BTW, Tatum O’Neal, Jodie Foster, Natalie Portman and Brooke Shields all managed to get through their childhood “adult” roles without ending up being Dana Plato. I won’t be taking my kids to Hollywood to play those odds, but they don’t universally end up in tragedy.
It does make me uncomfortable to see children that actual age or portrayed at that age by older actors engage in this kind of onscreen activity, especially rape scenes or a “handjob”.
I would not let my children do that at that age, if they were child-actors.
Of course, knowing what 12-year old boys are like having been one scares me more than the fictitional portrayal!
It is a difficult issue to think about. There’s no way this question would even be raised 20-30 years ago. I also am of a mind that this has been a progression of some sort in the movie/TV industry on many levels that keeps on going…where does it stop? At nine? Ten?
Taxi Driver? Pretty Baby?
Oh yeah…well, after wiping your egg off my face, how about prevalence, then?
Is it more prevalent now than before? Weren’t those glaring standouts and now it’s not so…unusual/controversial or taboo?
And if we go back further than that, the entertainment industry was pretty damn wholesome compared to today.
Why did that change?
Not that I am so worried about it because I can keep my children from viewing age-inappropriate material, but I am honestly wondering when the shoe dropped and caused more controversial subject matter to be less, well, controversial!
Was it the 1960’s and the counter-culture movement that triggered it?
Sorry in advance to the OP for my quasi-hijacking ramble…
Don’t you think the people to decide this are the parents and the kids together? It’s not like a kid comes on the set one day and gets told there is a sex scene. I’m pretty sure that when the call goes out to agents and managers anything out of the ordinary is included - you’d certainly not want to cast someone to have them quit because of a scene they don’t want to do.
I’m sure it is embarrassing - but I’ve heard commentary about how the first on-screen kiss between two characters was embarrassing, and both these kids were old enough to have kissed in real life. But a lot of kids don’t have the experience to make this stuff as emotionally loaded as the scene was for Jodie Foster, say, and shooting a scene is far less intense usually than watching it.
I must admit that the most intense thing my daughter had to do was to eat lobster on-screen during her vegetarian period. I doubt she would have wanted to do a sex scene - she was too much of a prude. But, given the screening and parental involvement, I don’t see a big problem.
In fact, I suspect that the rate of problems with child actors is less than that of the kid population as a whole. For every super successful actor there are hundreds or thousands that have management and get parts here and there. I’m sure some of them get into trouble, but you don’t need a SAG card to do drugs.
To be a child actor, you need a maturity and focus well beyond average for kids that age. When we started I thought it amazing that a manager could filter on just one line of dialog, but after sitting in the waiting rooms of enough casting agents I began to see it also. A kid has to be able to be on for the camera, to listen to and take direction, and to be reliable. If you aren’t, you don’t last long. There is no difference in the director’s expectation for kids and adults…
My daughter wrote that the best thing about acting was having all those people and all that money depending on her, and being able to do it. (She wasn’t the lead - everyone on a set has to be right there.) Having a kid who acts is a hard life, and there are many who don’t have the flexibility to handle it, but worrying about the kid turning out like Dana Plato is no reason not to do it.
I don’t see why you’d see a stage kiss as a first real kiss any more than one which was forced on someone without their consent. Not to be gross, but a rape victim can still consider herself a virgin, can’t she? If there’s no consent or it’s not a real moment between two people who want to kiss each other, it’s not like the ability to have a true first experience later has been somehow taken away.
Taxi Driver and Pretty Baby came out within 2 years of each other. The OP mentions one movie and two television episodes (and frankly I think the kiss one is ridiculous to worry about), also in a 2 year period. So, you tell me: is it more prevalent, or are you just more aware of the recent ones because A) they’re more recent and B) they ping *your *oogey meter?
I think you just don’t know about the un-wholesome old movies, because, let’s face it, who remembers every movie that comes out every year! Thousands of the movies made before we were born aren’t even on videotape or DVD. Even of the famous ones, there were movies about child killers (The Bad Seed), alcoholics with children (Days of Wine and Roses), sexual abuse of child nuns (Agnes of God) — and that’s without moving beyond my high school speech team resume! 
