In Which Panties Are Twisted Unnecessarily

[beautifulduckweed]

Photographer takes candy from babies, creates art from pictures of reactions.

I'm not sure what it says about me that I found most of the pictures amusing rather than upsetting. I think part of it's knowing the reason why they're crying, and part of it's the fact that they're obviously clean, well-fed, cared-for kids getting their pictures taken in a studio somewhere in California. I mean, c'mon. The kids weren't beaten--they just had a lollipop taken away from them. Chrissakes, people. By ANY standard, if that's the worst thing the kid cries about all day, the kid's having a great fucking day.

Some people, however, have become so indignant over Greenberg's work that they've done some pretty tasteless things, like call her "sociopathic publicity whore" and "cunt," and perhaps worst of all, use multiple exclamation marks to indicate how very, very disgusted they are with the artist, because as everybody knows, mo' exclamation points = mo' betta.

(Link courtesy of Kate Rothwell.)

This disproportionate ire is symptomatic of the way certain cultures have put children on this weird pedestal. "Think of the children!" exemplifies the desire to simultaneously elevate and insulate our kidlets from, well, everything. Look, there's minor adversity, and then there's abuse. In fact, here's a quick LJ poll to see if you're able to differentiate between minor adversity vs. abuse:

[Poll #779720]

Now, mind you, I'm not saying that what Greenberg's doing is great art, or that her methods are completely kosher. There's something a bit squidgy about the fact that she's making kids cry in a controlled setting and then taking the pictures. The photos are certainly gorgeous, but I don't think they're eliciting in me the reaction she intended. Instead of thinking "Oh, look at the pain and suffering of the wee 'uns! O the trenchant commentary on our political situation and the morally retarded policies of George W. Bush!!!!" I'm thinking "These kids are awfully photogenic and awfully hilarious."

And frankly, given the stated purpose of the exhibit (to provide commentary on the current political landscape or some shit like that) I can't help but think that this exhibit would've been a lot more effective if the photographer had, y'know, travelled to places where the kids are crying over things much, much bigger than a freakin' lollipop, like the loss of a parent, or a home, or a limb. God knows there are more than enough children in this world who are crying over things a whole hell of a lot more serious than the loss of some candy.

(It might be interesting to divorce pictures of crying children from context and seeing if people can tell the difference between a child crying over a lollipop vs. a child crying over something much more serious.)

(Am I being exceptionally cold-blooded, even for me, to suggest this sort of experiment?)

On the other hand, presenting grief over a lost lollipop as a legitimate comparison to much more serious suffering provides some pretty sharp (if unintentional) commentary on the American conception of pain and suffering. Consumer-licious!

Comments

[rat-bastird.livejournal.com]

freaking crybabies :)

Babies should be eaten, not heard.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

Babies are not playthings, they're cocaine-smuggling implements.

[rat-bastird.livejournal.com]

ooohhhh! That's a good idea! Then you get a nice high when you eat them too!

mmm i'm really hungry right now. time for dinner!

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

There's a lot going on here (but it's really slow at work right now, so I might be able to address some of it ;-) ):

First of all, I think that your criticism over the "think of the children!" rhetoric, though entirely justified, is slightly misplaced: that kind of reasoning, as it is so often used and abused by knee-jerk liberals and conservatives alike today, is not (to me, at least) offensive because it places too high a value on caring for children. A society should have no higher priority than caring for its children. It's offensive because it equates caring for children with sheltering children from anything that the speaker finds offensive. It generally is used to try to suppress and hush up anything that might expose children to unconventional, rebellious, or lurid influences, as well as anything with the remotest chance of causing harm. Clearly, if the children are ever allowed to see a naked person or a depiction of sexuality, to experiment with any sort of drugs, or to witness people living in ways not condoned by their parents' sensibilities, their little souls will be corruped on the instant. That's offensive.

