Sexualiserade bilder av flickor. Pippi Examples och den manliga blicken

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine shifts of meaning of the visual material in a piece of art called Pippi Examples (2001). The Swedish artist Palle Torsson uses parts of the Pippi Långstrump motion picture for this video work, which has been accused of "making porn of Pippi". It is when the visual material is moved from its original context of children'scultureand placed in a context ofart, that the perception of the viewers' position changes. Four pictures from Pippi Examples are examined through a semiotic method. These pictures are related in different ways to signs of sexualisation used in visual pornographic material. The girls in the material are exposed in a sexualised way, related to two frames of interpretation. The first one is the references in the pictures to a pornographic visual tradition. The second important frame of interpretation is the concept of the male gaze, in the article also referred to as the male viewer's position. This position is structured through the historical meaning of children's sexuality, cultural boundaries for girls' physical use of their body and the sexualised gaze of male adults. The theoretical ground for the article is Laura Mulvey^ essay on the male gaze and Michel Foucaulfs work on the history of sexuality. In the final part of the article the gender of the artist is discussed as a vital part of Pippi Examples. The artisfs male gender both confirms the sexual content of the visual material and tums the interest to his person rather than to the art. This can be seen as a new situation for the male artist that historically has had a position related neither to sexuality nor gender.