as a masturbatory device for pedophiles or pedophilic tendencies. duh.
Duh?
So we should legitmize these tendencies? Cater to them?
I can only speak for myself, but as an adolescent, the first time I got my hands on some porn, I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. It did make me long quite badly for the real thing though, as I knew I only beheld a pale substitute.
Later I’d say that my experience with porn made me a little more adept when I had the opportunity as a quaking 17 year old to get my hands on the real thing (so to speak.)
I don’t think training pedophiles is a good idea in any form.
We are talking about having sex with prepubescent kids. I can’t imagine that any step in this direction is a good thing.
Your problem with this, Scylla, is that you are insisting all pedophiles molest children. That is patently untrue.
“We” are doing neither. If someone wants to read or write these things, we shouldn’t stop them. I will believe this until you (or someone) gives a valid reason why we should.
We are talking about murder–the callous and brutal taking of human life. I can’t imagine that any step in this direction is a good thing.
We are talking about the degradation and objectification of women. I can’t imagine that any step in this direction is a good thing.
We are talking about the subversion of our way of life; the replacemennt of a free, democratic republic with a cruel tyranny. I can’t imagine that any step in this direction is a good thing.
No one (well no one here, anyway) is saying “artists” should have the right to violate laws, like the laws against molesting children. No one is saying that the way someone uses their freedom of speech can’t be morally reprehensible and worthy of being condemned by other people using their freedom of speehc. No one is saying that you can’t personally refrain from buying the books of authors whose work you find objectionable; you can even make a point of refraining from buying their work, write letters to their publishers and editors telling them they’re all scum, post uncomplimentary things about them on message boards, etc. But I do have major problems with outlawing speech where the production or transmission of said speech does not otherwise involve any crimes.
Oooh, “kiddie porn”, evilawfulevilawful. Filth, filth, vile filth, save the children!
Stop. Time-out. Time for a different perspective. Cut ten years ahead:
Think about this, people. There’s a powerful knee-jerk reaction going on here, and of all places, this is from a user base that supposedly prides itself on being above this very kind of unthinking response. Why is this?
In my opinion, the root cause of the matter, general pornography issues aside, seems to be the common perception anyone below the “Age Of Consent” (a nebulous and oft-changing thing, that) is some sort of androgynous sexless mutant, and thus any form of sexual activity involving such is inherently WRONG. Well, from my persective, this is critically flawed thinking. When I was 10, “I did not have sexual relations” with someone similarly-aged. When I was 14, the same with two someones 15 and 16 (at the same time, no less 
) and on the other end of that spectrum, when I was 18, the same with someone who was 16. I did not then, nor do I now, regret any of them…they were, in fact, perhaps the most maturing factors on my life. Of course, all were patently illegal and “morally wrong” and blah blah blah etc etc. And for those of you mentioning the anti-kiddy-porn laws, just telling you this would be illegal had that rag of legislation been allowed to stand, and this message board (and my ISP) would be obligated to assist in prosecuting me for these “crimes”. I challenge anyone here to justify that. Oooh, kiddy porn! Let’s go on a witch-hunt!
Are there 50+ year old sexual predators out there hunting 5 year olds? Sure. There’s also ~16 year old sexual predators out there hunting 80 year olds. I don’t claim to understand either. However, what should be the key phrase there are not the numbers involved, but the “predator” part. Painting anything and everything with the broad brush of “pedophilia”/“kiddy porn” and all the reactionary assumptions contained therein is often not deserved, warranted or desired.
So, the counter-question from me is, in reference to the scenario in the OP:
Contrast it with, say, a beautiful country girl being ravished by a cruel, callous ruffian and then rescued by a dashing, handsome noble whom she immediately takes to romantically loving (in all senses of the word). How is the story in the book really any different from a more conventional form of the same tried-and-true formula?
Wasn’t the recently wed Madonna quoted as saying that a lot of times in 80’s?
For an interesting column advocating child pornography, go here.
The most pornographic book ever written is unquestionably * The Meese Commission Report on Pornography*, Volume 2. Even Hustler was selling the graphic-filled version of it for a time.
We put the onus on the adult because the child does seduce everyone, unintentionally. Society have determined it is up to the adult to exhibit self-control in the situation. The child (any many an adult for that matter) is generally not prepared for the complications and tribulations that come about when a relationship becomes sexual. And for the most part the child don’t care for that sex stuff anyway. In this day and age, when sexuality is heightened to what many deemed to be unhealthy levels, it is even more important for the relatives, parents, and adult influences in the child’s life to show that self-control and modestly are virtues, and let the child be a child in the process. Leave adult sexuality to the adults.
