There you go.
The sort of person to give final approval over this at Balenciaga thought they could test and get away with this incredibly disgusting shoot. Then everyone noticed and they started to back-peddle.
Unfortunately, I don't think it is the last time we will see Balenciaga and others do disturbing shoots like that. Quite a shame.
Gosh, it's almost like you're describing the entirety of high fashion.
In a society with a court of public opinion, the exact opposite is true.
...middle school?
To model ourselves after middle schoolers would be aspirational to a delusional degree.
E.g. certain Russian oligarchs winning lawsuits in West because of some legalese. It feels like „rule of law“ nowadays is used to silence the weak and doesn't apply to the powerful ones.
The main question is what's the tangent. And TBH it looks quite sad in the past decade.
Maybe it needs tear down and rebuilding from scratch?
Progress is an illusion!
There is only black and white!
Also I don't see the difference between the work by Lotta Volkova and some drawings by Goya.
Pro-pedophilia activism has existed within queer activism since its inception:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-NseFg2kno
It has been sidelined for obvious reasons, but it didn't disappear. The issue didn't disappear. The people didn't disappear. So let's not start with the assumption that it must all be innocent, no matter how fucked up.
I'm not exactly a member of either community, but my understanding of drag is that it's performance art. My understanding of the leather community is that it's (1) a cornerstone of gay male culture, and (2) the polar opposite, in terms of sexual preferences, of the things people normally see as child-abuse-adjacent.
You're entitled to whatever opinion you have about the age appropriateness of "preschool leather daddy," if that's a thing that has ever even existed. But I see no reason to enshroud that opinion in the same old tired fearmongering tropes about gay people.
Personally, I believe that road leads down to the normalization of pedophilia, which is a stated goal of certain queer activists. I think we need boundaries, it's not actually helpful to "look the other way" and perform extravagant mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that it's not pedophilia when it looks like pedophilia.
None that I'm aware of. Given your own stated recalcitrance to actually search for resources and information about these things, I suggest (as gently as possible) that you're way off base here.
If you want to actually make a difference, educate yourself on the very real harm that is done to children. Volunteer for anti-child abuse organizations. Advocate for real policies, such as banning child marriages across all states. Call your government about the hundreds of migrant children that ICE just "lost". Advocate for the removal of domestic abusers from police and civil servant positions. etc.
If this was about child marriage, I'm sure many arguments along the lines of "it's part of their culture, we need to respect it" can be made. Indeed, such things are normalized in certain cultures. They are not even considered child abuse. I suspect we are early on in a trajectory where we are normalizing child abuse under the guise of supporting LGBT. What we decide now matters not so much to the children today, but in the indefinite future. Human morals appear to be quite flexible in that regard.
There's no need to invent gay people clandestinely abusing children as if straight people don't openly abuse children already. Like I said, marrying underage children is legal, and it certainly isn't the lgbtq people that put that law there.
Drag queens have more to do with clowns than with sex. I can't see anything wrong with drag queen story hour.
There is absolutely zero chance that any choice associated with a professional photo shoot was made flippantly, especially for fashion of any kind. Every hair, every spec of dirt, and every single thing in every single shot is intentional.
Please stop engineering doubt. It's absurd to pretend that there isn't a consistent theme of child abuse here.
Not a claim on OP, but in general for this conversation: I find it intriguing that the level of grace and benefit that is given to the people involved in this controversy seems to be at an all time high. I wonder if the same people extending this grace and benefit of the doubt would do so with those opposed to them politically.
There are literally thousands of years of texts, debates, classes, hell, entire schools based around those first five words.
You simply cannot use them definitively. It's just not that simple.
There is art that crushes the human spirit. Art about war. Art about slavery. Art about personal trauma. I think if we only depicted pretty war, pretty slavery, pretty rape and genocide, that's pretty disgusting.
Wake up, you have been conditioned to accept a corrupt, misanthropic oligarchy.
High fashion photoshoots are a multi layered production. Several people would have viewed these photos, edited, adjusted, filtered out bad shots, etc prior to this campaign being released. The fact that no one seemed to bat an eye at a judicial opinion including the words "child sexualization" seems concerning. No special knowledge is required.
Basically the modern version just has the serial numbers filed off and doesn't reference Jewish people directly, just "the elites" (note finance, entertainment and academia have long been considered "Jewish" domains for various reasons.) But if you did deeply enough, it's always there.
