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Comment by thepasswordis | Hacker News Reader

Here’s Balenciaga’s 2023 video showing off their styles for the year. This is from their own YouTube channel.

Fair warning: the children shown appear to be dolls, not actual human children, but it is still disturbing:

These seem to be adults dressed as literal demons (one of them has horns on their head) many of whom are carrying (probably fake) children, and all marching through the mud. It’s very unsettling.

This next thing is considerably worse since it appears to involve pictures of actual children (I won’t link it here since it’s NSFL). One of Bakenciagas designers, Lotta Volkova, had what appear to be photos of children in various…bizarre? Situations. If you search her name and instagram, there are websites which have archived her page (which is now private).

Balenciaga is trying to claim they didn’t know anything about this. That seems absurd given the rest of what they are putting out and who is working with them.

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I mean the fashion show is just the typical haute couture nonsense.

But I did look up the instagram profile you're talking about and saw one of the images in google's cache. I'll save other people the trouble of doing the same: it's a little kid taped into a chair with packing tape, including over their mouth, and they're wearing headphones connected to a laptop showing some sort of tv show.

It's not CSAM but it certainly is intended to ape it stylistically, which I find incredibly poor taste.

> which I find incredibly poor taste.

I wonder if that's the point. Fashion is all about pushing boundaries/generating buzz/publicity, right?

I'm not saying I agree with it. I just don't think anybody would be talking about Balenciaga on HackerNews if they weren't being quite literally as edgy as possible/pushing the boundaries as hard as possible.

If all of this ends up increasing sales/brand image in one twisted way or another, will they call it a net win and go back to being a sleeping giant until they fabricate/drum up the next "scandal"?

Pushing images of simulated child abuse to sell shoes should be beyond the limits of what society accepts.

Art can continue to push boundaries without kids.

It’s sick this even needs to be said.

Do you think they'll go for the same but instead use stereotypical imagery of starving children or POWs? I bet they do not because yes, it'll create lots of "controversy" but also many advocacy organizations will come down on them like a ton of bricks.

Of course you're right, but let's continue the thought experiment: if they had used some of the imagery you suggest, would anyone claim that the people taking the photos were starving said children, or imprisoning people?

This is not what is claimed, at least, not by the reasonable people opposed to such marketing.

The photos would constitute gore. Just like the Balencia photos constitute pedophilia flirting with ritual abuse.

The photographer is just pushing aside blame. They knew damn well what they were depicting when they checked the light values on the dog bowls and discarded adult clothing placed on the floor of a child's room.

The photographer still says the pushback in general is way overblown, and that people repulsed by these images are overreacting. They know what they did, they just donnot see a problem with it. That is how normal such shoots are these days at the higher levels of the fashion and modeling industry.

What would you expect of someone who takes photos of starving children in a bright Beneton shirt?

>Balencia

[sic]

The photoshoot included a roll of police tape with the sic:

Baalencia.

With Baal they were referring to Lord Moloch, a pagan God who demanded child sacrifice by casting these in the fires of a horned bull statue.

So the fashion and modeling industry. They depict the demon. Youth and Beauty sacrificed at the altar of Lord Moloch. Maybe the photos are meant as a warning or a way to offset karmic debt.

> I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl

> who says this?

Someone who actually believes in free speech, not faux-free speech or faux-satanism. It is improbable, yes, even for those who talk a lot about free speech and satanism.

> So you're saying

I said what I said. These shoots, and the movie Cuties, invoked a pedophilic attraction in me. I do not think that was purely imagination, nor do I appreciate being questioned about the veracity of my feelings by someome who was not born for this path.

> tell us more about the viewers, based on their reactions, than about the photography itself?

I do not get this attraction to a photo of a milk carton. The photography itself certainly plays a role. The more you can identify with the photographer, in regards to boundaries and tastes and attractions, the more a photo will resonate with you.

It's funny to keep trying to convince people you are a "real pedophile" (TM). In particular, with a zero-day account. I don't merely question the veracity of your feelings; I am calling your entire account (both the literal user account, and also the retelling of your stories) fiction.

It's also very suspect that you picked "Cuties" which was the prior round of moral outrage; it is almost as though, rather than being a "real pedophile" (TM) you are just sifting through Tucker Carlson's satanic panics to make provocative points that suit whatever weird agenda you have.

