Drawing the line between art and pornography - the Larry Rivers case

Great Debates
1

There was an article in yesterday’s New York Times about the archives of artist Larry Rivers (1923-2002), which have recently been purchased by New York University, and promise to be an excellent source of material about the New York and American art scene in the second half of the twentieth century.

Much of the material is the usual stuff you find in archival collections: letters, personal papers, photographs, etc.

But the archive also contains:

One of Rivers’ daughters has asked that the films be turned over to her. She asked the previous holder of the archive, the Larry Rivers Foundation, to destroy the films, but it refused. NYU has agreed to keep researchers away from the films during the lifetime of the two daughters, but has not said that it will destroy them or turn them over.

As a historian, i usually come at issues like this with a historian’s desire to preserve the material. I think our society is generally better off when we preserve and remember the past, rather than trying to bury or forget things that make us uncomfortable or ashamed or angry. There’s knowledge to be gained even in the more unpleasant or embarrassing of our archival records.

But in this case, i really think that NYU should hand the films over and let the daughter do what she wants with them. Maybe they can preserve written descriptions of the films, so that people researching Rivers’ life have a more complete picture of what he was like as a father, a person, and an artist. But i don’t see a very compelling need to keep the films themselves, and any need that there might be is outweighed, in my mind, by the fact that the daughters (or, at least, the one who is asking for them) were reluctant participants. The younger daughter says she needed therapy to get over the trauma of the experience, and Rivers himself acknowledged that the girls were often resistant to taking part, noting that “they kept sort of complaining.”

There’s also, for me, the question of what legal status these films might have. They are, if the article is to be believed, rather sexualized depictions of topless and naked under-age girls. Does the university get to hang onto them just because they were produced by a famous artist, and not some regular old kiddy-diddler with a basement digicam? I’ve never been a prude, and i have no trouble with art that deals in sexuality. Hell, i have no problem, as a general principle, with pornography. But if society has decided that pictures like this of under-age kids is illegal, should it get a pass just because it’s “art”?

I understand the Foundation director in the article who said, “My job is to preserve the material,” and i feel myself conflict about advocating a course of action that will likely lead to the destruction of these unique historical records. But, on balance, i still think that handing them over to the daughter would be the right thing to do.

Thoughts?

2

I hate the idea that “art” makes something immune to the law or even just bad manners. Same thing with “The Press”. The constitution did not mean that to apply specifically to reporters, as we seem to use the term today, so I find shield laws repugnant as well.

We all have the same rights of expression, and the same responsibilities, regardless of whether we belong to some self-important group like artists or The Press.

3

That is truly disgusting behaviour on the part of the foundation and the university. To me, the only acceptable response to the daughter’s request would be to comply and then express their regrets for what a shitbag her father was.

4

Presuming that he didn’t do this for sexual reasons, just artistic, then I’d have to vote for preserving the material. She was a model who posed in the nude. As a child, she might not have had a lot of say in whether she had the job of modeling, but it wasn’t intentionally abusive, if it even was. Ultimately, you can go to any beach in the South of France and find any number of naked teens and tots running about, and not a one of them is going to become an axe murderer for it. Obviously at some point, the daughter learned to be ashamed of her body – possibly even when she was a kid – but the point remains that that’s her problem, not her dad’s. He obviously thought there was nothing wrong with it, nor was he attempting to do anything that is in any reasonable sense wrong. Her gained prudishness is unfortunate, but is insignificant so far as the artistic legacy of mankind is concerned.

That said, I see nothing wrong with waiting until she has died before releasing the work to the public.

5

No. She was a minor being abused and exploited by her father. Do you seriously not see any difference between a professional model and this man’s daughter, in this situation?

Oh, it wasn’t “intentional”! Why didn’t you say so in the first place? That makes everything OK. It’s good for us parents to know that if we exploit, abuse, degrade, and traumatize our kids, any records of such abuse are A-okay in legal terms, 'cause after all, we didn’t mean to… :rolleyes:

Utterly irrelevant. Not remotely related to the particular situation at hand.

Oh, I gotcha. She wants to keep a lid on the borderline-kiddie-porn films that her father made of her, just because she’s ashamed of her body. Stupid bitch. If she just weren’t so homely and pudgy, everything would be OK. I’m sure if she were hot, she wouldn’t have any problem with the films, at all. Right?? :rolleyes:

[Seriously, are you just trolling here?? I’m not sure I could muster such an offensively disingenous, chauvinistic opinion on the issue, if I tried. :eek:]

Says who? Maybe they were his biggest Regret, his darkest Skeleton In The Closet. The fact that he at some point acknowledged that his daughters complained, indicates that he cannot have been unaware of some question of impropriety of his actions.