Not sure about the satanic thing, as I'm an atheist myself, but to put that sort of document inside a photo-op that already looks fishy as hell is not ok, to put it mildly.
[1] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/11/28/20/65014791-11478639...
No offense but that’s just a fashion show in a setting involving some mud in the background. It looks a bit like another planet rather than hell. Also there are no children here. I’m still looking for the disturbing part.
> This next thing is considerably worse since it appears to involve pictures of actual children (I won’t link it here since it’s NSFL).
The controversy is about pictures of kids carrying bags shaped as teddy bears in chains which can make one thinks of bdsm. I repeat: the teddy bears are in chains, not the kids. It’s in bad taste but very much SFL.
I have no clue about what’s actually happening at Balenciaga but I wish people kept to facts.
It's invalidated in the same way if some rube off the street told you that they give a wide berth to applied research and then went on to give some sort of opinion about workplace solutions and then summed it all up by saying some one particular thing was a red flag to them.
And even if there were actual babies in there, the most unsettling part is the danger of the person carrying the baby slipping in the mud and falling on top of the baby.
To me, this is "bad" because I subscribe to a belief system that thinks abusing children is bad. Balenciaga, in their marketing, has used images which imply the abuse of children. Therefore: this is bad.
Please at least try to argue in good faith. It’s the first time I think I should flag a comment looking polite at face value.
This is not fair. The original post was about the inappropriate use of children in a marketing campaign. Balenciaga claims they didn't know the nature of the photoshoot.
The video I linked provides context demonstrating that balenciaga continued the same theme in their fashion show. "Why is this fashion show bad" "because it is part of a larged set of behaviors which include and encourage child abuse".
You can disagree with me, but don't misstate what I am saying.
>These seem to be adults dressed as literal demons This would imply you believe in demons, which are things that do not exist in the real world. You might believe they exist due to your moral upbringing but just because you were brainwashed (abused) as a child, doesnt mean every one is a child abuser.
Lotta Volkova artwork is definitely sordid but so is a lot of art. You dont have to like it or even look.
If anyone abuses a child, partner or elder, they should be held accountable.
Let me know when there's a wiki list full child abuse incidents involving Drag shows while most godfearing people ignore institutional abuse and rape in the Church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...
Exactly. I feel like art and its purpose have been lost in recent years. Art is supposed to make people think or feel. Paintings of beheadings in museums don't make people think about beheading people, nor do they make people happy. They make people think about the atrociousness of history and hopefully about not wanting to repeat it.
My (non religious) dad recently argued that music that implies rape or child abuse shouldn't be broadcast on the radio, because it's wrong. I asked whether any movie showing violence, abuse and rape should also not be played on TV or in cinema. I also explained that both are art forms and aren't depictions of things the singers or actors want to do in real life, per se (we all know there are exceptions). He argued this, however, because he heard the argument from some radio DJs.
It'll be a sad day when we ban everything we don't like to see or hear, because that's when we forget those things exist and stop doing anything against it.
Can one abuse a urinal? (Apologies to marcel duchamp!)
...the dolls???
I'm actually not sure what caused such a repulse from that comment, it's the usual edgy haute couture show, the way it was described in that comment made me expect a lot more than what I watched. I thought there would be some deeply unsettling stuff and was wondering how it was even allowed on a fashion show. It's just mud, some models walking around with the pieces of the season and... That's it?
The chained BDSM teddy bears with the kids pictures are actually in bad taste and more unsettling than the show but in a "how the fuck did the artistic directors think this would be viewed as?" way than anything else. Because it's truly in bad taste to try to refer to any kind of child abuse.
To me the shock portrayed by the parent comment of yours is actually a bit shocking, might be that my life's experiences made me a bit unfazed to this forced edgy bit though.
But I did look up the instagram profile you're talking about and saw one of the images in google's cache. I'll save other people the trouble of doing the same: it's a little kid taped into a chair with packing tape, including over their mouth, and they're wearing headphones connected to a laptop showing some sort of tv show.
It's not CSAM but it certainly is intended to ape it stylistically, which I find incredibly poor taste.
I wonder if that's the point. Fashion is all about pushing boundaries/generating buzz/publicity, right?
I'm not saying I agree with it. I just don't think anybody would be talking about Balenciaga on HackerNews if they weren't being quite literally as edgy as possible/pushing the boundaries as hard as possible.