Lastly (and I do mean lastly, as after this, I'm done engaging you in discourse) it's interesting that you're sweating me, specifically. Every single comment on your fake identity "real pedophile" (TM) 4 hour old account is in response to me.

Not necessarily but they would talk about "normalizing" and advancing certain unwelcome attitudes and behavior. Let's say they "recreated" a Srebernica scene -it would certainly be controversial. No one would accuse them of massacring the actors --less so if they used CGI --but never the less is it would be considered beyond the pale and would be denounced by virtually everyone and for good reason. It's gross. It's repugnant. What they did was and is repugnant as well.

My only horse in this particular race is that--repugnant or not--this ad campaign does not constitute pedophilia, grooming, pedophilia normalization, or the like, as is claimed (for example) in the sibling to your comment:

>Just like the Balencia [sic] photos constitute pedophilia flirting with ritual abuse.

Furthermore, that, these moral panics are dangerous and (specifically in this case), constitute attempts at stochastic terrorism and political destabilization.

We'll have to disagree.

Ceci n'est pas un pipe.

I agree that moral panics are undesirable. But by saying "these" you imply that this is all this is: a moral panic. You would have to be able to see this as more than just panic, or you will deem anyone in this debate under the spell of moral panic. You then cannot accept good faith on counterarguments. This is not pragmatic.

Yes, polarization is used to pit right against left. We could all join hands on this: It is repugnant to use vulnerable children for marketing that reeks of pedophilia. Do not focus on those screaming global cabal of satanist abusers, and certainly do not make it representative of the position of your political opposition.

How far are you willing to go to concede on this topic? Or should we let such politicized events destabilize us without a fight (through debate).

They can dress up what they're doing in whatever language they want, like calling it "art" or whatever, but at the end of the day this is a company whose business is selling clothing.

It strikes me as tasteless, or maybe even plain vulgar, to use imagery like this to try to sell clothing. Wasn't the first time, won't be the last, but I'm glad they're getting dragged for it all the same.

I watched this video and I think you've grossly overstated how disturbing it is.

The "theme" (insofar as anything high fashion really has a theme) seems like a mixture of grindhouse and apocalypse. "Child carrying a doll" is a borderline trope in that context: compare, for example, the first episode of The Walking Dead.

I don't know anything about the thing you haven't linked, because you haven't linked it. But the panic over this video doesn't pass the sniff test.

My takeaway is simply "this makes people want to buy clothes??"

Overall the result is comedy.

Exactly. It's honestly a funny video, insofar as it demonstrates how ridiculously divorced concept fashion is from everyday clothing.

woodruffw says "> I watched this video and I think you've grossly overstated how disturbing it is. <"

Yes. It is annoying to have my attention brought to this. What would be disturbing would be being forced to watch the entire video, as in "A Clockwork Orange":

https://www.slantmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/fil...).

. Luckily freedom of speech reigns so I can turn off such shite.

On the plus side, they didn't pay much for the set, a mud/coal pit of some sort.

Sure, disturbing photos and all but what's the problem? This all seems to me like another "save the children" craze, a pretext to oppress speech and snoop into peoples private business.

Artists use provocative or disturbing images all the time, its how some art works. Images of children have always been used in various contexts.

If anything, I will be very disturbed if using imagery of children becomes a new taboo. I hear that in the USA you can't interact casually with other peoples children because they assume that you are some kind of pervert, are we extending this taboo to imagery of kids just because the the elite pedophile cabal runs the government conspiracy theory has become mainstream?

I find all this ridiculous. If there's an abuse or something, jail them already but this has turned into a witch hunt. The western society is just inches away from becoming like Taliban and hunting down people for objectionable art.

There's also a chance this is happening simply because Balenciaga dropped Kanye West but I hope it's Balenciaga's marketing people stirring a controversy.

> These seem to be adults dressed as literal demons (one of them has horns on their head) many of whom are carrying (probably fake) children, and all marching through the mud. It’s very unsettling.

No offense but that’s just a fashion show in a setting involving some mud in the background. It looks a bit like another planet rather than hell. Also there are no children here. I’m still looking for the disturbing part.

> This next thing is considerably worse since it appears to involve pictures of actual children (I won’t link it here since it’s NSFL).

The controversy is about pictures of kids carrying bags shaped as teddy bears in chains which can make one thinks of bdsm. I repeat: the teddy bears are in chains, not the kids. It’s in bad taste but very much SFL.

