserable experimental design and inaccurate recording of data, but most of it is a moral one: you become complicit by citation.

In the art world it’s harder to say “that’s not art” the same way you say “that’s not science”, but if anything that seems like a reason to err on the side of destruction. It’s not as if there’s a limited supply of exploitative things that call themselves artworks.

I’m interested in knowing if anyone knows about Jock Sturges and one of his models, Misty Dawn.  She was about four or five when he first took her picture, and there are photos of her from that age up to her twenties.  Nude photos.  Nothing Penthouse-style, at least not that got published, but nude.  And apparently, she’s okay with it.  I’ve seen a lot of his work, and it’s a bit odd to see nude children and adults on beaches and in streams, and there is something both beautiful in the freedom of their nudity but as an outsider I sometimes feel a bit pervy and envious.  But not really lustful, since they’re people.  Sure, it can be masturbated to, which is one definition of pornography.  But it can also be admired for its simple beauty.

Misty Dawn certainly didn’t have the same experience as Ms. Tamburlini (and the grand jury refused to indict Sturges when asked, since no one cooperated with the panel,) so it seems to go against the notions of those who say any images of naked children shouldn’t be taken.  For nudists, being naked is a natural state and no big deal.  And there are a lot of conservative nudists, even Christian nudists, out there.

Also, don’t look at the photo galleries in the Dr. Sommer section of www.bravo.de if you want to think that being ashamed of your genitals is a universal thing.  In German youth magazines, photo essays of genitals apparently are okay.  Social nudity in Germany is also common.  I don’t know if that makes all Germans sex-crazed monsters, but I bet it makes them have healthier attitudes toward their bodies than Americans have.

Just as a point of clarification, Sally Mann also worked carefully and with a psychologist when she created her photographs of her children. But if her children wanted the originals destroyed, I’d support them.

Let me guess, LR - you aren’t a parent?

Also, when institutions get an archive, part of the deal when they accept it is to preserve it.  That’s why NYU has its hands tied to some degree, since getting rid of something without cause (they seem to want to find a way out of this and are likely hoping that some part of the ownership will allow for this,) will make donors of archives less likely to give them to institutions that don’t preserve them in accordance to the donor’s wishes.

This case is different, but not ever donor of an archive would see it that way.  There’s a lot of money at stake, and librarians, archivists, and museum curators are hesitant to change their collection and retention policies for single instances.  Even when it’s deserved.  Breaking a contract just isn’t good business, which is why the lawyers will sort this out and allow everyone (with one notable exception) to save some face.

geogami what you are glossing is that very often those photos aren’t one child in isolation, nor are photos just documents of people - they can also be documents of events or relationships and one child’s right to destroy can conflict with another child’s right to cherish.

I still think this is just because “we” think the nudist lifestyle is shady in the first place. If you truly, honestly, believe that hanging around nude is not a big deal, then taking photos of nude kids is not treating them as property any more than taking photos of kids with clothes on is.

I think you’re right.  IANAN (I am not a nudist/naturist) but from what I understand, the entire point is to try and remove the association between sexuality and being nude/naked.  For a nudist/naturist, there is nothing inherently sexual about not wearing clothes and a lot of them point out that you barely even notice that everyone is naked after a day or two.  It’s just not a big deal anymore, and it certainly isn’t a big sex-fest with everyone ogling each other.

I could never do it because I sunburn way too easily but I do agree that there’s some value in trying to break the hysterical association our culture has between nudity and sex that leads to things like people freaking out because—OMG!—they saw a woman’s bare boobie when she breastfed her baby in public.

When it comes to photos and other recordings, that’s where I think consent comes in.  In fact, I would even go further than some people here and say that anyone can withdraw their consent at any time, even if you consented as an adult.

geogami what you are glossing is that very often those photos aren’t one child in isolation, nor are photos just documents of people - they can also be documents of events or relationships and one child’s right to destroy can conflict with another child’s right to cherish.

Yeah, you’re right. I was erring on the side of making it clear that I think that in the case of the OP, the daughter should have the right to those videos. When I said “inherit” I was mostly thinking about after the parents died, but you’re right that there could be other kids and relatives involved, etc, who might want to keep photos in general. I think that in general if there is nothing creepy or abusive about the relationship in the first place, all people involved have a right to keep photos of their lives and relatives and friends. I dunno about things like publishing them, though.

Personally, I’m the family photographer. I take tons of photos at family gatherings, all the time. I keep them all on my computer, and I post a lot of them to a semi-private website where only the people I give the password to can see them (basically my family and friends, the same people who would be able to see physical photos in my house). I try to weed out the unflattering ones before I post them, but if anyone doesn’t like a photo I posted of them I take it down (pretty much never happens). I was the one who decided to make it a private website—no one else actually seemed to have a problem with it being public, but I was worried about the possibility of stalkers or whatever, especially with photos of kids. I think that’s a pretty standard way to deal with family photos, and I don’t think its trying to own someone else’s body to have family photos of them.