If all of this ends up increasing sales/brand image in one twisted way or another, will they call it a net win and go back to being a sleeping giant until they fabricate/drum up the next "scandal"?
Art can continue to push boundaries without kids.
It’s sick this even needs to be said.
The photos would constitute gore. Just like the Balencia photos constitute pedophilia flirting with ritual abuse.
The photographer is just pushing aside blame. They knew damn well what they were depicting when they checked the light values on the dog bowls and discarded adult clothing placed on the floor of a child's room.
The photographer still says the pushback in general is way overblown, and that people repulsed by these images are overreacting. They know what they did, they just donnot see a problem with it. That is how normal such shoots are these days at the higher levels of the fashion and modeling industry.
What would you expect of someone who takes photos of starving children in a bright Beneton shirt?
[sic]
Baalencia.
With Baal they were referring to Lord Moloch, a pagan God who demanded child sacrifice by casting these in the fires of a horned bull statue.
So the fashion and modeling industry. They depict the demon. Youth and Beauty sacrificed at the altar of Lord Moloch. Maybe the photos are meant as a warning or a way to offset karmic debt.
> I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
It's also very suspect that you picked "Cuties" which was the prior round of moral outrage; it is almost as though, rather than being a "real pedophile" (TM) you are just sifting through Tucker Carlson's satanic panics to make provocative points that suit whatever weird agenda you have.
Lastly (and I do mean lastly, as after this, I'm done engaging you in discourse) it's interesting that you're sweating me, specifically. Every single comment on your fake identity "real pedophile" (TM) 4 hour old account is in response to me.
>Just like the Balencia [sic] photos constitute pedophilia flirting with ritual abuse.
Furthermore, that, these moral panics are dangerous and (specifically in this case), constitute attempts at stochastic terrorism and political destabilization.
Yes, polarization is used to pit right against left. We could all join hands on this: It is repugnant to use vulnerable children for marketing that reeks of pedophilia. Do not focus on those screaming global cabal of satanist abusers, and certainly do not make it representative of the position of your political opposition.
How far are you willing to go to concede on this topic? Or should we let such politicized events destabilize us without a fight (through debate).
It strikes me as tasteless, or maybe even plain vulgar, to use imagery like this to try to sell clothing. Wasn't the first time, won't be the last, but I'm glad they're getting dragged for it all the same.
The "theme" (insofar as anything high fashion really has a theme) seems like a mixture of grindhouse and apocalypse. "Child carrying a doll" is a borderline trope in that context: compare, for example, the first episode of The Walking Dead.
I don't know anything about the thing you haven't linked, because you haven't linked it. But the panic over this video doesn't pass the sniff test.
Overall the result is comedy.
Yes. It is annoying to have my attention brought to this. What would be disturbing would be being forced to watch the entire video, as in "A Clockwork Orange":
https://www.slantmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/fil...).
. Luckily freedom of speech reigns so I can turn off such shite.
On the plus side, they didn't pay much for the set, a mud/coal pit of some sort.
Not people wearing horns, dear god. I think we might be summoning the devil.
Artists use provocative or disturbing images all the time, its how some art works. Images of children have always been used in various contexts.
If anything, I will be very disturbed if using imagery of children becomes a new taboo. I hear that in the USA you can't interact casually with other peoples children because they assume that you are some kind of pervert, are we extending this taboo to imagery of kids just because the the elite pedophile cabal runs the government conspiracy theory has become mainstream?
I find all this ridiculous. If there's an abuse or something, jail them already but this has turned into a witch hunt. The western society is just inches away from becoming like Taliban and hunting down people for objectionable art.
There's also a chance this is happening simply because Balenciaga dropped Kanye West.
Fashion is an art form. Sometimes it makes statements and attempts at subversion.
Fair warning: the children shown appear to be dolls, not actual human children, but it is still disturbing:
https://youtu.be/Yh_1K9s6UV0
These seem to be adults dressed as literal demons (one of them has horns on their head) many of whom are carrying (probably fake) children, and all marching through the mud. It’s very unsettling.
This next thing is considerably worse since it appears to involve pictures of actual children (I won’t link it here since it’s NSFL). One of Bakenciagas designers, Lotta Volkova, had what appear to be photos of children in various…bizarre? Situations. If you search her name and instagram, there are websites which have archived her page (which is now private).
Balenciaga is trying to claim they didn’t know anything about this. That seems absurd given the rest of what they are putting out and who is working with them.