Another meaning, which I take to be closer to yours, is that anything that hurts children must be prevented. This also has the potential to be absurd - think of zero-tolerance laws that get a kid expelled from school for bringing a butter knife to lunch - but I think the problem here is more, complete lack of judgment in what actually constitutes a serious hurt. I do agree with your core principle: some measure of hurt is a necessary part of life, and if we try too hard to spare children any pain or trouble at all, we do them a greater wrong in the end.

However, this doesn't mean that we should cause children pain gratutiously, for its own sake. I think some criticism of this art is valid, on that basis: Is it really worth distressing these babies, just to get some damn pictures? How are we to draw a line between making children cry for One's Art, and making children cry purely for one's own amusement?

On the subject of the merits of this Art: I think this is an excellent example of how these subjective meanings of artwork can be abused. While I entirely agree with the press release that the proliferation of right-wing Christianity in American politics is deeply troubling, I can see no rational connection between that subject and these pictures. I could never imagine anyone looking at these glossy pictures of crying babies and saying, "Yes, this speaks to me about the Middle East conflict." In what sense can this art possibly be about that subject, aside from the artist's bare assertion that it is? Can I take a picture of a toilet seat and say that it's About nuclear disarmament? If not, why not? What's the principled difference?

(It might be interesting to divorce pictures of crying children from context and seeing if people can tell the difference between a child crying over a lollipop vs. a child crying over something much more serious.)

From a social science point of view, that would be a fascinating experiment. I would venture to guess that, at least for some children and some ages, there wouldn't be much difference. Children below a certain level of development can't properly prioritize injuries. That's just what being a child means. Learing to distinguish minor and major hurts is part of growing up.

(Am I being exceptionally cold-blooded, even for me, to suggest this sort of experiment?)

Not at all - though if you suggested making this a lab experiment rather than an observational study, then I would object. There are some things we don't do for science, and killing children's parents to watch their reactions is one of them. ;-)

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

First of all, I think that your criticism over the "think of the children!" rhetoric, though entirely justified, is slightly misplaced: that kind of reasoning, as it is so often used and abused by knee-jerk liberals and conservatives alike today, is not (to me, at least) offensive because it places too high a value on caring for children. A society should have no higher priority than caring for its children.

That's an excellent dissection of the whole "Think of the children!" canard, and I can't disagree with you there. I'm certainly with you when you say that society should have no higher priority than caring for its children. The main thing at issue is the hysteria this exhibit is generating. Yes, Greenberg is an asshole. No, what she's doing isn't TEH WERST THING EVAR, which is the impression I get when reading some of the negative reactions.

However, this doesn't mean that we should cause children pain gratutiously, for its own sake. I think some criticism of this art is valid, on that basis: Is it really worth distressing these babies, just to get some damn pictures? How are we to draw a line between making children cry for One's Art, and making children cry purely for one's own amusement?

Again, not much disagreement there: like I've said already, Greenberg's methods make me uncomfortable, and God knows if she wanted to use crying children as a political statement about the current administration, why not go to countries that are currently enjoying the fruits of Dubya's foreign policy and snap pictures of them? Weeping Iraqi, Afghani and Sudanese babies, as well as kids dying from AIDS, would be (potentitally) less exploitative as well as much more poignant and meaningful than these canned shots.

As for whether the resulting pictures Greenberg took was worth distressing the kids: Personally, I don't think so. Like I said, it's kind of mean, and you're right, it's gratuitous. But I still don't think it's abusive. Taking away a lollipop from them strikes me as, well, not that big a deal in the big scheme of things. Yes, it's more exploitative than not, and she deserves some shit over her methods, but it's. not. abuse.

On the subject of the merits of this Art: I think this is an excellent example of how these subjective meanings of artwork can be abused. While I entirely agree with the press release that the proliferation of right-wing Christianity in American politics is deeply troubling, I can see no rational connection between that subject and these pictures. I could never imagine anyone looking at these glossy pictures of crying babies and saying, "Yes, this speaks to me about the Middle East conflict."

Yes, we're in complete agreement there--the connection between the weeping toddlers denied the candy and President Bush's theocratic leanings is tenuous at best. However, like I said at the end of the post, in terms of commentary on suffering in the American mind, this bit of art may have quite a lot to say about contemporary American culture--something that the photographer probably didn't intend.

