We've all got embarrassing photos in our collections, maybe old school pictures or snaps of family members happily torturing hooded Iraqi detainees with dogs, but the trick is to keep those photos locked up at home.
Not Elton John, though – he didn't get where he is today by locking up vaguely contentious photos in his collection, like Klara and Edda belly-dancing by Nan Goldin, an image of a pre-pubescent girl lying down with her legs splayed towards the camera and playing with her friend. No, Elton John got where he is today by putting those sorts of photos up in galleries across the world, daring the authorities to seize them. And by 'where he is today' we mean 'breathing a sigh of relief that the Northumbria Crown Prosecution Service has decided that Klara and Edda belly-dancing isn't child porn'. So yay for Elton John and yay for non-pornographic, yet still fairly unsettling, images of naked children!
It must be difficult buying a grumpy old millionaire like Elton John a gift, mustn't it? Offer him anything music industry-based or camera-based or scruffy or technological and Elton John will just get angry and throw it on his fire, stamping his feet and roaring insults at God. To play it safe you could always stick to the traditional old lifesize chocolate Elton John statue, but that's no fun, not compared to giving Elton John the greatest gift of all – the gift of naked infant girl photos.
Now, of course we're not saying that Elton John likes looking at all pictures of naked pre-pubescent girls, but he does like looking at one. That photo is Klara and Edda belly-dancing, part of photographer Nan Golding's Thanksgiving collection and possibly one of the foremost artistic examples of a photo of a young girl with her bits out known to man. Elton John has owned the Thanksgiving installation, and thus Klara and Edda belly-dancing, since 1999 and has displayed it at exhibitions around the world, but it was only last month while on display at the Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art in Gateshead that police decided that Elton John's photo might constitute kiddie porn and seized it for investigation.
However, the results of the investigation are now in, and it turns out that Elton John doesn't peddle kiddie porn at all. Reuters reports:
Kerrie Bell, head of CPS Northumbria's South Unit, [said]: "In order to prove that the photograph is indecent we must be satisfied that contemporary standards of propriety are so different now to what they were in 2001, that it is more likely than not that a court will conclude that the photograph is indecent. I am not satisfied that is the case. "Even if the photograph was now considered to be indecent, a defendant would be able to raise a legitimate defence, given that the photograph was distributed for the purposes of display in a contemporary art gallery after having been deemed not to be indecent by the earlier investigation."
This news is sure to be a relief, not just to Elton John but to all the artists and collectors in the world who realise that a basic function of art is to reflect and comment upon the world surrounding it, however grim. Plus now the doors are totally open for Elton John to display his artistic masterwork, an image entitled Look At My Balls, No Really, Look At Them, Look At Them Hard, These Are My Balls, These Are Elton John's Balls, You're Basically Just Looking At A Giant Photo Of Elton John's Balls.
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Sage says
The picture is obviously lesbian child pornography.
* The photographer, Nan Goldin, is a lesbian known for her homo-erotic pornography (“art”). Thus the “she’s a woman photographer” argument, made by those who wish to deny the obvious perversity of what is is staring them in their eyes, just does not cut it.
* The title of the “work” (Klara and Edda Belly Dancing) has a clear association with sexuality and in particular prostitution (belly dancers, as all the literate people who frequent these museums know, were the prostitutes of the ancient Arab world). Why add to the sexuality of the picture by giving it such a name if it is truly “innocent”?
* The title of the book in which it was first published is the “Devil’s playground”, which, beyond the reference to Satan (and evil), has connotations of sado-masochism (and look at the way the standing girl is dressed).
* The supine girl, totally naked, has her legs spread, her vagina boldly facing the camera, and is staring at (and reaching her hands up toward) the vagina of the girl standing spread-eagled above her.
* The standing girl, while she has panties on, is wearing a risque top which exposes her nipples and resembles dominatrix outfits – it might as well be a leather band crossing her torso. Also she stands in a sensual pose – from the way she holds her arms to the way her lips are pursed – it looks like she may even be wearing lipstick.
I really don’t see how this can be judged a “normal” child picture – I would not dream of taking a picture of my child in that position, much less publicizing it for every degenerate man in the world to look at – the parents should be sent to the slammer! It is clearly child pornography, repulsive and disgusting. If a normal person tried to develop a picture of their own child like this in a Fotomat or the like they would properly be arrested. Why would someone take this photograph except to sexually exploit these poor girls? – but then to sell the pictures and even to post them publicly, this reveals a disgusting degeneracy!
But, thanks to the authorities, it is now totally legal to spread this image through the Internet. Now the paedophiles (male and female) will have a perfectly erotic child picture to masturbate to legally. Congratulations, and thanks again for making the world a better place!
Gilbert Wham says
Freak.
Phsyt says
we had a chance to get him out of the music business by sending him to prison.. and we blew it :O(