I have no clue about what’s actually happening at Balenciaga but I wish people kept to facts.

I give a wide berth to artists but those teddy bears are not innocuous. They are highly suggestive and in the context of the photo shoot are beyond the pale. In my opinion BDSM teddy bears alone is a bright red flag.

So because you give a wide berth to artists and I assume high art in general... I'm sorry but your opinion is invalidated.

It's invalidated in the same way if some rube off the street told you that they give a wide berth to applied research and then went on to give some sort of opinion about workplace solutions and then summed it all up by saying some one particular thing was a red flag to them.

Rubes are entitled to their opinions as am I.

The wide berth is to give more latitude in restricting behavior than those who are not artists. It’s a privilege to allow them more freedom to create art. If they use that privilege to create BDSM teddy bears then I think social outrage is a predictable and appropriate response.

It’s teddy bears in chains. I mean I know I’m French which means it’s probably hard to find someone culturally less attuned with an American regarding sexuality but the whole thing seems to me like a storm in a tea cup. As I said, it’s not tasteful but that’s miles away from being scandalous.

If only it were a storm in a teacup! This will be used for political gain among America's christo-nationalist right wing.

Watch the rest of the video. Eventually the actors are all walking around wearing child carriers containing dolls.

Won't somebody think of...

...the dolls???

What's so unsettling about that? Sure, I understand they did this to cause a bit of a stir, but it's just people carrying around dolls in a dystopian setting.

And even if there were actual babies in there, the most unsettling part is the danger of the person carrying the baby slipping in the mud and falling on top of the baby.

I don't think I can explain to you why this is unsettling in the same way I can't explain why abusing animals is bad, stealing is bad, or anything else is "bad". If we don't already have a shared system of morals which says "abuse of children is bad", then it seems unlikely I'm going to convince you that depictions of child abuse are bad.

To me, this is "bad" because I subscribe to a belief system that thinks abusing children is bad. Balenciaga, in their marketing, has used images which imply the abuse of children. Therefore: this is bad.

Well done on implying someone not agreeing with you on the moral value of carrying dolls in a fashion show is actually them not caring about child abuse and having a poor moral system.

Please at least try to argue in good faith. It’s the first time I think I should flag a comment looking polite at face value.

>Well done on implying someone not agreeing with you on the moral value of carrying dolls in a fashion show

This is not fair. The original post was about the inappropriate use of children in a marketing campaign. Balenciaga claims they didn't know the nature of the photoshoot.

The video I linked provides context demonstrating that balenciaga continued the same theme in their fashion show. "Why is this fashion show bad" "because it is part of a larged set of behaviors which include and encourage child abuse".

You can disagree with me, but don't misstate what I am saying.

Your slippery slope logical fallacies has no merit. There were no children being abused in the Balenciaga video you posted.

>These seem to be adults dressed as literal demons This would imply you believe in demons, which are things that do not exist in the real world. You might believe they exist due to your moral upbringing but just because you were brainwashed (abused) as a child, doesnt mean every one is a child abuser.

Lotta Volkova artwork is definitely sordid but so is a lot of art. You dont have to like it or even look.

If anyone abuses a child, partner or elder, they should be held accountable.

Let me know when there's a wiki list full child abuse incidents involving Drag shows while most godfearing people ignore institutional abuse and rape in the Church

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...

> Lotta Volkova artwork is definitely sordid but so is a lot of art. You don't have to like it or even look.

Exactly. I feel like art and its purpose have been lost in recent years. Art is supposed to make people think or feel. Paintings of beheadings in museums don't make people think about beheading people, nor do they make people happy. They make people think about the atrociousness of history and hopefully about not wanting to repeat it.

My (non religious) dad recently argued that music that implies rape or child abuse shouldn't be broadcast on the radio, because it's wrong. I asked whether any movie showing violence, abuse and rape should also not be played on TV or in cinema. I also explained that both are art forms and aren't depictions of things the singers or actors want to do in real life, per se (we all know there are exceptions). He argued this, however, because he heard the argument from some radio DJs.

It'll be a sad day when we ban everything we don't like to see or hear, because that's when we forget those things exist and stop doing anything against it.

But this is pointedly not child abuse. You're talking about inanimate objects.

Can one abuse a urinal? (Apologies to marcel duchamp!)