Seriously?? “Prudishness”?? If your father or mother had forcibly made films of you as an adolescent, NAKED, obliging you to talk about the growth and development of a VERY private, sexual part of your body, and that film were later made public as part of your mother’s or father’s memoirs or personal document collection, you wouldn’t have any problem with it at all, 'cause you’re not a “prude”?

Jesus. H. Christ! You cannot be serious.

6

p.s. I should have made it more clear in my above comment, whether Rivers’ intentions were sexual or “artistic”, is totally beside the point (and I have SERIOUS doubts that his motivations would have been largely the latter). Abuse and exploitation are not technically dependent on sex as a motivation.

7

That’s exactly what I was thinking.

The written accounts would cover the preservation of the art* (most of history is written accounts at best), and turning the films over would take an unbelievably heavy weight off of this woman’s shoulders, I would think. I can’t imagine the outrage I would feel if I was in her situation; someone holding records of my abuse and calling them art? Fuck that.
*Whatever and to whomever that might be

8

That’s the thing though, it’s not abuse.

Say that I’m a parent who refuses to spank my kids, yell at them, or otherwise punish them for anything. I’m that sort of parent because my parents were physical and mentally abusive and I think to myself that it’s unjustifiable behavior, no matter what. I have four kids and three of them turn out perfectly healthy, normal people. The fourth one, though, ends up totally unable to cope with the real world, is severely harmed by having no way of dealing with negative feedback or results, and ends up killing himself.

But that’s an extreme example. Plenty of perfectly of nice, reasonable families have kids who end up becoming drug addicts and criminals. It’s not the norm, but it happens. There are perfectly normal, reasonable things commonly practiced to do to a child that will turn that child into a messed up human being even though it doesn’t do it for anyone else. What is or isn’t abusive is really dependent on what the end result is, which varies on the individual you’re practicing it on. Certainly, it’s best if you are able to notice that this one person doesn’t react the same way as everyone else, and adjust what you do to match, but frankly that’s not a very common thing to do. And quite often, there’s no way to know that a certain thing will have been traumatic for someone until they are grown, by which point it’s too late. Lambasting the parent for behaving in a reasonable way that ended up abusive is silly. There was no reason at the time for anyone to think that it might hurt the child so…what more do you expect from people?

Like I said, it’s unfortunate that this girl has a problem with her body, but there’s whole countries of people where children walk around getting photographed naked and talking openly about their physical development, and it doesn’t harm any of them. Ultimately, there’s zero reason for him to have thought he was hurting his daughter, nor for us to think that he had anything but the best intentions. He was an open, artistic guy. That didn’t mesh with his daughter’s personality. That’s sad, but no reason to burn art.

9

No-one is proposing publicly exhibiting the films. Even after the daughters die, I imagine they won’t be shown to the general public, because of the touchiness of the subject matter.

Filming a nude teenager is not, in my opinion, inherently immoral or abusive. Obviously I haven’t seen the films, but the description given is not particularly shocking. The major issue is the distress of the daughters, both in the making of the films and in the prospect of having the films seen by others; considering that they already exist, I think “keep them locked up and unseen even by scholars for the lifetime of the subjects” is a sufficiently fair judgement for this case.

If “but it depicts a nude minor!” is the standard, there’s a vast number of paintings and a large swathe of premodern photography that is going to have to go.

10

Sage Rat,

All of your hypotheticals and arguments from other cultures and appeals to the unpredictability of the lifelong effects of abuse on a youngster, and so on, simply and totally miss the point.

This Rivers guy, under the guise of “art,” FORCIBLY filmed his MINOR daughters NAKED, making them talk on film about the development of a very personal, highly culturally EROTICIZED part of their BODIES, and he did so with the full knowledge that the act was done AGAINST THEIR WILL, and you seem (to me, inscrutably) to think…

  1. that it wasn’t necessarily abuse;

  2. that the grown daughter shouldn’t expect or demand to have the films made public; and

  3. that the grown daughter’s objections to the films’ preservation/publication are primarily related to her own insecurities (you suggest that it’s HER “problem” that “she’s ashamed of her body”).

I am agog, literally incredulous, that anyone could hold a view like that of 1) or 2), but in addition to simply disagreeing with it, I personally find position 3) to be piggish, presumptuous, chauvinistic, and obscenely offensive. “The only reason you don’t want people to see your naked teenage self is that you’re embarrassed by your body.” </paraphrase> Really??? You think this poor woman is driven to suppress the release of an exploitive nude film of herself, underage, only by a vain concern about her body? Are you really unable to empathize with the MANY reasons why this would be deeply objectionable to her, beyond body issues?

