OPINION | Why should you know that some of your favorite 70s artists tried to legalist child abuse

During the sexual revolution in the 70, some intellectuals pleaded for the decriminalization of consensual sexual relations between adults and children. Today, we don't hear enough about what happened back then. It is still important for us to know what kind of "values" a lot of people of art were standing for.

Credits: David Hamilton

One of my favorite films ever is the Pianist, a Jew pianist's heart-breaking story during World War 2. But what was my surprise when I found out that the filmmaker of this masterpiece is Roman Polanski, a man who was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

In 1978, Woody Allen, another famous Hollywood filmmaker, adopted a little girl and 19 years later he married her. His ex-wife claimed that she had found naked pictures of his adopted daughter when she was a teenager. If you think that those stories are very few, you're wrong, in the 70s, the art industry was full of predators and some of them were even proud of it.

The enthusiasm for the potential of childhood sexuality was common throughout the counter-cultural movements of the Seventies

As you know, the Seventies was the era of hippies, the Sexual Revolution, Women's rights, the gay movement, and other liberation movements.

While the young generation was fighting for its right to be free, some perverted people try to include pedophilia in this revolution. In fact, some claimed that children had also their right to sexuality and there was nothing wrong to make love to a "consenting" child. If you think that only sick-minded people and criminals would show their support for this statement, you are wrong. So many artists support pedophilia and even abuse children in the 70s.

Among them, French intellectuals were especially energetic in their efforts to normalize pedophilia like Gabriel Matzneff , a multi-award-winning writer who based his whole career on describing his" love stories" with little girls. In 1974, he published "Les moins de seize ans", an essay about his attraction to very young girls. If you think that the public opinion was outraged, well you are also wrong.

Long before the Instagram influencers arrived, the intellectual elite had a monopoly of entertainment and inspiration. If a famous artist was interested in a very young girl, some people would consider she is a lucky one, and she could learn a lot through her sexual initiation. It seems like everything was forgiven to the public and influential faces.

In 1977 the newspaper "Le Monde" published a petition to defend pedophiles who had abused minors aged 12 and 13. Through this text, the intellectual elite of Paris was indignant that men were being condemned for simple "caresses" and "kisses". Many intellectuals signed this petition such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Louis Aragon, André Glucksmann, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, Francis Ponge et Guy Hocquenghem.

Still, during this time, David Hamilton's work has been marked by a strong taste for the staging and representation of nude, even naked, adolescent girls. The pedophilia-like tendencies of the famous photographers didn't chock that much as it was "art". Indeed, people were not that offended until one of his many victims speaks out a few years later.

In 1975, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a leading student activist in the 1968 unrest and a prominent member of the Greens, wrote fantasies about sexual contact with children. This man still has a promising political career, even though some people shame him for what he had written.

What should we do about those historical figures?

Actually, there is nothing that we can do about those crimes because of the legal prescription. The only thing we can actually do is to stop idealist those artists. Do not let them exist in the public space. They don't deserve our love and respect. The cancel culture is a big deal, especially in the United States, where any wrong word from a public person can destroy his career forever. However, The cancel culture would not work for art. We can’t cancel artworks because it is a part of our human patrimony. I can't just stop watching the Pianist, even though I know its creator is a pedophile. It is still a beautiful and powerful movie about WW2 for me.

I think that it is just important to let people know about the dark sides of our favorite artists from the 70s and try to not let any shine touch someone like them. No sexual predators should be allowed to be cheered and even inspire the young generation. We should learn from past mistakes and never let them happen again.

Abuse is not art.

In the 70s, filmmakers, writers, and photographs could sexually portray children by pretending to make art. But pedophilia could never be an art in any way. Today, we don't speak enough about those artists who had a disgusting sexual interest. They should not be examples for nowadays' artists. There is nothing beautiful in abused young girls’ stories. There is no beauty in photographed naked children. What those artists did, was just still children’s innocence. Everyone knows their names, but no one knows those who suffered in silence. Few of us heard about those traumatized little boys and girls who experienced the worst with those famous predators.