“Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson are at the center of a legal case in Australia that ponders a bizarre — and slightly creepy — question: Are drawings that depict the younger members of the Simpsons clan engaged in carnal activities merely offensive and crude? or do they actually constitute child pornography? Yesterday, an Australian judge ruled that such images are indeed illegal. The decision upholds the conviction of a man who was found guilty in February of possessing child pornography, after the offending cartoons (which were piracies and not official Simpsons ware) were discovered on his computer. It is not clear how or why the man was arrested, or whether his arrest was part of a larger sting operation. Absurd as it may sound, the case is the latest to address what, exactly, constitutes child pornography in the age of the Internet and digital design. As American legislators try to stem the scourge of child pornography on the Internet, they have outlawed so-called ‘virtual’ pornography that, while depicting children, is entirely computer-generated or based on digitally altered images of adults. In May, the United States Supreme Court upheld these prohibitions. And in Iowa, a 38-year-old comic collector was charged with possessing child pornography after federal authorities seized his collection of manga comic books, a Japanese form that sometimes features graphic depictions of sex.” — New York Times (US)

Several different readers (Warren, Emma, and Chris Finch) sent in links to this story about a Simpsons cartoon parody being classified as child pornography. This New York Times article does a decent job summarizing the issues.

It is obvious that child pornography — and child prostitution as well — have become international hot-button issues. In the past, the difficulty has been how to determine what is or isn’t pornographic, as exemplified by the famous pronouncement “I know it when I see it” offered by Justice Potter Stewart in 1964. In this case, the emphasis is on a different point — not what is pornography but what is a child or, more broadly, a person. Does an animated character count? It may seem ridiculous to consider a Simpsons character a “person,” but what authorities fear is a slippery slope. Given the sophistication of computer illustration, if a cartoon character isn’t considered a “person,” it will open up the way for forms of animation that are virtually indistinguishable from photographic — i.e. real and abusive — child pornography.

The irony, of course, is that while lawmakers are battening down on child pornography, children are making themselves increasingly pornographic. Just today PervScan reader Furpo sent in two links to articles declaring More Young Adults Engaging In Risky Anal Sex and 1 in 5 Teens Engaging in “Tech” Sex. What happens when these young people who have grown up with a lifelong awareness of pornography become adults and lawmakers?

In his book Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, the historian Philippe Ariès writes about the development of the notion of childhood innocence, defined roughly as “should be kept away from all matters sexual.” His work is worth quoting at length not only for its humor but for the perspective that it gives:

One of the unwritten laws of contemporary morality, the strictest and best respected of all, requires adults to avoid any reference, above all humorous reference, to sexual matters in the presence of children. This notion was entirely foreign to the society of old. The modern reader of the diary in which Henry IV’s physician, Heroard, recorded the details of the young Louis XIII’s life is astonished by the liberties which people took with children, by the coarseness of the jokes they made, and by the indecency of gestures made in public which shocked nobody and which were regarded as perfectly natural. No other document can give us a better idea of the non-existence of the modern idea of childhood at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Louis XIII was not yet one year old: “He laughed uproariously when his nanny waggled his cock with her fingers.” An amusing trick which the child soon copied. Calling a page, “he shouted ‘Hey there!’ and pulled up his robe, showing him his cock.”

He was one year old: “In high spirits,” notes Heroard, “he made everybody kiss his cock.” This amused them all…

Ariès gives further examples. This is not to say that morality, where childhood is concerned, was better or worse in the 17th century. It is to say, rather, that morality is historically conditioned. Can there be any doubt that we are going through the growing pains that signal a transition from one conception of childhood to another? Adults today continue to uphold the identification of childhood and innocence — and yet children themselves already seem to be abandoning it to play with their cocks, like Louis XIII.

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