This is one of the most ludicrous things I’ve heard in a long time. Let me explain why.

There is NO SUCH THING as “behaving in a reasonable way that ends up being abusive”. Ever. Reasonable parenting choices, by literal definition, NEVER end up as abuse. That’s what “reasonable” MEANS. Likewise, abuse is NEVER “reasonable” at the outset. These two terms (reasonable behavior and abuse) are forever and always antonyms!

11

Correction to 2), above:

That the grown daughter shouldn’t expect or demand to have the films SUPPRESSED;

(NOT “made public”! D’oh!)

12

If you made an “art film” of physical or mental abuse of your children, and the children grew up and asked for it to be destroyed, I would honor their request. I wouldn’t tell them, “Chill out! Don’t get so uptight! Lots of kids get yelled at and don’t become heroin addicts!”

13

Although my father was not a famous artist, he documented himself watching me in inappropriate ways, just like Larry. Was this a trend in 1970’s Manhattan?

As a victim of my own father’s predatory desires, I hope this doesn’t get swept under the proverbial rug. I started reading all the comments posted regarding Larry’s archive and his abuse. As a father, he abused his daughters by using his authority over them to get them to participate in his project. His thoughts were of himself, not his daughters. Loving parents don’t take risks with their children’s welfare just to complete their own pet projects. Larry’s wife quoted him, “What Larry said was that it would belong to them, as a record that when they got older they could look back at.” My father taped himself saying “This is not for us to know, but for you to know 10 or 20 years from now.” and I used this in my film as evidence. Chilling. One person pointed out another atrocity that became public: the images from Abu Ghraib. I kept reading and couldn’t believe the similarities to my own experience. I even wrote an obituary for my father that references Abu Ghraib.

I once had a father named Abe
Who treated me like a hot babe
He lecherously stared
While he photographed me bare
So my home felt like Abu Ghraib.

Larry’s daughter Emma said “I don’t want it out there in the world. It just makes it worse.” She has every right to this archive and to do whatever she wants with it. It is a document of her lost childhood. her archive of betrayal. Every time I revisit my father’s archive the pain is excruciating. I have been in therapy for many many years and nothing can compare to the healing I have achieved since I unleashed my father’s archive in public. The difference, as noted in my Cahiers du Cinema interview, is that I chose to re-use the toxic material to give birth to the artist within me. I made my own choice in showing my pain publicly. It was not dictated by an “art authority.”

You can watch my 18 minutes of trauma cinema at themarinaexperiment.com

14

“Officer, my next door neighbor is a Peeping Tom. He is videotaping my fourteen year old daughter and selling it on the Internet.”

“It’s too bad your daughter has such ridiculous hang-ups about her body. Go away, prude.”

:rolleyes:

Regards,
Shodan

15

What’s special about being naked? What if he’d had his daughters dress up as the Pilgrims or flowers, or any other embarrassing outfit that is entirely common for parents to dress their kids up in? If the child grows up and had an irrational fear of being seen in a hot dog costume, does that mean that we are obligated to destroy all those photos? I personally feel sorry for every other person on the planet whose baby pictures are posted on the walls of their parents and grandparents walls, and yet I don’t expect that no matter how much one person complains to his parents and grandparents that his baby pictures make him feel insecure, that he was forced to have that picture taken, will actually be able to convince them to destroy his baby photos.

Everything parents make their kids do is AGAINST THEIR WILL. We make them clean their room AGAINST THEIR WILL. We make them dress up in stupid hot dog costumes for the school play AGAINST THEIR WILL. We make them get a part time job over the summer to develop their work ethic AGAINST THEIR WILL. I may not be a parent, but I’m fairly certain that by the time I am one, when it comes time for my kid to do what I expect of him, so long as what I’m telling him to do is reasonable and for his own good, he can cry, holler, tell me that neither I nor the world is fair, he’s still going to have to do it.

What’s unreasonable about it? Billions of kids have been forced to work milking cows, hauling water from the river, working with dangerous animals, jumping from trapeze. You’re literally going to tell me that a man having his daughter sit in his photos is clearly acting with more potential harm than the farm labor or circus labor that children are made to do by their parents? Go watch Cirque du Soleil. You’ll be plum smack in the middle of the USA, and there’s a fairly good chance that you’re going to see a little kid, who’s almost certainly the child of two of the performers, having been told that he’s going to perform in the circus. He’ll be half naked, and contorting his body into shapes that may leave him with joint issues for the rest of his life.

