No, of course you don't. No one in her right mind would. But 11 years ago, a mother in Oberlin, Ohio created a similarly innocent image of her child and was indicted on child pornography charges. Lynn Powell has written a fascinating book about the case, Framing Innocence. You can read my review at Chapter 16.
As always, there's a lot of other interesting stuff at Chapter 16, including an interview with Michael Sims about his current project, Kingfisher Days. (Facebook denizens can get a daily dose of natural history at a page Michael hosts, "Today on Earth".)
Happy reading.
Madonna with the Child Reading, Jan van Eyck, 1433
5 comments:
Another thoughtful, thought-provoking review. Any comments I might offer about the case described in the book would just be your garden variety "just goes to show how upside down our values are ..." stuff, so I won't bother. Raising kids is a scary proposition. I've been watching nearly everyone I know fuck it up for so long. M. wants kids in the next couple of years (do you like how I phrased that? I want them, too, but still have an ambivalent streak on the subject) so it looks like I'll get my own chance to fuck it up soon enough ...
I think if the Stewart case shows anything, it's that good parents come in many varieties, and one of our problems is that we don't respect that. We keep trying to define the ideal parent when there isn't one.
Ambivalence is not a bad state of mind to bring to parenthood, it seems to me. All the best parents I know have it.
Going back to the review, the funny thing is that I felt a shudder of indignation when I read that she had to destroy the pictures, so I completely understand her balking at doing so, even though it was the smart, expedient thing to do. It's infuriating to be told you've done something wrong when you know you haven't.
Oh, I agree, it's galling to think that the state could force her to consent. Her rationale for opposing the destruction of the photos was that it sent a mixed message to her daughter. But, under the circumstances, it was clearly in her daughter's best interest to make the case go away, and that's why people were a little shocked that she hesitated to agree.
BTW, J, I think you would really enjoy the portrait Powell gives of the court-appointed guardian, who is a hardcore evangelical and follower of Ernest Angley. She's the last person you'd expect to side with the family, but she is crystal clear from the beginning that the criminal charges are crazy, even though she completely disapproves of Cynthia Stewart's parenting style. The phrase "true sight of sin" kept coming to mind whenever she entered the narrative.
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