Friday 28 February 2014

Raking up memories of the Bill Henson case

From an SBS World News Australia segment
on the Bill Henson case, 23 May 2008. 
There was talk last night on the ABC's new courtroom drama Janet King about artists using the excuse of exploring the transition between innocence and adulthood to produce child porn, with Australian actor Darren Gilshenan on the stand as Alex Moreno, the alleged perpetrator, and Marta Dusseldorp as barrister Janet King on the offensive, and getting flustered. Moreno came across as a manipulative and unreliable character who probably lied on the stand.

If these parts of the the episode made some people think of the Bill Henson case in the autumn and winter of 2008, when the renowned Australian photographer had his artworks siezed by police from his gallerist in Paddington, in Sydney, and then had to tolerate everyone from child protection workers to the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, proclaiming his creations worthless and disgusting, they can hardly be faulted.

It is somewhat ironic then, if not downright disturbing, that yesterday also it was announced that in October the Classification Review Board banned a 1980 Swedish film after an application by the Australian Federal Police. 

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