Balenciaga apologises for bondage bear advert involving child

Lolita is a good case in point - some feminists argue it's nothing more than propaganda for paedophiles, some argue that it exposes the banality of CSA and seductiveness of abusers.

JKR is a fan (something else for the haters, I suppose):

In a 2000 interview with BBC Radio 4, Rowling revealed a deep love of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial book Lolita, saying, "There just isn't enough time to discuss how a plot that could have been the most worthless pornography becomes, in Nabokov's hands, a great and tragic love story, and I could exhaust my reservoir of superlatives trying to describe the quality of the writing."
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_influences_and_analogues#Other_favourites

This does raise some issues, though. Part of the function of art (high fashion is at least in some ways also art) is precisely to question, reflect, and disrupt.

Where do we draw lines between reflecting culture's sickness back at itself to draw attention to it and actively promoting that sickness?

'nothing is positively asserted, but only referred to obliquely or quoted in order to generate interest in the clothes' - yes, but there is also room for the idea that artists/designers are making comment on social issues. I'm not saying this is what Balenciaga is/was doing, at all, just that the wider issue also matters.

Lolita is a good case in point - some feminists argue it's nothing more than propaganda for paedophiles, some argue that it exposes the banality of CSA and seductiveness of abusers.

I love Marina's writing, her sarcasm is like a stiletto blade. I think this is my favourite part.

It says only good things about our not-at-all-backwards culture that we’re forever waiting for the verdict of brands on everything from racist celebrities to rogue states, so we can gasp that the ultimate moral reckoning has been handed down: the sponsors or the advertisers or the retailers have left them.

'Why is fashion selling children?'

It's the 'queering' of cultural norms.

Kathleen Stock's just published a piece in Unherd:

Why is fashion selling children? - Balenciaga mirrors our culture of exploitation

Lots of great bits:

As Louise Perry has argued, fears about paedophilia are often viewed by liberals as classically low-status, and associated by them with the “ignorant and credulous working classes”. And so, ironically sneering about low-status cultural fears about paedophiles, in a way only detectable to a few knowing onlookers, is automatically high-status.

...

It is bad enough to represent grown adults as slack-jawed, vacant children, but a lot worse to turn children into slack-jawed, vacant little adults.

...

Moral panics get off the ground partly because they pick up on unconscious forces genuinely rippling through a culture. It doesn’t seem to me a coincidence that there’s increasing prurient interest in paedophilia and grooming at the moment, when at the same time there have never been so many culturally acceptable ways to objectify your own child.

That is genuinely chilling. They're discussing child abuse, calling it 'distasteful', repeatedly, then seguing effortlessly into laughing about how ugly the handbags are.

What the FUCK is going on in these people's heads?

But from the other wing of the left, here's commentator/comedian Jimmy Dore, who formerly was involved with the Young Turks, struggling to find anything funny to say about it.

Dore did a second segment on it this week, this time dissecting apologetics about it from some US TV chat show ("The View").

They had a load of "the main problem was that Balienciaga played into totally unfounded and ridiculous right-wing tropes about grooming/sexualising children". Sigh.

rumble.com/v1y7ybk-the-view-hits-a-new-low-discussing-balenciaga.html

Interestingly, he didn't post that clip from the stream to his YouTube channel, so I had to get the clip from Rumble. Maybe concerned about too much discussion of "grooming" for YouTube censors?

I just can't get over how Oli London has become the voice of truth and sanity on this! What happened...?

Sam Smith (nonbinary male) and Kim Petras (trans-identifying male) latest number one single Unholy has the lyric "Give me love, give me Fendi, my Balenciaga daddy"... Utterly disgusting. They haven't mentioned anything publicly about this even though other singers mentioning the brand have changed their lyrics. The video is full of BDSM references and the song is all about a man going to some kind of orgy with prostitutes leaving his wife at home with the kids - utter misogyny.

IDK, Nils, there's publicity and there's the Ratner effect.

I didn't really know the brand beforehand, but they look sleazy as fuck and pretty revolting to me at the moment.

The Guardian has also got a separate article with Balenciaga apologising, again, a mentioning a lawsuit.

www.theguardian.com/fashion/2022/nov/29/balenciaga-apologises-for-ads-featuring-bondage-bears-and-child-abuse-papers

Also a piece about this guy, who I'm sure was mentioned upthread

www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/feb/06/i-dont-think-elegance-is-relevant-vetements-demna-gvasalia-the-worlds-hottest-designer

Authenticity, couldn't be more fake.

Martina enjoyed herself there, there are some excellent lines. However as one comment says, quite rightly, Balencia will be sniggering up their sleeves as this is more publicity than they could have dreamed of.

Negative publicity works and there are no real consequences, so we'll see boundaries shoved ever further. And apparently this will involve exploitation and depravity reaching whole new depths because having any conscience, morals or basic wish to do good as opposed to sinking society into ever bleaker filth seems so very 20th century.

Comment piece in the Guardian, with comments!

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/29/kardashian-teddy-bears-bondage-gear-balenciaga

Yes, it is.

Unacceptable. We need to start using that word more.

How did KK become famous again? Didn't it emerge that she willingly participated with her own mother in the taking, perusal and later distribution of her own sex tape?

I find her to not have much self-mind. She is mentally inhabited by either her mother's dominance or adulatory sycophancy which comes from being too rich or both. Asking her to have strength of mind now is ridiculous.

She represents the problem. The wider culture has lost moral cohesiveness and sense of generational asocial obligation and almosts all it's idols are famous for degeneracy.

Half the people being held up as idols are famous for literally nothing.

Kim K is basically dressing with a variety of fetish style outfits. How anyone would expect her to have an intelligent response is beyond me.

Balenciaga is very fetish style: either explicitly or not. Fashion is basically nonsense so in order to charge absurd prices they resort to extremity and shock. Otherwise it would just be worthless. It is morally disconnected - if there is impact, then fashion matters.

Of course this is bollocks. These pictures are degenerate, not edgy or interesting.

This is a great response by Misan Harriman - apologies if already posted

vm.tiktok.com/ZMFQqe8W3/

Oops, forgot what forum I was on and that mentioning trans issues was unlikely to get me at the bottom of a pile on.

Yes. I've had to stop listening to the vast majority of the US left leaning podcast that I've been enjoying for years.

Lots of hand wringing and sighing over people objecting to Drag Queen story time and transwomen in female sports on one this week. There isn't one that hasn't been captured by trans ideology. (Apologies for mentioning the trans debate but it is THE subject everywhere at the moment and I think it runs alongside the normalising of children in sexualised situations.)

Ok, let me correct it:

The BBC didn’t even ‚‘notice‘ Savile.

I wouldn't say that. Some people at the BBC have said he was known about. Also of course there have been several others at the BBC,who have done similar over long periods, some of them only quite recently found out and /or convicted.

Thanks Lex but I stand by my earlier post re: teddy bear image.

Obviously, too frivolous a story for the grown ups.

Ah, got it. But the audience is 16-29 year olds apparently. Obviously, teens & twenty somethings can only cope with simple sentence structures.

@OmiOmy - it is intended for Newsbeat, a children's news show. That would account for the slightly simplistic style, but I'm not sure it's a story that should be on Newsbeat!

It’s Newsbeat, it’s only a step up from Newsround when it comes to BBC “news”.