[pure-silver] Re: Sally Mann lecture in Houston
- From: Shannon Stoney <sstoney@xxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:22:42 -0500
Shannon Stoney wrote:
If your whole identity is your appearance, you are not being loved
for who you are, for the content of your character as MLK said, but
for your curly golden hair and slim nubile body. This is bad and
demeaning.
That's a big "if". What should having widespread photographs of
yourself entail that your whole identity is your appearance? You're
appearance at various times, of course, is /part/ of your identity.
That's why photographs do tell us about ourselves, and it's a good
thing, too. Well, usually. What was I thinking when I got that
haircut back in 6th grade? You're objectifying these girls by
claiming that the pictures in question represent their whole
identity. The whole 'objectifying' type of thought goes back to
Kant's Categorical Imperative, what he thought was the highest
principle of morality. It consists of the claim that we should never
treat a person /only/ as a means to our own ends. There's no reason
to think that Sally Mann has violated this principle with her
photographs. But you're deflating these girls' identity to objects
(the photographs), and you're imposing your outrage onto them.
These/ are/ violations of the CI. But that's ok. Kant, for example,
thought that lying was always wrong, as he held that it violates the
CI. But that's not true. In some rare cases it's morally required
that we lie. If that's true, and if the CI entails that we should
never lie, then the CI is not the highest principle of morality.
It seems that Kant's categorical imperative has evolved into John
Rawls's theory of justice in the modern era, that issues of justice
should be decided behind a "veil of ignorance." That is, you have to
think about a given issue without knowing what you yourself would be
in this society: that is, your race, your gender, your class, etc.
Imagine yourself, then, as some disembodied spirit, having to make a
decision about whether children should be portrayed in sexualized
ways, for adults to look at. You don't know if, when you are
embodied, you will be a girl or a boy. How would you decide? The
chances are fifty-fifty that you will be a girl. Would you want adult
men to look at pictures of you in sexually provocative poses at the
age of eleven? Would you want to be 25 years old and know that most
people knew of you from these pictures? That every time you apply
for a job people will have that image of you?
My claim is precisely that Sally Mann HAS violated the categorical
imperative, by using her children as means to her own ends; and
further, that she may have failed to imagine how they might feel
later in life, when they understand fully the meaning of these
photographs, thus violating John Rawls's principles of justice. I am
surprised that a woman would do this, since it's not a stretch for a
woman to imagine these things.
--shannon
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