Tangentially related hypothetical—teenagers are often hyper-embarassed about everything. If you are the parent of a teenager, and you take photos of them (not naked, just normal photos) and they hate them, should you be required to destroy the photos? What if they hate their baby pictures, or photos of themselves at age 5? Sure, in the short run don’t show them around to avoid upsetting the teenager, but should you destroy them? What if you think there are pretty good odds that they’ll change their mind later and when they’re 40 they’ll be happy to find pictures of themselves as a teenager and kid?

This is getting more and more off-topic. The original post is about something that really does sound like abuse, not innocent family photos of babies in the bathtub. This discussion got going because someone said nudists shouldn’t ever take nude photos of their families, but really, this discussion could be completely moved off into its own thread. Maybe there should be a separate discussion of the rights of people in general to own their own image in the most casual contexts, vs the rights of people to keep photos of their own memories of their family and friends. That discussion could be completely separated from any discussion of photography of abuse.

Let the daughter have them on the condition she burns them and gives NYU film of the event.

Now its art.

Consent, once given, was given.  It can be withdrawn, but it’s not okay to pose nude for someone and then demand that that person destroy his or her work.  It’s ethically okay to do so (heck, you can ask me to jump in a lake right now,) but the artist is under no obligation to respect the wishes of the model.  Contracts are contracts, even if there’s no paper.  In the case of Tamburli, that wasn’t consent and certainly isn’t now, so Mnemosyne’s rule can apply.  But in most cases, it’s a nice ethos but a genrally unworkable business model.

I’m a nudist, and it’s not considered okay to just run around taking pictures of strangers.  Public beaches and such get a bit overwhelmed with cellphone camera-bearing idiots who are there for their (usually deferred) sexual gratification, but actual nudist places with gates and such tend to not have many problems with consent issues.  Of course, with cell phones and such all having cameras, and the existence of small cameras, one can never be sure if there isn’t someone taking pictures.  Some women even take pictures in locker rooms, since there’s money to be made.  I worry less about my children at a nudist gathering than I do in the locker room at the Y.

The only way to be safe is to be okay with your naked image.  But since getting to that makes many if not most people feel like a victim, it’s not a solution.

But, just to give you a few more for instances.  What about this picture by Cassat? http://www.titalus.com/art/Hum113/Impressionism/Cassatt.jpg  Obviously a female topless picture before the age of consent.  If the now adult had felt violated - should it have been destroyed?  Or what about this one - heck, it’s probably been reproduced thousands of times.  http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Baby-And-Spaniel-Posters_i406277_.htm
Comment #76: phylosopher on 07/09 at 01:19 AM

Or what about the coppertone girl?  Or any of a zillion representations of Jesus as a baby, cupids, mannekin pis?

They. Are. Not. Sexual. In. Nature.

In sharp contrast, the Rivers material focuses on the secondary sexual characteristics of adolescents and how they feel about them.  If you read the article linked you find out that he told the girls that it was a record he was making for them, not for display.  So it was obtained under false pretenses and they were still very unhappy about it.

He’s a real gem:  “Rivers cast himself as something of a wild man, and in his 1992 autobiography, “What Did I Do?,” he chronicled, among other things, his heroin use, his effort to sleep with his mother-in-law and numerous affairs, including one, when he was in his 40s, with a 15-year-old girl.”

In either case, though, if the adult felt violated, yes, it should be destroyed.  But in most cases the adult won’t feel violated because the context is non-sexual.

As Mnemosyne has so well stated, there’s a linkage between nakedness and sex that is getting confused here.  Parent with naked child doesn’t mean parent having sex with child—we all know this or no one would ever give their child a bath.

geogami what you are glossing is that very often those photos aren’t one child in isolation, nor are photos just documents of people - they can also be documents of events or relationships and one child’s right to destroy can conflict with another child’s right to cherish.
Comment #108: phylosopher on 07/09 at 10:57 AM

I already addressed that way up there—black that child out of the picture with a Sharpie or Photoshop erase tool.  Cut him/her out of the photo or negative.  It’s not rocket science, the Soviets did it all the time.

Consent, once given, was given.

Without context, this statement seems like complete crap to me. You need not only completely uncoerced consent, but you need complete information about what’s being consented to. If someone proposes to make a use other than what was originally consented to, they need new consent, and if they barge forward anyway, it seems not unreasonable for them to lose all rights.

“I worry less about my children at a nudist gathering than I do in the locker room at the Y.”—me, above.

I meant “I’d”, since I’ve never taken my children to any nudist gathering.  Many others bring their children, but I’m there for me to be free with likeminded others.  We’re all as naked as we like at my house, but I think consent for public display is something of an entirely different nature and not something I want to ask of my children.

I have been creeped out a bit a the Y’s locker room at the way some men would look at them, but that’s probably because I work at a prison and can often think the worst of people.  TMI, maybe.  But that’s me.

From the rest of the post (the context), I think that meant that if you sign a serious model release saying that your photo can be sold, you can’t legally retract that later, as a matter of contract law. That’s pretty different than the cases we’re talking about of unspoken levels of consent among family and friends.

