Paris Bans Teens From Exhibit About Teen Sex
Mayor Bertrand Delanoë of Paris has caused an international uproar with accusations of censorship by declaring that minors under the age of 18 will not be admitted to a retrospective of work by photographer and film director Larry Clark now showing in the Museum of Modern Art (MAM). The irony is that Clark's work focuses almost exclusively on teens, often doing things that are usually considered "adult"—like using drugs and having sex.
This isn't the first time that the 67-year-old Clark has caused controversy. In fact, it seems sometimes like that's the main reaction to his work. Clark is known for extreme and explicit depictions of the lives of adolescents, as in his 1995 film, Kids:
Such work has gotten Clark called a pornographer and a pedophile by some, and even among vocal advocates for sex-positivity, opinions about Clark are wildly divergent: for some he's courageously honest about the realities of youth; for others, he's exploitive and disturbing.
The curator of the exhibit tried to explain the reasoning behind the ban concisely:
Clark himself has lashed out because of the ban:
"What are we suggesting they do instead of going to see themselves in a museum? Staying at home where, on the internet, they will see pornography, things from the gutter."
If there was to be any ban, he quipped, it should be to people over 18.
In turn, representatives of the mayor's office have said that they had no choice but to enact the ban:
However critics pointed out that no objection had yet been made, and that only 10% of the photos in the Kiss the Past Hello exhibition were unusually explicit.
Clark must be used to questions being asked about his character or the intentions of his work by now, but the ban adds another interesting question: why shouldn't teens be allowed to look at pictures of other teens having sex? The people that are being banned from the exhibit are the very ones whose lives might be depicted in the photographs. The irony of the ban is unavoidable, all the more so because this is the first time that any French museum has enacted an age restriction on an exhibit.
The other irony is that it should happen in Paris, a city that loves both sex and art, and usually is known for being frank about both. Depictions of sex usually aren't the instant trigger for puritanism that they are in the United States. In France, depictions of violence usually arouse much more sensitivity. The problem is that in Clark's work, the line between sex and violence is a very thin one. As curator Gokalp says:
Parisians have taken up the debate with much gusto and enthusiasm, and it may be that the controversy means that more teens wind up seeing the pictures than would have if the city had done nothing. The newspaper Libération published one of the most controversial pictures, depicting a nude teen couple in the back seat of a car, and their web site has a slide show displaying several more.
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