16

Is it because he was supposedly some great artist that this is okay? I mean, if it was some guy down the street and it was someone else’s kid, would that be okay? Filming your young teen daughter and asking her questions about whether boys notice her breasts may not be illegal. I don’t know that.

ETA: I’m also aware that yes, we can make kids do stuff against their will. But we as a society acknowledge that some things we can’t make them do. Stuff of a sexual nature is stuff they can’t consent to. By that rationale, if we can make them dress up as a hot dog or clean their rooms we should also be able to fondle or grope them for fun. But we obviously do draw the line at sex. And I think most people would draw the line at naked or sexually charged film/photographs.

17

The fact that there are laws against child pornography?

That just means his parents and grandparents are assholes. It does not mean they are right to ignore his wishes.

Thank God.

Here’s the problem with your attempts to defend this guy: using your position of control to compel your children to let you video them, naked, while you interview them about their breasts is not reasonable, and is not for their own good. It’s just a creepy, unethical abuse of power.

18

Meh. If the films are given to the daughters, we make them happy. If the films are suppressed, we won’t know what adolescent girls will say about their breasts when forced to talk about them by their father, while topless. I have trouble getting worked up about this issue, either way. The girls are likely embarrassed by the tapes. The tapes themselves, as described, sound boring and of very little cultural value.

So I’d guess I’d be mildly in favor of letting the girls have the film, as it might do them a little good, whereas keeping the tapes available seems fairly pointless. I mean, I’m sure there are thousands, if not thousands of hours, of images of webcam girls who are only slightly older than the Rivers kids talking endlessly about their breasts, while topless.

19

Let’s assume, for a moment, that you’re right, and that it’s not inherently immoral or abusive.

In fact, the article i linked in the OP talks about other people who photographed naked kids, Jock Sturges and Sally Mann. But Sturges did his work in naturist communities where everyone was naked and nakedness was a habitual part of the everyday like, and Mann’s daughters “participated happily in her work,” and were only photographed when they themselves were already naked. She also stopped when they hit puberty.

But, even if we assume that filming naked teenagers is not inherently immoral or abusive, surely there are particular instances where it is, in fact, immoral and abusive. And, for me, one of the things that would put it over the line is if the minor subjects not only didn’t participate willingly, but were clearly reluctant and upset. and there seems little doubt that this was the case for Rivers’ daughters.

Even if we put aside the legal issue of age of consent, and argue that kids as young as 11 or 12 can reasonably consent to being filmed naked, the fact is that Rivers’ daughters, based on the accounts we have, would not have willingly consented to being filmed in this way, and only did it because they were pressured to do it by their father. That makes this particular instance immoral and abusive, in my opinion.

I guess.

But you concede that the “major issue is the distress of the daughters,” and it’s clear from the story that the existence of these films continues to cause distress, even when no-one is viewing them. Does that not count for something?

But it’s not just the depiction, for me, but the circumstances and the recent nature of its creation.

For me, the key reasons to hand over the film are: that the daughters were clearly reluctant participants and have been upset by its creation and its existence; that they are still around and able to make such a determination; that it was made during a time when we had very explicit laws about child pornography and sexual exploitation of minors; and that it was made at a time when society’s expectations are that a father will not ogle and take pictures of his naked pubescent daughters.

I’m not opposed to images of naked children, per se. It’s a matter of context.

My mother’s photo album has pictures of me and my sister running around our back yard wearing nothing but a flight attendant’s hat when we were 4 and 2 years old. We spent half our summers naked at that age, and there are plenty of photos of us. And despite some excessive paranoia about it, i think plenty of parents still take pictures of their naked toddlers, because that’s just how toddlers are.

But once a kid is a teenager, things change in a few ways. First of all, because of a variety of social forces, they become more conscious of their own developing body, and less willing to run around without any clothes on. Second, those same social forces make it more generally inappropriate for them to be seen naked by people who are not of the same sex. And teenage girls are probably more sensitive to these social expectations than just about any other demographic. How many 13 year old girls do you think are happy having their dad see them naked?

We could argue all day about whether society’s standards are too prudish. One could even make an argument that we might be a healthier society if we didn’t make such a taboo of nudity. I’d probably agree with that, up to a point. But the fact is that we have both legal and social limitations in this area, and Rivers betrayed his daughters’ trust in order to flout those limitations.

20

This is one reason that i suggested handing the tapes over, but describing and transcribing them first. That way, we have a record of what was said, without the moving images that are so distressing to the duaghters.