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If prohibition produces or escalates desire in the realm of sexuality generally, is there anything about child pornography law that would make it particularly vulnerable to this perverse dynamic? Sociological literature suggests the answer is yes: The social climate of anguish over child sexual abuse, and the expanding laws of child pornography that
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express and reflect this anguish, have made children all the more
sexually alluring.
The classic sociological work on the nature of taboo and
transgression is Kai T. Erikson's Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of
Deviance.
[230] Erikson writes that "deviant behavior [seems] to appear in a
community at exactly those points where it is most feared."
[231] Explaining the paradox by which "many of the institutions designed to
discourage deviant behavior operate in such a way as to perpetuate it,"
[232] he writes:
Any
community which feels jeopardized by a particular form of behavior will impose
more severe sanctions against it and devote more time and energy to the task of
rooting it out. At the same time, however, the very fact that a group expresses
its concern about a given set of values often seems to draw a deviant response
from certain of its members. There are people in any society who appear to
"choose" a deviant style exactly because it offends an important value
of the group... .
[233]
Erikson's theory indicates that the heated anxiety we have
exhibited about child pornography makes it more inviting to criminal violation.
As he explains, deviant behavior manifests itself in perfect symmetry to social
fears, lending a "self-fulfilling prophetic" quality to the
community's apprehensions.
[234] An early history of Puritan culture explained the self-generative quality
of fear: "Their troublers came precisely in the form and shape in which
they apprehended them." [235]
concern over children's sexual vulnerability had
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reached a frenetic pitch: Knox v. United States had been decided
the previous year. Senator Orrin Hatch had just introduced the legislation that
was to become the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. [236] Congress had just passed the Communications Decency Act - since
declared unconstitutional - aimed to protect children from the dangerous sex
available on the Internet.
In July 1995, Time magazine featured a frightening and much criticized cover story detailing the sexual threat to America's children posed by new technology. [237]
(Commentators assailed the magazine for giving in to cultural hysteria; Time printed a retraction the following week.)
Also
in July 1995, the FBI made news when it began investigating a ring of child
pornographers on America Online.
[238] At the very height of this panic, in August 1995, Calvin's Klein's new
multimillion dollar "kiddie porn" jeans campaign emerged on buses and
TV ads.
The campaign looked like fetish photographs of a pedophile. In one
image, a pubescent girl spreads her
legs to reveal white cotton panties under her short skirt. In the TV ads, the
teenagers seem to be tricked into auditioning for a part in a pornographic
movie.
[239] A critic called it "the most profoundly disturbing campaign in TV
history."
[240]
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frenzy. It was a staggering success. The campaign dramatically increased sales of Calvin Klein jeans. [242]
The
cancelled ads became hip collectors' items. Amidst all the government and media
focus on child pornography, it seems as if such an ad campaign were predestined;
it searched out and violated the hottest taboo. After all, jeans sell the image
of the sexual outlaw. Like a cool teenager, Calvin Klein sold the swagger of
saying nothing scared him, certainly not the sexual threat that preoccupied
policymakers. He defied authority and gained instant credibility with rebellious
kids.
[243]
Strange as it may seem, the Calvin kiddie pornography campaign exemplifies a recent pattern.
A cultural critic writes of the "ubiquitous eroticization of little girls in the popular media and the just as ubiquitous ignorance and denial of this phenomenon." [244]
For
example, fashion celebrates the "waif look" to the point where even a
mainstream magazine like Vogue was accused in the popular press of peddling
kiddie porn.
Pop star sensation Britney Spears rose to fame by dressing up as a naughty
schoolgirl and dancing provocatively in her uniform.
[245]
The Village Voice describes the increasing demand for models who look like little girls: The modern ideal has "the face of a child, while her engorged red lips suggest readiness for penetration. Her boyish body heightens the illusion of the fuckable child." [246]
Not only fashion, but even network news uses sexy children. Three years after the death of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, her preternaturally sexual figure still minces eternally on prime time television in full makeup and a revealing outfit. Decrying the seemingly endless - not to mention needless footage that aired "every, every night" for months after the murder, CBS news anchor
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Dan Rather condemned the TV industry for repeatedly airing pictures
that "border on kiddie porn." [247]
The child as sexual subject has emerged as a major force in artistic culture. [248] Best-selling, high-art photographer Sally Mann takes erotic nudes of her prepubescent children. A recent photograph of Mann's daughter entitled "Venus After School" pictured the naked child languorously spread on a divan in the precise position of Manet's famous portrait of a prostitute. [249]
One of the most disturbing and well-known art photographers, Larry Clark, who documents the lives of drug addicted and violent teenagers, takes photographs which, one could argue, easily meet the definition of child pornography. [250] For example, the title of the close-up photograph "Prostitute Gives Teenager His First Blow Job" speaks for itself.
Ironically,
at the same time Sally Mann and Larry Clark are so vulnerable to censorship,
[251] it is essential to note their commercial and critical success. Mann's
shows sell out. Larry Clark has been embraced by the film industry.
[252] Mann's and Clark's renown, coupled with their legal vulnerability,
suggests the complex relationship between legal prohibition and artistic
popularity.
As rhetoric rises about the threat of sexual abuse, as we insist more than ever on the natural innocence of children, as we expand the definition of what constitutes child sexual conduct, the seductive child beckons to us in advertising, fashion, pop culture, and art.
In fact, some scholars argue that modern society is perverse and pedophiliac, that pedophilia has become "such an everyday
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part of our lives that we hardly notice it."
[255] Some feminists have gone so far as to argue that given our culture, we
should no longer label the person who sexually abuses children as a pervert;
rather such a person is behaving according to "normal" masculine
sexual culture.
[256]
Yet, even if we assumed that child pornography law has succeeded at this task, it seems that its target has mutated and gone mainstream. Whatever the law's success in stamping out the "low-profile, clandestine industry" of kiddie porn, child pornography law has presided over a period in which the sexualized marketing of children has stepped into the light of day. [258] Given what we know of desire, sexuality, and deviance, the law may have unintentionally fueled this trend.