From: Fred Camper (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Sep 12 2009 - 10:24:06 PDT
Quoting Jim Carlile <email suppressed>:
> I have to disagree with this take that naked children on screen in the
> late 60s would have immediately elicited cries of child sex....
Have you actually seen the Brakhage films under consideration here?
These films do not show child sex, but they also do not just show
totally "innocent" nudity of the beach-snapshot variety. In "Song 9,"
for example, there is a little boy with an erection. When I showed
this film in a small town in Connecticut in 1967, it elicited a very
angry response from an, um, older matron.
It is true that in the 1980s the campaign, not unjustified in its
origins, against kiddie porn and incest and the like grew louder and
louder, to the point of unjustified mass-hysteria, where parents were
in fact getting arrested for those completely innocent nude beach
snapshots, turned into the police by their friendly photo lab. All
this may have contributed to the withdrawal of "Lovemaking." But
intimations that children actually had sexuality have caused all sorts
of trouble for a long time.
Fred Camper
Chicago
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