(Sorry, my post 116 was meant to be a reply to 114.)

paul, if you allow someone who asks you to do something to do that, then you’ve consented.  If you don’t want for that, then say “No” or ask for clarification.  “Complete crap”?  Not exactly.  Yes, give some people an inch and they’ll stab you in the eye with the ruler, but saying “No” is an available option.

geo, and old feminist - this isn’t getting off topic, it’s exactly the kind of discussion that needs to be had, because blanket statements like, “the rights to the photo belong to the photographee only and forever” are preposterous for many reasons.  The line between sexual in nature is also a fine one that requires a scalpel, not an axe.  This is an argument had ad infinitum between art/porn, but it’s an important one to have because it is a free speech issue, too. Mnemosyne has hit the problem squarely, IMO.

And no, photoshopping an individual out isn’t a solution.  It can destroy the entire meaning of a photo.  The photo can be much more about the relationship (non-sexual) or event/action than the individual.  Big bro or sis teaching little bro or sis something and they just happen, as in a nudist family, to be naked is meaningless if one is removed.

@119: Well, I don’t see people arguing that extreme. I see people quite reasonably arguing that photography of children is a special case where we should consider the retroactive right of a child in regards to media that may or may not have been produced with their full and informed consent.

There certainly is precedent for this, transfer of Urgh! A Music War! to digital media has been stalled for years because rights to documentary footage public performances of the bands involved need to be renegotiated from scratch. DVD release of Lathe of Heaven (1980) was stalled for years due to renegotiation of rights to use “With a Little Help from My Friends.” (The producers eventually reedited the film to use a lower-cost cover of the song.)

If transfer of a work to a different medium is sufficient to cause a reconsideration of rights, surely the fact that the model of a work has reached the age of majority should also be something to consider?

And especially when there is even a hint that the process of creating the photos involved a criminal act, the victims certainly should have a say in who can profit from them.

CBrach - so another dividing line is commercial use versus private use, or for profit versus non-profit.

One discussion is where to draw the line between photos that are sexually exploitative of children and photos that just happen to have naked children in them. Another discussion is whether or when or to what extent the subject of a photo has exclusive rights to dictate what happens to that photo no matter whether or not their reasons seem reasonable to most people.

I think that within families there are a lot of shades of grey. For example, when my little sister and cousins hit the awkward teenage years, they used to moan and groan at being asked to pose for family photos. I’d say something like “you’ll be happy to have these photos in 30 years” and they’d reluctantly smile for the camera. Now, it took much less than 30 years, and they are very happy to have those photos—they have posted a huge number of them on their facebook pages, and they love going through albums and remembering old family vacations and stuff. Of course, they weren’t naked and no one was trying to make money off the photos as “art”, but still. They didn’t really want their photos taken at the time, but other people around them wanted to cherish those memories, and as they grew up they found they wanted to cherish those memories too. Now, if my cousins have a falling out with each other as adults, should they have the right to insist that their cousins go through with a sharpie and black out their faces? Or should they remember that no one is publishing these, but people change their minds over time and even if they don’t like those photos now, maybe when they’re 75 they’ll be happy to find them in a box of memorabilia.

When I hit the awkward teenage years myself, a few years before that, I found some baby pictures of me naked in a bath. I hated the idea of those being around, and my mom told me that I was welcome to hide them but not to destroy them. I think that was a good way to handle it, because at the time I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see them, but now I’m glad they weren’t destroyed—I’m mature enough now not to be embarassed at having been a baby, and it preserves some adorable innocent moments. I certainly wouldn’t want to publish them publicly, but I’m glad they exist as part of our family photos. It would have been rash and short sighted of me as a teenager to destroy them.

(I meant to add at the top of that last post that I was going to stop talking about this, but since someone thought it wasn’t off-topic and was interesting, I’d say a bit more about it. Perhaps I should stop now, though.)

Asking for clarification doesn’t really help in an era of ever-changing technology. Tasini et al v. New York Times et al (no, first serial rights does not mean unlimited digital republication) would probably be the obvious cite for this.

In civilized countries, i.e. other than the US, the law on personal information is written so that the onus is on the collector/publisher, rather than on the person whose information is being used. I think that morally speaking the same should be true for things like photo and video: if there’s ambiguity in what the subject is consenting to, it should be resolved in the direction of minimal use, not maximal.

Man, fuck that noise.  I’d be planning the arson right now.

I think that morally speaking the same should be true for things like photo and video: if there’s ambiguity in what the subject is consenting to, it should be resolved in the direction of minimal use, not maximal.

and this is exactly what I was talking about when I said there was a danger of using arguments here in support of police state actions. No where in this statement does this qualify it as being about an abused girl simply pursuing the end of the physical recording of her abuse. Cell phone video of a cop shooting an unarmed, face down, handcuffed man is not consented to by that officer, and should be resolved in the direction of minimal use?

These films should be destroyed, but again, any attempt to draw wider moral or legal implications and setting precedent should be avoided for exactly this reason.

geogami, when you were a teenager, you were not yet an adult.  When you were mature enough to appreciate those baby snaps, you were an adult. 

phylosopher, I didn’t say anything was off topic.  I will say that the example we’re discussing above is blatantly on the side of “sexual pictures” given that they were taken to discuss the development of sexual secondary characteristics and how the girls felt about them and they were obviously embarrassed when it was taking place and they were partially mollified by being told it wasn’t for an artistic work but for their own viewing later.

There are times when there’s a question between “is this just cuteness, or is there a sexual element?”  This is not such a time.