There are some things we don't do for science, and killing children's parents to watch their reactions is one of them. ;-)

Just you wait--Fox is going to come up with a new reality TV series based on just this premise. They'll call it Schadenfreude's Kid.

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

I see what you're saying about our consumer culture - but you know, I really think that any child, from any culture, will likely react this way if you give them something they like and then snatch it away. This isn't a function of our materialist, consumer-oriented, depraved culture, this is just human nature. These kids are too young to have been that deeply socialized. The response is honestly pretty reasonable.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

Oh, you misunderstand me. I'm not saying that the kids' reactions are a commentary on contempoary American culture; it's the artist's attempt to conflate kids crying over lost lollipops with the the current presidency, as if that somehow adequately represented the spectrum of grief and suffering caused by this administration that I find insightful in not-particularly-flattering ways. It's the intent of her work that I find absurd, not the crying children in and of themselves.

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

So you're saying the kids' reactions to having their candies taken can be shown to be illustrative of American culture writ large, even if those reactions are not caused by that culture? Like, "We're all babies like these guys"?

If so, isn't there some risk that some viewers, heavily informed by the Standard Social Science Model thinking so highly in ascendance among the elites, might make the same mistake I just made and suggest that out kids are socialized to cry at the loss of sweets by age two?

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

So you're saying the kids' reactions to having their candies taken can be shown to be illustrative of American culture writ large, even if those reactions are not caused by that culture? Like, "We're all babies like these guys"?

Actually, that's not it at all. It's the artist's attempt to use kids crying over lollipops to critique the administration that I think is illustrative of YOU SOFT, USELESS CAPITALIST CONSUMERIST PIG-DOGS. In short, my critique on the art is meta-commentary; I'm critiquing the photographer's stated intentions and the way she chose to execute and express that intent, and not necessarily the artwork itself. The kids and their reactions are perfectly understandable. God knows I cried over a whole lot less when I was that age.

(Yeah, I know, I've already talked about this with you last night, but for the sake of posterity and anyone who might be following this discussion....)

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

Oh, and one more thing:

I think your survey is a little disingenuous. Child abuse is, at its core, about not respecting children - not treating them as human beings. A couple of these things you mention - which I assume you offer as examples of minor adversity that are not child abuse - could potentially straddle the fence, depending on how they're done. "Taking a lollipop from a child" might not be child abuse ("No, dear, you can't have that, no more than one sweet a day") - or it might be ("Here, have a lolly - PSYCHE! Ha ha! none for you! Oh, by the way - say cheese!" ::FLASH::).

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

Oooh! A nice, long reply from you, for to be making the debatery! EXCELLENT. I'll get to the longer reply of yours in just a little bit, but here's my thought:

Not every mean thing that can be done to a child is abusive. To me, abuse embodies elements of a) repetition and b) severity. Something that may not be abusive if done only once may become abusive if repeated frequently and with great intensity (for example, spanking comes to mind--although I think hitting a child should be something to be avoided at all costs, I don't think that swatting a kid once on the butt constitutes abuse), whereas some things are so awful that you only need to do them once for them to be abusive (the classic putting-a-cigarette-out-on-a-kid's-arm is an example, ditto any sort of sexual abuse).

So yeah, taking a lollipop away from a kid could conceivably be abusive if the person did this systematically over and over and over again over the course of a child's life, but a one-off thing like this photo shoot? I really don't think it's abusive. I'm not saying it's not an assholish thing to do (I noted that I'm not comfortable with the fact that the photographer induced the kids to cry in a controlled setting for the pictures in my post). But not all assholish acts are abusive.

As for child abuse being at its core not treating them as humans: well, yes, this underlies just about all man's inhumanity to man, right, from rape to murder? But not all acts of distancing and objectification constitute abuse; the fundamental disrespect and lack of empathy are necessary but not sufficient conditions.

I now await you poking all sorts of holes in my argument.