A child may look sophisticated, even precocious, but that is no excuse to have that child explore into territories that she is not prepared for. The child generally does not ‘enjoy’ the experience the way the adult does, and there is huge doubt that the child would enjoy such a turn in the relationship at all. So we are left with the sexual relationship being solely for the adult’s gratification. That is why it is deemed exploitation and statutory rape.
If what is said about Anne Rice’s latest book is true, then I find that disappointing that that volume reached mainstream audiences.
About child porn: if the act itself is illegal, then so does explicitly depicing it should be illegal as well. This is not about two consenting adults doing a scene. In this case, one of participants is for the most part completely unwilling. I had the retching experience of seeing a few seconds of child porn. I have concluded that the act itself and the media used to depict such acts absolutely does not benefit to the child involved, nor, gulp, does it benefit the child who may be unfortunate to watch it. This is the essence of exploitaion.
That being said, there are circumstances where these laws do get dicey, particularly where the age gap (or lack of one) between two participants is concerned. But that us another subject altogether.
What is missing here in this discussion of Anne Rice is context.
She wasn’t setting Armand in a current time period. In the past there was a far different perspective on sex between men and boys. I don’t believe in sex with minors in any way , especially with the current climate of the maturity or lack thereof where minors are considered. Just because someone is physically mature or able does not mean they are ready for consummation.
But, to tar and feather Anne for this is a bit unreasonable.
To call it kiddy porn is even more so. To quote Tom Lehrer: “filth is in the mind of the beholder.”
I second the nomination. Laugh-out-loud funny. But the author’s name is Christopher Moore.
Personally, I couldn’t even make it through Interview With the Vampire. It was so darned “gothic” and melodramatic. Retch.
I haven’t read Anne Rice’s novels, but Hastur makes an extremely good point. Adolescent boys were not excluded as objects of adult love in many earlier civilizations. The standard homoerotic relationship in classical Greece, for example, prescribed a pairing of the erastes or adult male lover with the eromenos or pre-adult male beloved. The adolescence of the eromenos was such an accepted feature of these amours that it was assumed that by the time he’d grown a beard, i.e. attained physical adulthood, the sexual relationship would be over (and the erstwhile beloved, now an adult erastes, would seek a younger eromenos of his own).
While we may well not want this to be the standard love story of our own society, should we be trying to get various works of ancient Greek literature or vase paintings (some of which are quite explicit) banned as “kiddie porn”? Nonsense. Of course, any attempts to sexually exploit actual children, either for one’s own pleasure or to create pornography for sale, should not be tolerated. But depictions of imaginary sex acts are not molestation and should not be criminalized. Don’t like 'em? Don’t read 'em.
Now, I’ve read Interview, and I have to say, it was rather light reading. I finished it in three days (being that I was on a canoe trip in the boundary waters of Minnesota, I had a lot of spare time on my hands). I never thought it was anything groundbreaking and wondered what all of the fanfare was about. There was a lack of any major plot, and it basically opened up this world so that Rice could publish ten more books in.
Now, if you want to read something trashy, overrated, and extremely homoerotic, I’d suggest Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. When I first wanted to get it, my mother told me it was the only book she ever threw out. When I tried reading it, I couldn’t get past half of it. Maybe you have to be twigged out on opiates to understand it (which I’ve been told is a “much better experience” to read it while high, not that I suggest trying it).
Actually if you are just noting the events and no other data is present I believe the correct term is post hoc ergo propter hoc, or after the fact reasoning.
Hastur and MEBuckner both raise good points.
As for Ann Rice’s recreation of earlier times when Mores were different, all I can say is I don’t think it was Rice’s goal to create and accurate historical context. It’s anything but, and it’s pretty much just porn.
As much as I personally don’t like it, I don’t think that it should be censored. I do think that poor judgement was used.
Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should.
I personally would like to know before I buy a mainstream book, if it’s going to be like that. Not that their should be mandatory labels, but that the publisher would use their good judgement.
As long as we are nominating decent vampire book as an antidote to the Rice junk, I’d like to mention Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett. Now there is a different and humorous take on vampirism!
Scylla: I personally would like to know before I buy a mainstream book, if it’s going to be like that.
Well, this is why we have book reviews, and why copies of books for sale in bookstores aren’t (usually) sealed shut. “Mainstream book” is not a recognized literary genre that implies a guarantee of some given level of innocuousness. Caveat emptor.
Bloodsucking Fiends was written by Christopher Moore, who does some of the best comedic supernatural writing around. A funny point in BSF: the female character, after being turned into a vampire, and her human boyfriend, read Anne Rice type novels to try and figure out what being a vampire is all about, with incredibly funny and occasionally disastrous results.
Ack! Could you imagine such a situation. Judy Blume books being pulled off of library shelves and burned.
Already are in some of the more backwards areas.