Yes, people sometimes make mistakes and destroy things they later decide they’d rather not have destroyed.  Shit happens.  “The record” isn’t so all fired important that everything else must bow before it.  Destroying the whole meaning of a photo?  Too bad, if the person in it feels degraded by the photo.  Sometimes there’s no perfect happy solution. Someone shouts when you’re making your one great contribution to an argument, and then everyone goes home.

This feels like another “what about falsely accused rapists?” “I was just trying to be nice and she shut me down” situation.

Phylosopher, if it gets to the point where your adult child is demanding that every photo you have of them be destroyed, clearly your relationship is already hugely fucked up. Maybe the relationship should be repaired, maybe they should all get counseling or whatever, but what won’t improve the situation is the parents insisting that “screw the actual wishes of my actual child, I want this memory of a time I wasn’t a fuck up!”

Seriously, it’s not like some huge number of adults is going around trying to wipe out any trace of their childhoods—and if someone is trying to do that, I suspect their childhood was massively shitty, and therefore am entirely unsympathetic to the wishes of the people that so ineptly “parented” them.

Bagelsn - the second person “you” needs to be avoided so as not to inadvertently offend the reader.  But since YOU passive-aggressive self fairy clearly meant to offend -  eff off.  Like you’ve never heard of some kid becoming psychotic, “getting” religion, being in an abusive relationship etc.  And siblings arguing about parental possessions of the most trivial? 

Th conversation was interesting - but you’re a jackass.

Oldfem - you’re right - geo did.  Grouped post, sorry.  It’s a situation of blanket generalizations and black/white needing nuance.

In the scientific world, there’s very strong precedent for throwing away information obtained in unethical fashion (sometimes that precedent is ignored, but it’s still there).

I always think this is an interesting question, and not usually as clear-cut as Nazi “research” either. A coworker of mine has been reading a lot of semi-historical journal articles on a particular topic, and has been sharing with us some of the older and more bizarre experiments (“okay, so I guess that surgery did in fact fix the problem… but WHOA is that not the standard of care nowadays! Interesting data though…”)

What I think it really comes down to is consent and, to some extent, intentions. The researchers and doctors she is reading about obtained consent that was as meaningful as possible at the time and did everything in an attempt to actually help the people involved. I would not personally be supportive, for example, of one of the subjects saying “hey, the treatments are so much better now! Now I’m pissed I had X procedure! Take out my data!” but if they said “hey, no one ever explained to me what was going on and I never said it was okay. Now that I’ve learned more about it I’m still not consenting” then I might be more sympathetic.

The case in this post is a lot more like the latter example, but even worse, ‘cause the daughter specifically said “NO” rather than there just being an absence of “yes.” It’s not like she’s objecting to the quality of the video (“I would have wanted it digital!”) or how fat her ankles look in it and regretting giving permission after the fact, she is saying that she objected all along to this ever existing. That should be respected.

Oh, boo hoo, I’m obviously not a parent because I don’t understand the glorious parental love that makes people want to keep naked photos of their children without the kids’ consent? Please.

Karpad and others are missing the point when they bring up the issue of photographs of the *victimizer*, or photographs where there is nothing victimizing happening, or photographs which don’t include areas of the body that are generally considered intimate and “indecent.”

The issue isn’t that people always control pictures of themselves. The issue in this case is that she was victimized, and she has the right to control the record of that.

In cases where the child wasn’t victimized exactly, but there’s still a picture of their intimate parts, they do get to control that. In most cases where there isn’t sexual abuse, the kid will usually just let the parent keep the photo—or the parent will simply *respect* the kid’s desire to get rid of it.

You know, I’m looking at some of the examples listed here, and I can comment on all of them:

*The Larry Rivers case is indefensible. Clear evidence of coercion and a distinct creepiness in my book equate to sexual assault in some sense (I realize I was a bit wishy-washy above, but this is pretty definite). Give her the tapes, let her destroy them.
*The Misty Dawn/Jock Sturges thing is borderline, but there seems to be no coercion involved, which would put it in the naturist category as opposed to porn.
*The Bravo Magazine thing is just weird—it’s outside US cultural norms, but it seems like it’s probably okay, and the “That’s Me” feature may actually even be a good idea given the general problems with body image and sex ed ignorance. The sex photos I’m on the fence about—on the one hand, I believe teenagers should all be given a copy of Paul Joannides’ “Guide To Getting It On”, which may be one of the best general sex ed texts I’ve ever seen, but the actual sex guides are a little extreme and are probably better left to bookstore shelves.
*Roman Polanski: String the bastard up. The man fled the country to avoid a sentence that was lighter than what Lindsay Lohan is getting for a parole violation.

geogami, when you were a teenager, you were not yet an adult.  When you were mature enough to appreciate those baby snaps, you were an adult.

EightTEEN year olds are legally adults. And depending on the state, sixTEEN year olds can be legally emancipated and sue their parents.

Seriously, it’s not like some huge number of adults is going around trying to wipe out any trace of their childhoods—and if someone is trying to do that, I suspect their childhood was massively shitty, and therefore am entirely unsympathetic to the wishes of the people that so ineptly “parented” them.

