kaeneth wrote:That said, I'm not sure statue-porn should be displayed on someone's lawn where a 5 year old can see without a parent's permission. I mean, what is the difference between a statue of a cock and a picture of a cock?
Holy shit. It's like you've never travelled outside your own megachurch filled backyard.
I would have trouble counting hte number of statues of tits, arse and wang in my hometown - and that's a small city in Australia. Turns out that growing up being exposed to metallic/stone junk isn't a fucking moral crisis.
I am shocked some people react so strongly to simple nudity. As others have said...that isn't "porn" in any sense of the word. The very reaction towards this as being sexually suggestive is proof that so many cultures that are heavily influenced by religous prudery simply can't stop looking at sexuality in some way as being either shameful or ridiculously personal and private. Those are purely subjective viewpoints...not shared, mainstream decency mores.
For example...I'm sure 99.9% like to defecate in private..we don't post pictures of our dumps or demonstrate them on the city streets. We naturally share an understanding that this is a bodily function not particularly "pleasant", but necessary and we find it an intrusion as to smell..waste to dispose of..etc.
Actual sexual activity can be viewed as a circumspect thing in the main..but mostly for personal reasons of desiring to share such a thing as a personal..not public act. But pure nudity? Not gratuitous or sexually explicit? Silly.
You have to realize that most Christian "moral values" behaviour is not really about "protecting" anyone; it's about their desire to send a continual stream of messages of condemnation towards people whose existence offends them. - Darth Wong alias Mike Wong
"There is nothing wrong with being ignorant. However, there is something very wrong with not choosing to exchange ignorance for knowledge when the opportunity presents itself."
Thanas wrote:If it is good enough to stand in the middle of Florence, it should be good enough to stand in a yard.
In the middle of Florence, it's a piece of art. In the middle of a yard, it's a piece of kitsch.
It's not an excuse to ban it, but I'd say there's no problem with whining about it being there - and I'll just stress: I really don't think this is news. I think that stories like these are reported by the media to confirm the image of Southerners as cultureless yokels - and the media report these types of stories because there is clearly an audience for it.
Thanas wrote:If it is good enough to stand in the middle of Florence, it should be good enough to stand in a yard.
In the middle of Florence, it's a piece of art. In the middle of a yard, it's a piece of kitsch.
By that logic, art can only exist in clearly defined locations. A painting on the wall of a museum is art. A painting on the wall of my home is not. This is not true. It's not like it's out of context in his yard. It's also not like he's put it RIGHT AGAINST THE FOOTPATH so that everyone gets some eye-level wang as they walk past. People just need to stop being prudish morons.
It's not an excuse to ban it, but I'd say there's no problem with whining about it being there - and I'll just stress: I really don't think this is news. I think that stories like these are reported by the media to confirm the image of Southerners as cultureless yokels - and the media report these types of stories because there is clearly an audience for it.
Yeah there is. Because it's a showcase of the kind of stupidity that runs the world.
Thanas wrote:If it is good enough to stand in the middle of Florence, it should be good enough to stand in a yard.
In the middle of Florence, it's a piece of art. In the middle of a yard, it's a piece of kitsch.
By that logic, art can only exist in clearly defined locations. A painting on the wall of a museum is art. A painting on the wall of my home is not. This is not true. It's not like it's out of context in his yard.
Wikipedia's Article on Kitsch wrote:Kitsch (English pronunciation: /ˈkɪtʃ/, loanword from German) is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons[1] while making cheap mass-produced objects that are unoriginal. Kitsch also refers to the types of art that are aesthetically deficient (whether or not being sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative) and that make creative gestures which merely imitate the superficial appearances of art through repeated conventions and formulae. Excessive sentimentality often is associated with the term.
Norade wrote:Frankly, fuck prudes. Protesting against a replica of a classic work of art is not only ass backwards given that the book these people likely worship is older than the statue they so hate. Hell, I'd full support somebody having larger than life statues of a massive bondage bukkake orgy on their front lawn and would likely go mildly out of my way to have a picture taken with it.
More to the point, the statue depicts an event in the holy book- David about to slay Goliath.
That said, I do support some degree of public obscenity statutes because of the public nuisance factor. If it's something I'd really rather not see right this minute (like a larger than life massive bondage bukkake orgy), and you put it on your property in such a prominent state of display that I have little choice but to see it whenever I'm in the neighborhood, you're imposing your amusements on me to some degree.
There's a line here somewhere- the mere existence of public depictions of people with no clothes on shouldn't trip the obscenity statutes, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be any.
My example was purposely over the top and I do understand where you're coming from. I'm sure a statue of my Mom naked wouldn't be something I'd enjoy seeing everyday, but I'm also they type to say that to each his own and just try to avoid starring at it when I pass by. Also, while I wouldn't support such laws, I can see how having clear guidelines for what can be displayed would help prevent issues and keep people from wasting cash of a statue that might be vandalized or cause other problems for the owner.
School requires more work than I remember it taking...
You have the right to waste cash; that's not the problem. The problem is that you don't necessarily have the right to create a real-life version of goatse trolling, or something of comparable effect. If your statuary is making nine out of ten passersby go AAAGH MEIN EYES, then you're abusing your right to display things on the property.
I mean, think about the building codes some cities enact to preserve the aesthetic of the city center. If you've got a beautiful historic downtown, you don't want someone dumping a giant glass-box skyscraper in the middle of it for the hell of it, do you?
You know, this is the same kind of mentality that led to the Attorney General's office spending $8000 to cover the nude statues of the Spirit of Justice.
To Absent Friends
Dalton | Admin Smash | Knight of the Order of SDN
"y = mx + bro" - Surlethe
"You try THAT shit again, kid, and I will mod you. I will
mod you so hard, you'll wish I were Dalton." - Lagmonster
There's an empirical step that got missed when Ashcroft did it: the "AAARGH MEIN EYES!" step. The Boobies of Justice* aren't something distracting, glaring, or ugly enough to create a public nuisance; they are, at most, something to create a bit of snickering among some of the people who happen to be in the building.
It's the public nuisance factor that counts in my opinion. Consider the social convention, enforced by law in much if not all of the world, against having sex in public- suffice to say that logically, the same arguments against making it legal to have sex in public would apply to public display of works which have an equivalent or near-equivalent effect on the public.
But this is really a fairly rigorous test, because a single nude statue does not have the effect in question.
*Forgive me, I'm in a strange mood and it amuses me to call them that.
Makes one wonder how the Greeks and Romans managed to build the corner stones and foundations of western civilisation with all this statue porn they had littered around their most public and important buildings doesn't it?
(note, the above was sarcasm)
Η ζωή, η ζωή εδω τελειώνει!
"Science is one cold-hearted bitch with a 14" strap-on" - Masuka 'Dexter'
"Angela is not the woman you think she is Gabriel, she's done terrible things"
"So have I, and I'm going to do them all to you." - Sylar to Arthur 'Heroes'
The Spartan wrote:*snip Kindergarten Cop*
An Arnold Schwarzenegger family comedy (*shudder*) got this right 20 fucking years ago.
20 years and people are still too fucking stupid to figure this out.
I'd like to note that, at the college radio station where I DJed a show, we had a bunch of "PSAs" that we had to run a certain number of every hour - some of which were about the speech limitations on radio (what we were and were not allowed to say on-air). That quote was part of one, as a specific example of something that was allowed at any time of day!
