Marr on Henson

I have now read David Marr's book The Henson Case. As always, Marr shows his gift for lucid narrative and readable prose - the gift which makes him one of Australia's best journalists. Having read quite a lot of his work, I am familiar with his techniques of scene-setting and so on now - it is amusing to see them coming! But they work.

A couple of things are interesting: one is that the Henson case was by and large not driven by religious groups but by an almost entirely secular form of outrage. Marr tries to say that is the 'old Christian fear of nakedness', and he mentions the police commissioner's faith at key points. But he fails to mention that other protagonists in the story - who take as far as Marr is concerned more positive roles in it - have religious convictions too. Malcolm Turnbull comes rather well.

But it is true that the moral panic about the depiction of children in art has not come from the traditional sort of moral crusader - your Rev Fred Nile, or a bishop or two. It comes from somewhere else. I am still trying to grasp where.

The book is rather light on analysis and strong on narrative. We never find what Marr himself really thinks about the art works themselves... though he does admit that many of Henson's own fans find these images disturbing and ambiguous. But one moment of insight that Marr comes to is this:

One wet afternoon in Canberra a senior policeman put into words something I'd never quite grasped: that Australians are not satisfied with just expressing disapproval. We want action. The law, he said, sorts art, film and books into three categories: those free to be published; those that need to be classified; and those that must be prosecuted. But Australians tend to jumble the categories. When we disapprove of something we want governments to leap into action. Many who deeply disliked the Henson picture weren't content to express their disapproval and leave it at that. They want something done about them. What made the Henson case rare in the history of these rows was that familiar demands for action so swiftly collapsed. The politicians were brought to order by their own officials...Australia seems caught in these confusions: of personal taste with public danger; of passionate difference and pleas f0r punishment; of decent concern and bullying restrictions. p. 135

I think at this point I concur. It comes from a sense of moral dispowerment - that there is no way to speak effectively into the public sphere about this deep sense of unease that many of us felt at Henson's art (and having glimpsed some of the photos in Marr's book my sense of unease is confirmed). Partly, secular liberalism is itself to blame for this disempowerment, because it challenges many of these expressions of moral sentiment as illegitimate for public discussion; and because it has promoted instead a 'what works for you' ethic which satisfies no-one, actually. The resort to law, or at least to tabloid media, is a mark of our immaturity as a culture: that we can't actually decide together that (say) Henson's art does not contribute positively to our society and is deeply insensitive to the context in which we live, and just ignore him.