Suppose the eighteen year old son or daughter joins a cult (insert cult horror stories here), ends up in an abusive relationship with another cult member, and end up being pressured into wanting the destruction of all record of a time when they were not in a cult. Should the parents have to destroy their photographs of a time before their child abandoned them and became a different person, even if they didn’t do anything wrong? To be less extreme, what if they join a fundamentalist religion that tells them that those photos of them wearing a t-shirt and shorts as a teenager are dirty and immodest and should be destroyed?

Suppose the child is paranoid schizophrenic and wants all photos destroyed because the aliens could get them, should the parents have to destroy baby pictures from before that child became schizophrenic?

If I hate a photo in my yearbook, from before I was legally an adult, do I have a legal right to contact every person who owns a copy of my yearbook and insist that they cross out my name and face with a sharpie, even if I provide no compelling reason other than that I want it done?

The issue isn’t that people always control pictures of themselves. The issue in this case is that she was victimized, and she has the right to control the record of that.

Right, but some people are talking about extending it beyond that scope, and that’s what we’re discussing now. I think that in this case the daughter has a right to insist on the destruction of this film, but I think its dangerous to say that that extends to any case that anyone wants a photo of themselves destroyed.

In most cases where there isn’t sexual abuse, the kid will usually just let the parent keep the photo—or the parent will simply *respect* the kid’s desire to get rid of it.

Its only the cases where people can’t agree that end up in court, so those are really only the ones at issue.

@phylosopher: Well profit wasn’t the right word to use there now that I bring it up. It should be noted that legal and ethical concerns regarding permissions often don’t have much to do with profitability.

@geogami:

If I hate a photo in my yearbook, from before I was legally an adult, do I have a legal right to contact every person who owns a copy of my yearbook and insist that they cross out my name and face with a sharpie, even if I provide no compelling reason other than that I want it done?

I think it’s more complex than that here. Do you have a right to rub out existing yearbook copies, I don’t think so. Do I think that you should have a say should Smurf Jones (a popular yearbook publisher) decide to use your yearbook photo for another purpose? Probably.

I think the fact that the film in question is part of an academic archive which presumably will be open to applications for research, future publication, and/or exhibition needs to be considered. These are not easy or convenient ethical decisions, and they’re ones that historians, photojournalists, and documentary filmmakers face.

geogami, I think it’s obvious that there will be tough questions in determining exactly where the line is drawn.  If pervy pictures of me as a child are shown on TV, do I have the right to go into everyone’s home and check to see if they made a recording of that picture and destroy their tapes or dvds? 

I don’t think so, but I believe I should damn sure be able to keep the people who made that show from broadcasting that part again.

And if one of those people puts it up on YouTube, I believe I have the right not only to get it taken down, but to have their copy seized.

It’s all on a sliding scale. 

The problem with having it in an archive is, who will watch the watchers?  It’s not like people who work in archives and pervy people are a disjoint set.  I’d be concerned someone might breach archival security and copy it—and if they copied it, then it would end up distributed, because child porn enthusiasts tend to like to share.  This is how private pictures of celebrities end up in the tabloids or on the web.

I think the example above is rather clear—the person wasn’t really consenting even at the time of filming, but was too young to say no.  The person who gave consent for her was the person benefiting from the filming.  The content is obviously sexual.  And the person who was filmed still wants it destroyed.  There’s really nothing on the side of “don’t destroy it” aside from “it’s Art” and/or “it’s part of the Complete Record.”

And again, most any nimrod with a camera thinks he’s doing Art.  That doesn’t mean it’s immune from being treated as child porn. 

The whole concept of “redeeming social value” is probably bankrupt.  It was developed when the idea of showing naked boobies was “sinful” and “smutty” and therefore we had to offset that with some moral or artistic component. 

Again this is mixing sexuality and nudity with victimization.  It’s as if no naked picture could not include victimization, therefore we had to balance it with some positive value that society would gain from the victimization.  Bleah.

phyl,
I reread my comment and realized it was poorly written (late night or early morning, sorry). I understand that homophobia makes it difficult for male victims to come forward. There is definitely a stigma. I didn’t mean to dismiss that. I stuck my hetero privilege my mouth.

But my original point still stands. Because of that stigma, most people understand that it’s difficult for a male victim to come forward after years of silence. He’s generally taken at his word. Who would lie about that? So the stigma is still there but you wouldn’t see the MSM asking if he’s a perv or a liar or responsible for the other victims of his abuser. But women can face accusations, recriminations, guilt, shame and outright dismissal for coming forward as an adult by those same people (please see my examples above) or media outlets.

Like you’ve never heard of some kid becoming psychotic, “getting” religion, being in an abusive relationship etc.

I can honestly say I’ve never heard of a kid “becoming psychotic” (and my wording is objectionable?) or “getting religion” or being in an abusive relationship and then promptly hunting down every one of their childhood photos for destruction. Maybe there’s a huge epidemic of that going around in your parts, but I can’t imagine it’s very common.

In fact, I would argue that it’s sufficiently uncommon (as opposed to depressingly common bad and abusive parents) that we should assume that a person who has a problem with their family probably has a legitimate complaint, rather than default immediately to dismissing them with various vaguely ableist claims of psychoses and cults.