Can you timestamp this? I clicked around (not really desiring to watch 15 minutes tbh) and all I saw was people carrying what looks like a stuffed animal (think like a teddy bear for a child) as a purse with a leather strap and people in otherwise skinny dresses and the like walking in mud. Even the final statement piece just looked like your average avant guard edgy nonsense, straps and belts that made no sense draping someone unflatteringly so the model had to walk super slow.

It's still not that unsettling as the parent comment tried to portray it.

I'm actually not sure what caused such a repulse from that comment, it's the usual edgy haute couture show, the way it was described in that comment made me expect a lot more than what I watched. I thought there would be some deeply unsettling stuff and was wondering how it was even allowed on a fashion show. It's just mud, some models walking around with the pieces of the season and... That's it?

The chained BDSM teddy bears with the kids pictures are actually in bad taste and more unsettling than the show but in a "how the fuck did the artistic directors think this would be viewed as?" way than anything else. Because it's truly in bad taste to try to refer to any kind of child abuse.

To me the shock portrayed by the parent comment of yours is actually a bit shocking, might be that my life's experiences made me a bit unfazed to this forced edgy bit though.

I thought that fashion show was great, the empty pit of mud is just hysterical, it is a bit of a shock act. The hole thing just seems like an inside joke that some people took too serious. This is a common problem with communicating things ironically, someone is bound to not get it. Dunno what happened with the photo shoot but probably the director was like put some paper on the table, and someone was like what papers, supreme court document, find some on the internet, I found a ruling about free speech and child porn, Ok great. You may say this is a stupid thing but then the highest court in the country decided to spend its time on the important legal distinction between child porn and free speech. Like that are very serious grown people spending their time on that. Fashion is stupid but at least is obvious to everyone and everyone but the biggest autist know everyone knows.

Also I don't see the difference between the work by Lotta Volkova and some drawings by Goya.

>Dunno what happened with the photo shoot but probably the director was like put some paper on the table, and someone was like what papers, supreme court document, find some on the internet, I found a ruling about free speech and child porn, Ok great.

There is absolutely zero chance that any choice associated with a professional photo shoot was made flippantly, especially for fashion of any kind. Every hair, every spec of dirt, and every single thing in every single shot is intentional.

in a post Epstein world none of these companies deserve benefit of the doubt in these types of situations. Once people dug into it they found Balenciaga has been doing similar things for years, you have to wonder why their marketing team would think this stuff appeals to their extremely rich and powerful customers

In a society with rule of law, everyone deserves benefit of the doubt, always, until proven otherwise.

Balenciaga isn't facing any criminal charges, I'm talking about public opinion. If somebody shows you who they are, believe them.

So, Balenciaga is checks notes an attention whore drumming up attention?

Gosh, it's almost like you're describing the entirety of high fashion.

Do we have rule of law though?

E.g. certain Russian oligarchs winning lawsuits in West because of some legalese. It feels like „rule of law“ nowadays is used to silence the weak and doesn't apply to the powerful ones.

Because you allege that the rule of law is implemented imperfectly, does not invalidate the entire project of the rule of law.

A great tool can cause great damage when missused.

The main question is what's the tangent. And TBH it looks quite sad in the past decade.

...which is an indictment of the misuse, not the tool. Or do we get rid of everything that "can cause great damage"?

Or label was stolen and plastered on a fake similar looking tool.

Maybe it needs tear down and rebuilding from scratch?

Humans deserve benefit of the doubt. I'm not so sure the same should apply to corporations

No such society exists or has ever existed.

We should aspire to nothing which has not existed previously!

Progress is an illusion!

There is only black and white!

Legally, sure.

In a society with a court of public opinion, the exact opposite is true.

Oh, so we should aspire to model ourselves after...

...middle school?

I would settle for the second semester of kindergarten.

To model ourselves after middle schoolers would be aspirational to a delusional degree.

They filed a lawsuit claiming they didn't know about a single stray sheet of paper in one of the photos of the shoot, which looks entirely innocent on first inspection, but happens to be a court document for a famous child pornography suit. The existence of this document has been claimed by some observers (shoe, for one), to be the "smoking gun" proving that this is all satan worship rather than strange art. So it is perfectly reasonable for balenciaga to assert that they didn't know about this document, and a great deal hinges on this seemingly minor question.

Nothing hinges on this question; nothing illegal was done. You're being trolled by both Balenciaga and the Twittersphere.

That photo [1] with said document looks real enough, what's there to "troll"?

