I was recently made aware of the fact that several rather prominent rock bands including the Scorpions used naked children and adolescents as album art. What does accountability for past abuse look like? What was the moral conclusion on Gaugin?
elephant in the room The scorpions album was always icky. Not a single decent track on it, either. This will be an unpopular opinion but the automatic labeling of any previous art including naked children as "abuse" is a Taliban move. Not all unclothed children are sexual, not all art created using unclothed children was created with sexual intent. Plenty of it was. Too much of it was. Dancing across the line has a storied tradition that never looks good in retrospect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_GrossI was recently made aware of the fact that several rather prominent rock bands including the Scorpions used naked children and adolescents as album art.
Looking at that picture today makes me cringe. It was done in the worst possible taste. Back then I was too immature to see that. Shame on me—I should have done everything in my power to stop it. The record company came up with the idea, I think. The lyrics incidentally were a take-off on Kiss, whom we had just supported on a tour. I was fooling around and played the riff of the song in the rehearsal room and spontaneously improvised 'cause he's a virgin killer!' trying to do a more or less way-off-the-mark Paul Stanley impersonation. Klaus immediately said 'that's great! You should do something with it.' Then I had the unenviable task of constructing a meaningful set of lyrics around the title, which I actually managed to do to some degree. But the song has a totally different meaning from what people would assume at first. Virgin Killer is none other than the demon of our time, the less compassionate side of the societies we live in today—brutally trampling upon the heart and soul of innocence.
What does accountability for past abuse look like?
What was the moral conclusion on Gaugin?