I can honestly say I’ve never heard of a kid “becoming psychotic” (and my wording is objectionable?) or “getting religion” or being in an abusive relationship and then promptly hunting down every one of their childhood photos for destruction.

But if it becomes common knowledge that everyone has a legal right to do that, then maybe they would. People are thinking about the potential unintended consequences of legal precedents, even if we aren’t sure whether such a thing has ever happened before.

It is not, for example, that unusual for someone to destroy photos after breaking up with a significant other, even if there was nothing fundamentally abusive or wrong about the relationship. The impulse exists, and if it were easier to get back photos from other people, people might do it more often.

Would, or how would, these comments change if Larry Rivers were Loretta Rivers, artist and the mother of Ms. Tamburlini, who made the films?

Late to reply, but my comments don’t change.  There are plenty of women who are happy to be misogynists for shits and giggles. 

Doesn’t matter if it’s Larry or Laura Rivers.  S/he abused the daughter by making this film.  The film itself is the crime.  The victim wants it destroyed.

This should not be a question.  It should be destroyed.

It’s as if no naked picture could not include victimization,

OF, I know you’re usually sloppy with your thinking, but 2 seconds of thought can come up with examples that do not include victimization.

You continue to unimpress.

Wow, Eric_RoM, I wasn’t saying that no naked picture could not include victimization.  Sloppy reading FTL.

I was saying that the “redeeming social value” idea (you know, the idea that porn is okay if it has it) assumes that sex and nudity are by definition victimization, and therefore there has to be some countervailing socially redeeming value to, you know, redeem it.

I only read half the comments, because there are a lot and I’m dying in this heat, but let me just say that while I agree with the majority of you that the emotional and physical needs of a survivor of abuse outweigh whatever social/historical/artistic/scientific benefits the material may possess, I think Nolo was perfectly reasonable in outlining her positions in a sane, thoughtful manner, and that perhaps calling her a “feckless dick” isn’t entirely fair.

I happen to be dating a lawyer, and it’s sometimes very frustrating that he thinks so differently from the way that I do, but there’s always a good reason.

That said, Nolo, I don’t see why, in the big scheme of things, this one video is so important. I’m an art history major, and maybe it speaks to how little I’ve studied the subject (mostly pre-1900) but I’ve never even heard of this guy. If he’s done something really incredible apart from this video, is it really so terrible that he be known for that while his daughter has the peace of mind necessary to live the rest of her life? As long as the contents of the video are uncontested by the scholars and archivists who have inevitably already watched it, is it really necessary to keep it in the record? Don’t police, for instance, destroy evidence after a certain amount of time?

The Holocaust is an exceptional case, because it doesn’t exactly happen every day (I know, I know, there are modern examples of genocide). Children, on the other hand, are abused by their parents every day. We don’t need a record of it every time it happens.

I suppose Caren thinks that a private subject of any video should have the reason to sweep it under the rug.

The video isn’t the crime.  The crime happened.  In the past.  Destroying the video won’t make things better or worse for her or her children.  The topic will come up, existence of the video or no.

If there’s no video, future fans of her father can paint her as a vindictive child, upset with her father’s whatever.  If there is a video, but locked away, those fans will have to face that she wasn’t able to purge his crimes from his record.

It seems that some people are working from the assumption that the filmmaker and not the people in the film have an exclusive interest in its cultural legacy. I don’t think that’s a safe assumption to make (it’s an assumption we don’t make regarding concert video for example), and I’ll stand by my claim that as a participant in the film, Tamburlini should have a say in its preservation.

It seems that some people are working from the assumption that the filmmaker and not the people in the film have an exclusive interest in its cultural legacy.

It’s not an assumption, it’s how intellectual property rights work. The people “in” a film (or photograph) do have certain rights over how their image is used (you can’t use it to sell or promote something without their permission, for example), but they do not have a claim of ownership over the piece, no matter how big a scumbag the creator was, or how big a crime it documents. Obviously she has a reasonable claim of ownership of the thing for other reasons, but not because it contains her image.

It is not, for example, that unusual for someone to destroy photos after breaking up with a significant other, even if there was nothing fundamentally abusive or wrong about the relationship. The impulse exists, and if it were easier to get back photos from other people, people might do it more often.
Comment #139: geogami on 07/09 at 05:31 PM

And it’s also not as if siblings never use inheritance issues to get back @ other sibs for childhood squabbles.  (I’d be interested to hear what Tamburlini’s sister wants done.) I’ve witnessed some pretty vindictive shit happen at estate dispersals.  Like vases smashed because another sib wanted it, buttugly worthless “paintings” causing people to swear not to speak to each other….  and honestly, before that, you would have thought these folks were tightknit family first types.  Sometimes, it goes back to that shortly after the blow up, and they all lame it on the stress of the parents death. 

So sorry back there Bagelson, that bifurcation between perfect family and dysfunctional lowlifes is an untenable one.

If there’s no video, future fans of her father can paint her as a vindictive child, upset with her father’s whatever.

And this woman doesn’t even realize we should care more about what these imaginary people might think after she’s dead than what she thinks, right now!  What a dumb bitch.  Thank god you’re here to look after her interests. 