[theotherjay.livejournal.com]

First of all: It looks like you're proposing a specific, exclusive definition of abuse - only I'm not sure what it is. It seems to be: Multiple instances of negligently, angrily or maliciously hurting a child in a severe way, or even one instance of hurting a child in a very severe way. There seems to be little point to arguing over definitions, but I do wonder: Why is this abuse, while, say, a single instance of hurt is ... not abuse? Something else? And what is that "something else"? What is the meaningful distinction, the defining factor of abuse, above mere obnoxiousness?

Second: however you define it, I believe you'd concede that even isolated and relatively minor hurts deliberately done to children - or, indeed, to anyone - for no good reason, are immoral even if not per se 'abusive.' This is why Greenberg's work disturbs us - to create these photos, she's violated the Kantian categorical imperative: to treat other human beings as ends, not as mere means to ends. She's caused these children hurt, and done it not to teach them or help them or protect them, but merely to get some photographs. The children are reduced to objects for her art. How better to illustrate "disrespect and lack of empathy"?

I think we agree more than we disagree. I'm not arguing that Greenberg is necessarily a child abuser, though I do think she's been immoral and a jackass. I suppose a lot of artists are, but this is still no excuse.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

First of all: It looks like you're proposing a specific, exclusive definition of abuse - only I'm not sure what it is.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure what it is, either. Abuse has a significant harm component to it, and that drags in the "reasonable person" standard of what constitutes significant harm. I think small acts, in themselves not necessarily traumatic, can become abusive if taken to extremes over time. Think of a parent telling a child to do common household chores, say. In most circumstances, that's actually a GOOD thing. But a parent telling a child that she didn't do a good enough job cleaning and making her scrub the bathroom twice or three times a day with bleach--that's abusive.

But some acts, because of the trauma they inflict, don't need to be repeated to be abusive, such as rape, severe beatings, etc.

The clearest way I can think of to distinguish between shitty but non-abusive behavior vs. shitty and abusive behavior would be the difference between the way my parents (specifically, my dad) treated me and my brother, Ben.

I was spanked/hit several times when I was a child. With the exception of a couple of times, I deserved each and every beating, because I was such a hellcat and it was literally impossible to get me to listen sometimes. I was never hit on the face; I was smacked on the arm or butt, or caned on the palm of my hand. The couple of times my mom flipped out for no good reason and smacked my arm--well, that wasn't cool, but she also didn't repeat it very often, and she didn't do it especially hard. It was shitty, but it wasn't abusive. If anything my parents did to me could be construed as abusive, it would've been the way they harped at me about my grades and my weight, but to be honest, my neuroses about the latter stemmed mostly from my friends and not my parents.

The way Ben was treated, however, was pretty abusive. My parents let him know early on that he was an unwanted child (they'd really wanted a girl), and that they'd almost given him up for adoption. My dad would beat him harder and more frequently than he would the other boys, and he tried to hit him with a chair a few times. Any time I got into trouble (and I got into trouble a LOT), my dad would punish Ben instead of me. And Ben got constant shit about his weight: he was fat for a number of years, and he was called all sorts of derisive names, and then when he lost a whole bunch of weight (unhealthily, I later found out--he was anorexic and bulimic by turns), they ragged on him for being skinny. He couldn't win. He had a pretty abusive childhood, though the abuse wasn't as extreme as the cases you read about in the papers, with kids having their hands burned on stoves or being locked in closets for hours on end as punishment.

(Again, something we discussed at length last night, but again, for the sake of posterity....)

Second: however you define it, I believe you'd concede that even isolated and relatively minor hurts deliberately done to children - or, indeed, to anyone - for no good reason, are immoral even if not per se 'abusive.'

Now that, I totally agree with. All abuse is immoral, but not all immorality is abusive.

Clearly, teh wiener.

[li-kao.livejournal.com]

Oh, Lollipop. Why hast thou forsaken me?



Also, spot the serendipitous sychronicity of certain of our journal elements!

Re: Clearly, teh wiener.

[misshepeshu.livejournal.com]

Ha! The first phrase that came to my mind was "My lollipop, 'tis of thee..."

And the synchronicity is serendipitous, indeed.