Will Ross Buncle log on here and defend his article?

Why, why not?

socratease says :"Those who support Henson,would you also defend the free publication of all forms of pornography on the grounds of freedom of expression ?" This is just verbal jugglery. The drive behind pornography is based on exploiting sex, turning sex into a profit, into a commodity, the creation of a market on the most backward of relations. But that is Capitalism the system the governments actively fight for to exploit every aspect of life from workers labor power, predatory home lending, food and to water.
Socratease says" "I dont hear accusations of political repression"
But this attack is political repression and the Arts have come under attack in the universities and TAFEs with courses cut, reduced and much of the art being hosed out. And other art exhibitions have been attacked by governments. Complaints from rightwing groups with an axe to grind and the sensational media do not constitute breaking the law.I find the mass media including the idiot box, with its daily dose of murder sex and violence and its perspective to dumb people down - pornographic. The nude figure too has been a legitimate subject for artists for a full five centuries.

socretease,

Those who condemn Henson, will you call for the censorship of all forms of pornography that involve children in vivid sexual scenes, and demand the confiscation of any publication of such along with the charging of all individuals involved? Of course you will but you know as well as I that those are quite impossible ... too difficult.

To those who support the political repression of Hensons work, the witch-hunting of Henson and his supporters, do you want consistancy across the artistic spectrum? Then why won't you support the banning or burning of famous literature that is much more explicit than anything Henson has published? Not only are de Sade's works 'sadistic erotica' but the pedophilia in Voltaire's work Candida is probably worthy of greater damming as it titilates with a sexual adventure between a 12 year old girl and an adult male.

Wish you'd show some consistancy.

Probably the most thoughtful pro-Henson article so far, but I'm disappointed that his liberalist defenders themselves are still locked in the issue of pedophilia. I understand that such is the populist rhetoric meant to carry opinion on this issue through the media. However, this topic's ideological implications are much broader than the matter of pedophilia, even though obviously encompassing a major part of that issue too. While I agree with Buncle's concern about the media-spin usurpation of critical discourse over Henson (the "pissing me off" aspect), we should remember that phenomenon surrounds nearly all political discourse now.

Given what I perceive to be a more pressing and general political context here, Buncle's article does not make explicit enough his own ideological convictions. What is the topic's actual relationship to Buncle's notions of "cherished democratic values" and "principles"? I think Buncle uses the terms insidiously and uncritically, just like the party chiefs' own motherhood statements of populist manipulation. And Buncle: what's wrong with a "nanny state" (though I believe it hardly deserves the title now)? Give me a nanny state over a neocon/lib privatization "whore state" and blustering "rugged individualism" or "bully state" any day.

Consider the unwitting irony of Johncee's emotive “nazis...book-burnings”, etc. (echoing MUP's Lousie Adler): liberalist Henson aesthetics are precisely the spillway of anti-traditional sentiment underpinning Fascism's orgiastic and misanthropic indulgences. Remember too the actually corrupt, hypocritical Nazi description “degenerate art”: NS art was very degenerate, and often pedophilic.

Again in this forum I conjure – after Buncle's all-too-brief Sade reference - Pasolini's eloquent “Salo” and its sharp, direct relevancy, light years beyond any Henson exhibition; recall Pasolini's celluloid tribute to Breughel under Orff's “Veris leta facies”.

And then...it's only a matter of time that unexamined notions of "democratic value/principle" and "free expression" sanctioned by caveats of “art” will lead to snuff venues and yet further degradation of humans, including adolescents, babies and foetuses, and say incorporation of plastinated cadavers in installation works. If that's the "aesthetic" you want, along with its resultant "morality", then you will surely reap it.

In response to Rainier, here I am, logging on - but what would you have me "defend"?

To be honest, I wonder whether those posters who have taken positions contrary to mine (or at least, positions they think they are contrary) have even bothered to read the article properly - if so, they appear to have not fully understood it.

I expressed an ambivalence on the issue of censorship in relation to the Henson furore for reasons I took some care to expand upon, yet the reactions of the anti-censorship brigade here amount to huff and puff and the general hysterical kneejerk stuff that is typical of the mindset, and reflect only the authors' views, without regard to the actual content of the article.

If any of this brigade can elevate their thinking beyond tedious cliche and manage to speak directly to the article while coming up with some real points worth debating, rather than pushing their moral wheelbarrows along a very well-worn track, I'll be happy to respond accordingly.

Didn't see your post, mil-observer. Just want to state that my dismissal in my previous post of the anti-censorship brigade's rants does not include you.

To be honest, I found your writing pretty dense and a bit difficult to digest on first reading. That's another way of saying I don't think I understood everything you were saying and need more time to try to get to terms with the issues and points you raise! I haven't time to respond right now, but will get back when opportunity presents.