This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Khan, U. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Having Your Porn and Condemning it Too: A Case Study of a "Kiddie Porn" Expose

Department of Law, Carleton University, khan{at}carleton.ca

In 2005, the Toronto Police Department’s Sex Crime Unit embarked upon the unprecedented move to go public with forensic evidence related to an on-going child pornography investigation. This strategy provided the public with exceptional glimpses into the taboo arena of child pornography. In this article, I trace the media coverage of this investigation to highlight the rhetorical and aesthetic components that, I posit, are related to a pedophilic logic. My goal is to reveal the latent but omnipresent desire encoded in the media narratives to imagine children and childhood in sexualized contexts. In particular, my analysis maps the literary and photographic aspects of the coverage to highlight the "performative contradiction" of the texts; though the media articulated a one-dimensional story of outrage and condemnation, the rhetorical and pictorial aspects of the story produced meanings that undermined the purported censure of child sexualization.

Key Words: child porn • narrativity • media • police • Voyeurism • taboo

Law, Culture and the Humanities, Vol. 5, No. 3, 391-424 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1743872109339109


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?