Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting

by James R. Kincaid

Book Overview

In Erotic Innocence James R. Kincaid explores contemporary America's preoccupation with stories about the sexual abuse of children. Claiming that our culture has yet to come to terms with the bungled legacy of Victorian sexuality, Kincaid examines how children and images of youth are idealized, fetishized, and eroticized in everyday culture. Evoking the cyclic elements of Gothic narrative, he thoughtfully and convincingly concludes that the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822321777
• ISBN13: 9780822321774
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Startling Thesis, Flawed Book

Back in the 1950s, Leslie Fiedler stunned America with his thesis that the great American novels were homoerotic love stories: Huck and Jim in "Huckleberry Finn," Ishmael and Queequeg in "Moby Dick," etc. He seemed correct as well as sensational, and American writing since Fiedler's magnum opus "Love and Death in the America Novel" and his jarring essay "Come Back to the Raft again Huck Honey" has only buttressed his point.James Kinkaid has made an even bolder claim a half-century later, that pedophile fantasy can be found at the heart of our most revered movies like "The Good Ship Lollipop" or "Home Alone." "Our culture has enthusiastically sexualized the child while denying just as enthusiatically that it was doing any such thing," he writes, capsulizing his argument. I think this claim in intuitively true. A lot of films show kids in their underwear gratuitously and use the ambivalence of art to insinuate what taboo dictates cannot be directly stated. Macaulay Culkin in the "Home Alone" movies is a beautiful blonde with unnatural cherry-red lips like Harlowe or Monroe!But the conclusions Kinkaid draws from his observations aren't as forceful and eloquent as the debunking observations themselves. If he is right, what does this mean? His answer seems to be kind of vague. He suggests we rewrite the Gothic script and stop overrating innocence and panicking about the burgeoning sexuality of the young. His pervasive humor throughout the book suggests a kind a campy scholarship. I am all for humor, but I think Kinkaid needs to write another book about how our society can get out of the quandary of its sexual hypocrisy. It's a larger and more complex subject than he seems to think. Also, he chooses his pictures poorly, and I think they're essential to making his points about the eroticized child.I hope these misgivings don't steer you away from "Erotic Innocence" though. Its a totally fresh perspective, and how many books deliver that anymore? Read it as the opening slavo of what I'm predicting will be a long 21st century battle between the prigs and the libertarians.

Think...

I haven't read this book but I had a class with Kincaid. A few remarks: The people whose reviews said that he did not have good evidence did not provide anything better to argue their side. So, without what they consider sufficient evidence for either argument (child abuse is or isn't a social construction), they side with the status quo. In other words, they never even thought about it. Kincaid always told us that he didn't pretend to have unearthed any absolute truth, he just thought it was valid to see things in ways that make you uncomfortable. I hate to sound like a fanatic, but honestly, I've never thought of the world in the same way since having his class. Also, his writing is always well-crafted and frequently hilarious (check out Annoying the Victorians).

Oh no, he's exactly right!!!

Want your eyes opened? Read this book. I must warn you though, after flipping through channels a few hours following the introduction of this book, you may want to get rid of your television. Kincaid really ticked me off initially in his intro, but by the end of it I was mesmerized clear through to the end of the book. The thought that we have and still do sexualize children in our country (and world) really sucks at first, but then you realize its true and it almost makes you sick to your stomach. It took so much strength to write this book. I commend you Mr. Kincaid.

This book attempts to resolve a terrible dilemma.

Kincaid begins from the premise that our culture's stories are flexible, and reflect our underlying cosmologies. He demonstrates convincingly that myths about childhood innocence and concurrent vulnerability arose historically as we created a separate cultural identity for children. This stoked a quasi-erotic love of children as innocents, and a hatred of those who act out that eroticism. There is a widespread obsession with children, and an obsession with those who act on that societally generated eroticism. Those who are inclined to hate have fostered a bitter hatred of those who are trapped by the wrong kind of love of children. Dahmers and Gacys are rare and twisted individuals, but they are held up by these haters as representatives of all who break the rules for touching and loving children. Kincaid shows, though, that society dotes on cute, eroticized children, as long as appropriate hypocrisies are maintained. He suggests that the frenzied hatred of child-abusers is fed by this same hypocritical eroticism. Up to this point, Kincaid is bold and persuasive. Children themselves become damaged by the myth, being taught that be be desired or contacted erotically by an adult is to become the most damaged of society's victims, and even potential abusers themselves, and that any love expressed in these relationships, perhaps by the only adult who has shown them love, is absolutely thereby discounted. The truth is that "hard-core" sexual contact with children is a harmful and abusive practice, and only the most blind or self-serving can deny this. Kincaid does not attempt to deny this, although he questions its frequency. Kincaid challenges all of us to find ways to reconcile the awareness of this cold harm with our "warm" behaviors in the unmapped areas of love. The book fails however in developing effective and compelling alternative stories. The tortuous paradigm he describes throughout the book exists, besides serving a "pleasure-principle motive", as a societal adaptation to prevent a shift into the wholesale abuse of children. The current and hypocritical arrangement kills and imprisons some relativey innocent adults as a means of controlling and containing erotic impulsivity towards children, but much of life seems to work this way. We may need new stories if we are to act in a more wholesome and communally suportive fashion, but Dr. Kincaid does not succeed in outlining them. Thus the pain and hurt (and titillation) will go on. Maybe there are no better stories. Still, the gauntlet has been flung.

We have met the enemy, and he is us....

Aside from the lurid title, Mr. Kinkaid's book on the "glorification" of child sexuality is a harsh study on America's fascination with all manner of things erotic. Born in Europe, I can say with some knowledge that Americans do seem to have a bizarre need to know all the details of molestation cases...almost as if they were suffering from the same desires as the perpetrators. Mr. Kinkaid's points are well presented, although to the point of monotony. After several pages devoted to Shirley Temple, I will never be able to view "Heidi" in the same way again. The dichotomy of writing a book of this sort is that Mr. Kinkaid becomes almost as guilty of the very activities of which he accuses Americans. Yes, some ideas and subjects must be broached in a manner that borders on exploitation, but still....a little less detail of certain elements would have sufficed. All in all, Mr. Kinkaid has written a very disturbing, yet highly important work. Perhaps the next time a mother or father decides to dress a nine-year-old girl up in a skimpy bikini, they will think twice before doing so. Cute? Maybe...But what message are we sending, anyway, when we show as much young flesh as we tend to do? Remember Jon-Benet Ramsey?