I always figure concern trolling a child abuse survivor was in bad taste.  Live and learn.

As an NYU film alumna and documentary filmmaker, I am absolutely outraged that NYU is not immediately handing over the footage and film to the daughter.  Although we were taught to push the envelope in our filmmaking, we were also taught to respect the subject.  Keeping it in the archives goes against NYU’s values.  Art or not, legal rights or not- if a girl was unwillingly filmed in a manner that may be construed as sexual and asked intimate questions at a time when she could not legally or morally consent, then the right thing to do is return the footage immediately.  Period.

And it’s also not as if siblings never use inheritance issues to get back @ other sibs for childhood squabbles.  (I’d be interested to hear what Tamburlini’s sister wants done.) I’ve witnessed some pretty vindictive shit happen at estate dispersals.  Like vases smashed because another sib wanted it, buttugly worthless “paintings” causing people to swear not to speak to each other….  and honestly, before that, you would have thought these folks were tightknit family first types.  Sometimes, it goes back to that shortly after the blow up, and they all lame it on the stress of the parents death.

So sorry back there Bagelson, that bifurcation between perfect family and dysfunctional lowlifes is an untenable one.
Comment #147: phylosopher on 07/09 at 11:31 PM

So what?  It’s not like people don’t call each other and say horrible things—do we then make it so people can’t call each other?

I’m not stating that a person who has a nude picture of me before I was of age has no legal right to keep it.  I’m saying what I believe, morally, should be my right to ask for it back and get it.  This case is so much further out than that, I think it’s pretty clear what should hapen, regardless of the legal issues.

All those people saying, you’ll regret it later, what about your kids wanting to see pictures of you, what about The Record?  That’s all perfectly legitimate stuff to say to the person.  As you’re handing over the video/pictures/whatever.

I do not want to live in a society where everything you do is limited by the public good.  Especially where “you” always seems to turn out to be female.  This has always been my argument against deciding on when an abortion is “correct” based on external factors like, was she raped, is she poor, disabled, the “wrong” color, or unmarried.  It is perfectly within anyone’s rights to describe the conditions under which you think an abortion makes sense, but it is not right to impose those values on someone else.

I basically cosign oldfeminist’s response @150. I would love to come up with a solution that was foolproof against people being assholes, but I can’t. I still think that it’s better to err on the side of protecting victims of abuse rather than worrying about cousins doing douchey things with their inheritances—clearly even without control over photos they can be douchey, right? I can’t stop that.

It’s not like I’m saying SWAT teams should be legally required to descend on the owners of photos with unhappy subjects, just that I think that being a child at some point in your life should not negate all future consent issues—if your child is really genuinely upset about a photo you have of them they probably generally have a reason for that, even if it’s not one you think is a “good” reason.

(And, on a side note, I would appreciate if you would try to spell my name correctly, phylosopher. It’s not a huge deal but you’ve spelled it something like 3 different ways on this thread so far…)

“I do not want to live in a society where everything you do is limited by the public good.”
OldFeminist @ 150

Fuck yes.  I do not have a “I got mine so screw everybody else” attitude, but I also refuse to compromise on things such as my right to ownership of my own body, or my right to not be punished for being a burden because I have ADHD and aspergers syndrome and depression and intrusive thought patterns that paralyse me with fear and shame (not literally, but that is how it feels) multiple times a day and I tend to end up in tears at least once a day, just because some people who are not in the situation I’m in have total empathy fail and want to condemn me as a worthless eater (note I would never refer to anyone this way), because sometimes I don’t organise myself well enough or don’t manage to do as much work around the house as everybody else does.  I’m trying, but right now my brain doesn’t even seem to work properly, it’s so stuck in destructive patterns that I can’t pull myself together all that well.  Again with the not making my point very well.

Anyway, while I’m not going to comment on everything in the thread because it’s late at night and I want to just hook up the TV that was bought down from the attic and watch the end of the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland followed by the Wizard of Oz on fuzzy old VHS, I absolutely defend the daughter’s right to ownership of the child porn in which she was forced to take part, if the father was still living and the film or photos were being used as evidence by the police to convict him then that’d be another matter so long as they were destroyed afterwards, but he’s dead and cannot sexually or otherwise abuse anyone else so if the only arguments are “it’s a record of his behaviour” and “it’s art”...

...if it’s about knowing what he did, then a written description should suffice, and if it’s about preserving his daughter’s reputation as a teller of truth then SHE wants them destroyed, ie. she clearly thinks/feels it more important that the images of her abuse not be viewed by anyone else than that in the future there will be indisputable evidence that she is telling the truth, and if someone is making porn/art/whatever featuring film/photos of somebody being raped then even if they can be convinced to change their appalling behaviour, I doubt that this footage will be THE ONE AND ONLY MAGICAL SPARKLING GOLDEN BEACON OF REASON that makes them reconsider.  And even if it could potentially make them reconsider, IT’S CHILD PORN, and one of the last people I’d want viewing it is someone who MAKES RAPE/CHILD/OTHER SEXUALLY ABUSIVE PORN.

As for “it’s art”, IT’S CHILD PORN, not to mention that if that’s the argument used then you could call any child porn art.  Just because someone’s an artist who has some works that are famous, doesn’t mean they are incapable of making child porn, no matter how artistic it might be.

