roachboy

there seems to be a few issues at play here.
i cant always tell them apart, post to post, so i'll make a little list.

pornography is what it is because of the way in which it is framed.
the same imagery can be pitched a number of ways depending on the situation into which it is placed--so (a) explorations of one's sexuality using a camera is not necessarily porn but (b) lots of different types of exploration can be understood as pornographic, one way or another, if they are framed that way. if a 15 year old kid explores a camera, what to do with it, and crosses that with exploration of sex there is nothing about this that makes it (a) interesting or (b) provocative.

the interesting is particularly elusive.


but if you put the same imagery in a "barely legal" area, you frame it in terms of norm or taboo violation and THEN it becomes pornographic.

so if that's true, then it follows that the problem is less the making of such imagery than it is the ways in which that imagery gets used.

of course this gets more complicated in that it is entirely possible that kids who play these camera games are emulating porn films.

either way, this stuff crosses with some social neurosis.

personally, i think these sorts of "problems" build on themselves: the horror reinforces the taboo which reinforces all the reasons why breaking it can be fun.

perhaps it'd make sense to talk to your young cameraman about the difference between how the same imagery looks to those involved with making it and how it might look to someone who surfs into it as a function of a more general predelection for those tedious porn narratives involving very young people. but that'd mean you have to confront the simple fact of your child's sexuality.
which i expect isnt something folk want to go charging into. awkwardness.

and then there's the possibility that your young cameraman or burgeoning net starlet or star might like being reduced to a thing for the mastubatory pleasure of invisible strangers.

complex awkward space, that.

========
thinking about this, i can see what i'd prefer to imagine i'd do in the abstract, and then i consider how i'd probably react in real-time.
luckily, i dealt with this matter a while ago by not having kids.

this is one of those unenviable situations for parents.
they seem to have no easy choices about how to proceed.

yanking the laptop, trashing the equipment wont change anything.
the conversation about objectification and self-objectification might entail all kinds of other possible disclosures. i'd like to imagine that i'd be able to force myself into that kind of space, but frankly, in reality, i dunno.

convincing your kids that their "work" is tedious isnt a great idea. stomping on creativity, even low wattage, because you as a parent are afraid of what it might mean isnt good. i'd probably end up trying to convince my young camera-man to make other types of films, or my young net starlet or star to do something else. which of course would position me as one of those icky understanding parents, like dustin hoffman's character in "i heart huckabees"
loud shirt and all.

and such imagery posted to the net tends to float into places structured by adults with all kinds of curious fixations and since any given piece of footage is so open with respect to meanings, that is another problem.




um...


i dont know.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite