Where Were You When the Jackboots Came?
“Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don’t tell them anything.”
-Dr Hunter S. Thompson
When a squadron of jackboot police officers raids an inner-city art gallery without reason or justification on the basis of a phone call from a crazed zealot with hate in her blinkered eyes, we had all better take flight and find a safe place for cover. Like Iceland. Or Crete. Or rural Japan, somewhere in the mountains among the rice paddies, where the tentacles of the Himmler doppelgangers don’t quite stretch.
Police walking out of an art gallery with newly-confiscated works could have been seen in Germany circa 1938. Unfortunately for all of us, it was seen in Australia in this, the Year of Our Lord 2008.
Last Friday, New South Wales police officers stormed the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Paddington and seized a number of Bill Henson’s art works. The photographs, some featuring naked and semi-naked teenagers, were hauled from the building by an institution that has, for the most part, operated without accountability throughout its existence. Despite the fact Henson’s photographs have been displayed across Australia and the world in some of the most renowned galleries, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, for over fifteen years, the New South Wales police decided to chase him like a jackrabbit and ensure he was mired in obtuse accusations of being a child pornographer.
Presumably, the New South Wales police force has conferred the right of artistic censorship on itself and is prepared to use force to solidify this power.
Not only has Henson been critically lauded for his attempts to show beauty in adolescence, a stage in life often associated with awkwardness, but he has undertaken the very noble pursuit of breaking down teenage stereotypes and generalisations. Henson, like artists for time immemorial, has used the human body. His focus for the latter part of his career has been adolescence and as a result he has used the teenage body. He has done so with the consent of both the model and the parents of same and has included them all in the artistic process. There has been no public complaint from either model or parent and more importantly, there have been plenty who have come out in defense of Henson after the jackboots came down on his balding skull.
To imply Bill Henson is a child pornographer and that those displaying his photographs are peddlers is nothing short of sickening. To actively pursue Henson and the exhibitors through legal channels is a rabid act of censorship and public smearing.
To quote the Good Doctor once more, “it is pure and savage terrorism reminiscent of Nazi Germany”.
Equally appalling as the pursuit of Henson is the uninformed popular support the state is receiving for their brutal attack on the freedom of expression. One probably shouldn’t be surprised. That is populism, of course, and anyone who wants to argue otherwise is a fool and the perfect prototype to be suckered in by the tabloid newspapers, talkback radio jockeys and morning television presenters. There is a striking correlation between those who support such brutal censorship and those who read the Daily Telegraph, listen to John Laws (or whoever has replaced him in the hearts and minds of those who like to be told what to think) and believe David Koch is anything more than a Machiavellian publicity junkie who would eat the heart of his co-host if it would boost ratings. As all these icons of the Fourth Estate always do, they prayed on base fears. Ye Gods, even members of my immediate family were wild with anger after reading my first public defense of Henson. When members of your own family condone such a brutal infringement on individual rights, there is plenty to be scared about.
The issue here, of course, is censorship by the state. It is not, as those from government and those generating the populist campaign would have you believe, child pornography. Child pornography is about the sexual exploitation of children. No child was exploited and the works can hardly be considered in anyway sexual. Condemnation of child pornography is virtually universal and rightly so. To suggest the issue in the Henson case is child pornography is not only hopelessly simplistic but intentionally insulting to those defending Henson and the right to free expression.
By allowing the state to censor Henson, we have essentially assisted in the further erosion of our rights to free expression. Even though all the likely charges will be dismissed- in the words of NSW Law Society President Hugh Macon “the Crimes Act requires two things- an intention and an act, the act is usually fairly easily established but if the intention is to produce a work of art and solely to produce a work of art, then I cannot see how a crime has been committed”- the consent of many Australians in the public lynching of Henson has given the state further license to determine what grown adults can say and do. By succumbing to the fears targeted and evoked by the populist campaign, we have essentially waived part of our rights as individuals. Regardless of whether you enjoy Henson’s work or you don’t, the simple fact of the matter is that it has a right to be shown. By shutting him down and impounding pieces of art, not only are Henson’s right to free expression revoked but the rights of every Australian to view his art are also taken out back and stomped on like a card counter in the backrooms of low-rent Reno casinos.
It is very easy to dismiss the Henson case as being another instance of the art world being out-of-touch. If a move was made to censor sport, I dare say the outrage may be more widespread. Pandemonium would ensue if rugby league was shutdown for being too violent or soccer was banned for being too distasteful to the senses.
The bow drawn is not that long. In Vichy France, rugby league was outlawed for four years during World War II. Rugby union officials were well versed in right-wing politics and managed to obliterate the competition with their connections in the new government. Rugby league was prohibited; assets valued at between 3 to 6 million francs were taken from the French Rugby League Federation and handed to rugby; force was used in the confiscation of everything from grounds to the kits of junior players. Coupled with Australia’s sorry history of censorship that has seen books like Joyce’s Ulysses and Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint banned, copies of Catcher in the Rye seized by customs officials and movies like Ken Park blacklisted, it is not a long stretch to suggest that by allowing the state to censor art based on taste that the same thing could happen to sport.
We are, of course, a way off seeing any particular sport prohibited in Australia. But we are not as far from the finish as some may think. The path we tread is certainly headed in that direction. We have allowed the state to use force to reaffirm their belief that they have the right to dictate taste. Just because it happened in the world of art does not mean that sports fans won’t one day feel the whip cracking heavily. And by then, the path will all of a sudden be closed in every direction and there will be no recourse but acceptance.
And writers with an offbeat kink and a sharp way with words, who may occasionally dive into the realms of vulgarity, violence, drug abuse, petty crime, strange sexual acts, political subversion and high literature in their much-loved screeds, well, they will be a very rare breed indeed.
We should all be ashamed to be Australian today. We have willingly handed over part of our right to free speech by accepting ludicrous state censorship of artistic works. The line has in the sand has been moved and it is the state who has staked claim to more territory and the individual who has given it up. Fear and outrage are the only emotions with any currency in these parts and it is well worth considering the housing market in Reykjavik if freedom is a notion you believe in.