I too agree that it misses the point to argue about whether this counts as “art.”  I’m generally bothered when people try to put a marker on what is or isn’t art, even when the thing they’re defining as “not art” is something I consider abhorrent - just because I think it’s a very slippery slope.  I remember in a high school philosophy class when we were each asked to define what we thought of as art, some of the truly stupid answers some of my classmates came up with (“it’s art if it makes me feel happy”) which, as a modern composer, sort of shocked me into realizing just how close some people are willing to draw the line.  So I feel like with something like this, the argument about it either being or not being art can really derail a conversation that, as you said, should be about the fact that it’s abhorrent - and the larger question of why our culture has decided that “art” is a legitimate excuse to do some pretty horrible things.

I remember how a few years ago, there was this wave of Facebook groups about this artist in Nicaragua who was supposedly starving a stray dog as a part of an “art exhibit.”  It turned out it was nothing of the kind; he was indeed feeding it, the dog only looked starving in the videos because that’s how it was when he found it earlier that day.  Personally, while I was skeptical from the first time I heard about that urban legend, I think it’s perfectly understandable why people were willing to buy into it. Child abuse was and is tolerated under the banner of “art” in Rivers’ case, so is it that much of a stretch to believe that animal abuse could be as well?  I’m troubled by the mistrust people have toward modern artists that they believe such a thing could happen, but it’s not like there isn’t precedent backing it up.

Erda @ 153 Just to clarify, I wasn’t saying that this isn’t art, I was just saying that regardless of whether it’s art or not it’s child porn and that is the important point, I agree with you that it’s redundant to say something isn’t art just because it’s disturbing, or worse, it’s creation/production involved/it features the violation of someone’s rights, I also agree with you that calling something art doesn’t excuse any violating of anyone’s rights or promotion of prejudice or other objectionable things that the artist did to produce it or mean that it’s wrong to have it be destroyed/not shown to anyone in such cases (at least I think that’s what you were saying?)

I also agree with you that calling something art doesn’t excuse any violating of anyone’s rights or promotion of prejudice or other objectionable things that the artist did to produce it or mean that it’s wrong to have it be destroyed/not shown to anyone in such cases (at least I think that’s what you were saying?)

To some extent.  Subjects of art having their basic rights violated to make the art is grounds for removing it.  Viewer squeamishness is not.  So while I agree that the videos here should be destroyed, I would have to quite strongly disagree with you that something like “promotion of prejudice” is grounds for censorship.  Not just because I think any piece of art has multiple dimensions, and a work with a problematic message can have other merits, such as in technique (the film Birth of a Nation and Wagner’s operas come to mind), but also because I think censorship is a really stupid and counterproductive way to engage with ideas you find objectionable.  What’s much better is to explain why the ideas are so abhorrent.  To censor it will just arouse curiosity (didn’t they used to say that calling something “banned in Boston” meant everyone would want to see it?)

What makes the Larry Rivers case exceptional to my general rule of “censorship is always unjustified” has to do with how it was made, not the message it sends.  This goes for child porn in general; it isn’t the fact that they’re making fetish material for sick fucks, it’s the fact that they’re harming living, breathing children in order to do it.  Likewise with anything involving animal abuse or otherwise harming unwilling participants.  When the issue is just the message, I will always disagree with censorship because I think that just about any message is objectionable to somebody, so allowing people to draw the line somewhere introduces a rather slippery slope.  (That being said, the Supreme Court’s line of “inciting violence” makes a lot of sense.)

Erda @ 155 I meant to post again and amend what I said, I agree that promotion of prejudice isn’t grounds to censor or ban a work, I accidentally forgot to separate out the part where I was saying what I thought should be illegal and what I thought was unacceptable and shouldn’t be excused from criticism on the basis that it’s art.  I just couldn’t think how to put what I was trying to say yesterday.  I’m actually strongly opposed to censoring something because of the message it sends (unless it can legitimately be said to be inciting assault, whether of individuals or through terrorist methods such as bombing abortion clinics), I’m in disagreement with the new laws in several countries making “virtual child porn” illegal, because as far as I’m concerned, a drawing is a drawing, even if it is of something really horrible, not to mention that such laws can be used as an excuse to ban any drawing of a legal minor being sexual in a manner that is about them, on their own terms and even drawn by someone of the age or thereabouts of the character in the drawing.  When I was thirteen, I would definitely have drawn pictures of people that age naked if I wasn’t so scared of my sister/parents finding them, as I understand it it’s even illegal to write stories about underage characters in explicit sexual situations in… I think it was New Zealand.  Do I want drawings of 5 year olds being raped to exist?  No.  Do I actually want it to be made illegal for said drawings to exist, particularly considering that that could lead to someone found with them being watched to make sure they don’t draw anything or possibly imprisoned when they didn’t violate anyone’s rights at all?  Super ultra mega no.

Okay, so I see we’re on the same page.  (I also am really bothered by bans on drawings of child porn, even though the material, obviously, bothers me much as it does you.  I agree with you that the law would likely be abused, a conclusion which I feel is proven by how current child porn laws are abused to punish teenagers for “sexting.”)