In 20 years, no one will remember Houndog, either. Heck, I had to IMDB it just now because I’d already forgotten it!
True, there were production codes and internal censorship which were arguably stricter (though I’d argue that the current relaxation is far more prevalent in depictions of violence than anything else). But “issues” were addressed - Showboat, one of the most wholesomey wholesome of family musicals today, was shocking in it’s day - all that racially equality and miscegenation! If we’re now covering new “issues” that seem less wholesome because we haven’t seen them covered as much, it’s because we’re concerned with these new issues as a culture.
40 years ago, people were shocked and outraged about the immorality of a white woman kissing a black man there on the silver screen in front of God and everybody, thanks to Sidney Poitier and Katherine Houghton. And, today, what could be more wholesome than Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?
A think a lot of the blame for messed up child actors can be laid at the feet of the parents.
The myth of the stage parent isn’t.
When my daughter was 16 she got interested in modeling and acting. She has the look (LOOOONG legs, slim, blonde, high cheek bones) so she got me to take her to a casting call for a modeling / acting agency.
We went, and we saw parents bring their entire brood, as many as 5 kids in one case to the casting call. You could see the hope in the parents eyes.
A short presentation was made while we were being watched by several of the staffers.
They then came back and excused the children they were not interested in. The reactions were classic. The kids could not have cared less, however in the face of the parents you could see the dreams evaporate. Crestfallen does not even begin to describe the look on the parents faces. Crushed would be more like it.
IMHO a parent like this would agree to whatever the script said, to keep their child working.
What was really funny was the individual interview that my daughter and I had with the casting director. We were called, I walked over with her, and did not sit down, but rather started to walk away. The casting director said that he needed to interview me also. OK, I said, but she is the one you need to talk to, I am not pursuing a dream here, she is. The guy looked surprised but talked to my daughter.
By the end of the interview, I still had not said a word, he turned to me and asked for my questions. I told him I did not have any, I was not trying to live my life though my daughter. If my daughter wanted to do this, I would be behind it 100%, but it was her call. He put down his pen looked at me and told me that it was nice to meet a normal parent every so often.
FTR: My daughter decided later that night, on her own, that she wanted to concentrate on her schooling. The next day the casting director was unhappy with her decision, and even had one of the VP of the agency call me. No go she had made up her mind.
She graduates college in June!
Danica McKellar calls her first kiss the one she had on-camera with Fred Savage for an episode of “The Wonder Years.” So at least SOMEONE is not choosing to view these things as “it doesn’t count.” You may believe otherwise, but the important thing would seem to be how the kid views it.
Actually I agree with you completely. Others were acting as if it definitely did count and that’s my main objection. It seems to me to be down to whether the person feels it was her true first, as you say, and of course I wouldn’t argue if she went on to say she regretted that. She has every right, naturally.
My concern is not the portrayal of kids – it’s kids doing the portrayal. Meg Tilly was 25 when she portrayed the “child nun” in Agnes of God, so it’s not remotely relevant to this discussion. The filming and story for Days of Wine and Roses was done without exposing Debbie Megowan to the more harsh aspects of the story. And, like it or not, children understand death and killing – at least on a visceral level – before they understand sex and sexual paly, which makes my comfort level for The Bad Seed’s 10-year-old Patty Macormack bearable.
True. So is your point that our ideas about not having twelve-year-olds get handjobs from adult massage parlor employees will one day be seen as similarly quaint? “Ah, how prudish they were, back when jerking off preteens was considered scandalous!”
It is possible it was her first kiss, that she had the emotional attachment to it of a first kiss and therefore it was hers.
