Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting [Hardcover]

James R. Kincaid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 1998

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 only way to break this cycle is to acknowledge—and confront—not only the sensuality of children but the eroticism loaded onto them.
Drawing on a number of wide-ranging and well-publicized cases as well as scandals involving such celebrities as Michael Jackson and Woody Allen, Kincaid looks at issues surrounding children’s testimonies, accusations against priests and day-care centers, and the horrifying yet persistently intriguing rumors of satanic cults and “kiddie porn” rings. In analyzing the particular form of popularity shared by such child stars such Shirley Temple and Macaulay Culkin, he exposes the strategies we have devised to deny our own role in the sexualization of children. Finally, Kincaid reminds us how other forms of abuse inflicted on children—neglect, abandonment, inadequate nutrition, poor education—are often overlooked in favor of the sensationalized sexual abuse coverage in the news, on daytime TV talk shows, and in the elevators and cafeterias of America each day.
This bold and critically enlightened book will interest readers across a wide range of disciplines as well as a larger general audience interested in American culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

According to the media, the sexual abuse of children has reached epidemic proportions, and those who do not think so are in denial. English professor Kincaid (Annoying the Victorians, Routledge, 1994) uses the model of the Gothic novel to explore the origin of this concept, showing that by employing Victorian and Freudian ideas our society has simultaneously idealized and eroticized images of children and youth. Citing examples from the tabloids, celebrity trials, and popular movies starring children, the author explains society's need for horrors such as ritual abuse, "kiddie porn," and accusations against clergy and day care workers. Preoccupation with this misguided sexuality allows the public to ignore the poverty, neglect, malnutrition, and poor education that constitute true child abuse. Kincaid suggests abandoning the Gothic model and acknowledging that erotic feelings are a normal part of life that rational adults can control. Written with clarity and wit, hers is a timely, interesting book. Recommended for academic and large public libraries.?Barbara M. Bibel, Oakland P.L., CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A compelling cultural history of children and sexual desire. Kincaid, a professor of English at the University of Southern California, seems to have screened every movie that ever featured a child, and his reading list is extensive as well. He takes on some obvious targets, like the legions of child actors whose images are the very essence of innocence and purity, but whose photos and mannerisms belie a darker knowledge of desire. It's no accident that child stars seem always to be photographed in the same way: eyes wide, mouth opened in a smile. It's a sexual gaze, says Kincaid, and while adults may argue that childrens images are entirely free of sexual connotations, there can be no doubt that these children serve as erotic objects and fetishes to the culture at large. He also calls attention to widespread hysteria over childhood knowledge of sex: the threat of kidnapping, the fear of abuse in day-care centers, the fear of the Internet being used by pedophiles. Never mind the fact that only about 100 children a year are abducted by strangers, that the McMartin day-care case was a horrible sham, or that Internet ads for ``kiddie porn are nearly always police-run dragnets. The war against such nonexistent crimes, Kincaid writes, masks the real abuse to children, like poverty, physical abuse, and simple indifference. What Kincaid proposes in this cogent work (though it's marred by some overly snide asides) is that we accept that our children are sexual creatures and dispense with hysteria in favor of a frank and reasoned approach to a subject thoroughly obscured, at present, by fear and sensationalism. Often fascinating and sure to spark controversy among the recovered-memory and Courage to Heal set. (24 illustrations) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books; 1ST edition (April 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822321777
• ISBN-13: 978-0822321774
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,890,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Startling Thesis, Flawed Book, April 10, 2003

By 

Christopher Schmitz (Rocky River, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (Paperback)

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.

34 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book attempts to resolve a terrible dilemma., February 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (Hardcover)

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.

30 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars We have met the enemy, and he is us...., February 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (Hardcover)

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?