Not sure about the satanic thing, as I'm an atheist myself, but to put that sort of document inside a photo-op that already looks fishy as hell is not ok, to put it mildly.

[1] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/11/28/20/65014791-11478639...

> So it is perfectly reasonable for balenciaga to assert that they didn't know about this document

High fashion photoshoots are a multi layered production. Several people would have viewed these photos, edited, adjusted, filtered out bad shots, etc prior to this campaign being released. The fact that no one seemed to bat an eye at a judicial opinion including the words "child sexualization" seems concerning. No special knowledge is required.

Even after somebody told me it was there, I still had to look really damn hard to find it. I don't think your expectation that people reviewing the shoot noticed it is reasonable.

I suppose the other thing to consider is the (art book in the photos) by an author who regularly depicts children naked, dismembered, and covered in blood.

Please stop engineering doubt. It's absurd to pretend that there isn't a consistent theme of child abuse here.

Not a claim on OP, but in general for this conversation: I find it intriguing that the level of grace and benefit that is given to the people involved in this controversy seems to be at an all time high. I wonder if the same people extending this grace and benefit of the doubt would do so with those opposed to them politically.

The theme is child abuse... Except not in the way that you're thinking about it... It's speaking out against it by showing the extreme depiction of it in a controlled art manner.

That's an interesting take. What leads you to think that the artist is speaking out against child abuse, though? What do you we have to go on here that would allow us to assign that intention to them?

Art is meant to be beautiful, not to crush human spirit.

>Art is meant to be [. . .]

There are literally thousands of years of texts, debates, classes, hell, entire schools based around those first five words.

You simply cannot use them definitively. It's just not that simple.

Nah, I don't think this is the take generally.

There is art that crushes the human spirit. Art about war. Art about slavery. Art about personal trauma. I think if we only depicted pretty war, pretty slavery, pretty rape and genocide, that's pretty disgusting.

I can think of lots of art that are designed to, if not crush the humans spirit, at least call into question the goodness of it. See "Rhythm 0" by Marina Abramović or “Helena & El Pascador” Marco Evaristti are just two examples.

Yep, this insanity is only matched by the deference shown by e.g. the NYTimes to SBF. Compare how Apple is responding to Elon’s political-speech Jihad, vs. the complete lack of response to the child exploitation material that he has been purging from Twitter.

Wake up, you have been conditioned to accept a corrupt, misanthropic oligarchy.

It seems this belongs to the class of thought which believes that the rich and powerful are literal Satan worshippers and they, for some reason, like to hint at this in public.

For the life of me, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around this particular obsession. The satanic panic sadly never went away, I guess.

It has its roots in old anti-semitic conspiracy theories, particularly beliefs about blood libel (that Jews would kill Christian children in diabolical rituals) and "Cultural Marxism" (a Nazi-born conspiracy theory that academia is filled with ranks of Jews conspiring to indoctrinate people into Marxist/Communist ideology, which feeds into general conspiracy theories about "the elites" plotting to change/take over the world in some nefarious way.)

Basically the modern version just has the serial numbers filed off and doesn't reference Jewish people directly, just "the elites" (note finance, entertainment and academia have long been considered "Jewish" domains for various reasons.) But if you did deeply enough, it's always there.

1. Worse than I thought, somehow. Yay. 2. I really shouldn’t be surprised at anti-Semitic roots, but here I am surprised yet again.

None of this was upsetting. This sort of seems like the "why can't comedians only tell nice jokes?"

Fashion is an art form. Sometimes it makes statements and attempts at subversion.

I watched the very first 30 seconds and saw literally zero things to worry about. If there's anything there, kindly link to a specific timestamp. Dear God, I wish we were still in pandemic mode so that pearl clutchers could scream about masks instead.

Not people wearing horns, dear god. I think we might be summoning the devil.

Nice try, balenciaga marketing dept.

I am so glad this wasn't a rickroll video

Groomers gonna groom. It's part of a campaign to ever so slowly sexualize children.

> Balenciaga is trying to claim they didn’t know anything about this. That seems absurd given the rest of what they are putting out and who is working with them.

There you go.

The sort of person to give final approval over this at Balenciaga thought they could test and get away with this incredibly disgusting shoot. Then everyone noticed and they started to back-peddle.

Unfortunately, I don't think it is the last time we will see Balenciaga and others do disturbing shoots like that. Quite a shame that they have just shown how disgusting they are.

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