Some rape victims who had not had intercourse before they were raped consider their rape to be “when they lost their virginity.” I don’t happen to think thats the HEALTHIEST view a woman can haver of her rape experience, but I’m not going to redefine it for someone else. Rape counselors are trained (or where trained when I was trained as a rape counselor) to encourage women to not define their rapist as a sexual partner and if they had been virgins to still consider themselves as such.
I’m not sure this is correct, seeing as how one of the original examples – Hounddog – sparked plenty of controversy, is generally referred to as ‘The Dakota Fanning rape movie’ and still hasn’t found a distributor.
What comes across as harmful to the viewer may not necessarily be what will harm the child actor (stage parents aside). The little boy in The Shining apparently thought he was starring in a family drama, whereas Sarah Polley’s role in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen left her scarred enough to write a letter to director Terry Gilliam years later. Read the full correspondence here
Wait, was the kid jerked off in the show? I missed that part. I saw a kid with a grin on his face sitting in a waiting room chair next to his uncle. I know the *character *had just been jerked off, but I see no evidence that the actor was. Or do you think it’s harmful for a 12 year old boy to know about handjobs? Assuming, of course, that he was told he was grinning because his character just got a handjob - maybe he was told to grin like he got a puppy or something, I don’t know.
But yes, speaking to the larger issue, I think we’re, as a culture, extremely concerned about sex and children right now, and so child sexuality, pedophilia and ephebophilia are three of our hot “issues” du jour. I don’t think they have always been, and I don’t think they will always be.
Hell, when I was twelve years old it would have just been a welcome rest for my own arm.
Seriously, though: regarding your first two examples in the OP, is it the characters who are 12, or the actors?
There are examples of both. I have little problem with a young-looking actor/actress portraying a sex scene, even one of abuse if it’s relevant to the plot, of a 12-year old.
I just wonder at the “hand job” scene described by the OP regarding an ACTUAL 12 year old actor.
Perhaps it’s as another poster described, whereby the “grinning” after the fact is because the director instructed the young actor to smile like he was just given a new puppy, instead of being actually exposed to the seamy underside of flimmaking.
One can hope.
I just don’t know, I see both angles, and obviously parenting comes into play.
I however do not like parents using their children for financial gain for themselves, that’s just despicable.
Where do you live? That is not the way they do it in Hollywood or New York. There are a lot of rip off “agents” out there - in fact we went undercover to one once.
First of all, modeling and acting are very different. Models are not unionized, and in general are far more at the mercy of the agency/client. My daughter’s manager told us that trying to do modeling wasn’t worth her time. One of her acting friends did (she was on the box of a Crayola product) but most didn’t bother.
Second, in NY and Hollywood you don’t just go to a casting call. A casting director puts out a call sheet, and agents try to get some of their clients in. When you have a manager, the agent calls the manager and the manager calls you. (In NY most kids have managers.) Many kids are represented by multiple agents.
Kids always go into casting directors offices by themselves. Agents and managers can tell very quickly if the kid really wants to do this, and those who don’t are not going to get calls, let alone jobs. Productions are very expensive, and the last thing a director wants is a kid who doesn’t really want to be there.
In all the auditions I took my daughter to, I saw maybe two obnoxious parents. The closest thing I’ve ever seen to an obnoxious parent on a set was the mothers of a few extras in a commercial who were trying to get their kids to push forward to become principals. I spent a lot of time with the mothers of the other kids in the industrial that my daughter did (it was 12 segments so it took a while to shoot) and all were very nice.
I’m kind of pissed at the myth of the horrible parent. There are one or two, but I assure you, any dreams of instant stardom disappear after the fifteenth audition without a call back. Getting one job in 15 auditions is considered to be doing really good. I’m sure there are some parents who would be pains, but people in the business know the signs and try not to deal with them.
Me too, in fact there are laws against it.
Do you think the usual case is that a parent takes a kid to a casting director, snatches a lucrative role, and then profit? If so, you are watching way too many movies. I suspect the relatives of working business people can cut corners, but you spend a lot of time and money dragging a kid around to agents and auditions.
I live in Southern California. It was a nationally known agency that was looking for people to represent.