Question about child porn

Factual Questions
1

Yeah, I thought that might get your attention, you perv.

I’ve just come from a screening of Keeping Mum (original UK title: Trunk) with Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott-Thomas, and Maggie Smith. A delightful black comedy, well worth seeing.

It’s made even more worth seeing (IMHO) by a couple of all-too-brief nude scenes (bare breasts only) with actress Tamsin Egerton. (The link is SFW.) Here is another shot of her (on the left).

I had not recalled seeing the young lady before, so I looked her up on the IMDb, which says that Ms. Egerton will turn 18 in two months! The film was released in Britain last December, just a few days after her 17th birthday, so she was 16 when the film was shot.

Could this film get in trouble with child porn laws in the U.S.? I hope it doesn’t, because it’s a very nice film, and Ms. Egerton makes an important aesthetic contribution to it. But I don’t recall hearing of a film that included under-18 nudity before. Porn films always make a point of stating that all the actors are over 18. (Or so I have heard.)

What’s the straight dope?

(After careful consideration, I decided not to research this myself by Googling on “child porn,” preferring instead to rely on the wisdom and experience of my fellow Dopers.)

2

American Beauty included a nude scene with Thora Birch, who was 16 when the scene was filmed. It was done with her parents’ full consent and they were present on the set. Provided you’re not showing sexual activity, and you’ve dotted your i’s and crossed your t’s in terms of obtaining the appropriate familial consent, underage nudity is doable.

3

Thora Birch was under 18 when she did a topless scene in American beauty. If I recall correctly, the parents had to sign some sort of waiver and they were there on the set (which is still kinda creepy if you think about it).

Nonetheless, nudity for the purposes of art is vastly different than pornography.

4

Nice simulpost, guys.

5

Different people use different things for different purposes.

6

I meant to add: Where is the line?

7

Like I said, showing underage actors engaged in explicit sexual conduct would be pretty much impossible to get away with, regardless of the artistic merit. Underage nudity tends, exclusively I would guess, to be non-sexual (or non-actively sexual).

8

Like I said, where is the line - when does nudity become sexual? (I can think of things you might cite as obvious, flagrant examples, but I’m curious as to exactly where the tipping point is)

9

The Screen Actors Guild expressly forbids any under-18 actor from engaging in a simulated sex scene, but I don’t know if it would actually be illegal.

Any depiction of actual sex would almost certainly be illegal.

10

But perhaps not so the case over here, where the age of consent is 16. Mind you, the legal age for appearing in porn is 18, so go figure?!

11

Pretty Baby

Brooke was, what, twelve? Quite the controversy back then.

12

Happened with Keira Knightley, too. She was, I believe, 15 when she lifted her shirt for one scene in The Hole.

13

Which, incidently, starred Thora Birch.

14

In the first, brief nude scene in Keeping Mum, Kristin Scott-Thomas, playing Tamsin Egerton’s mother, is looking for her daughter and sees a VW bus in her driveway rocking. She opens the door to see her daughter and a boy at it. It’s a very brief shot, and you might say that, because they are interrupted when she opens the door, you don’t actually see them having sex. But it’s quite clear what was happening.

Later in the film, someone else is watching the daughter undress from outside her window. That is not a sexual context (for her, although it is for the peeping tom), but the first scene clearly is.

But I guess the answer is that these things are not specifically illegal. Thanks.

15

Michelle Johnson appeared fully nude in Blame It On Rio when she was seventeen.

16

As long as we’re tossing out anecdotes, Olivia Hussey was underage on the date she filmed the nude scene in Romeo and Juliet. Not sure if her co-star Leonard Whiting was also. IIRC the nudity earned the film a rating that prevented Olivia from seeing it in the theatre.

17

I wonder if it mattered that sex is fully legal in UK from the age of 16? Would a UK film showing 17 year old actors having simulated sex (or even real sex) cause problems if distributed in the US?

18

I dunno, Bippy, ISTR that the law for real-sex performance in the UK is also 18*; but yes, actual, real, under-18 porn, hard or softcore, would have problems in the USA regardless of its legality in the country-of-origin.

(* nothing in the UK or USA legal system prevents there being one set of age-legality requirements for private nonprofit sex - 16, in the UK and a majority of US states - and another for “adult performances” - 18 - )

Meanwhile, the OP answer would be so far NO, the film in question should not get in trouble with US child-porn laws because as far as we can glean from the description provided, the performance the minor’s involved in is NOT “porn”.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not the law in the USA that ANY portrayal of a minor involving nudity or the suggestion of sex is a crime. It goes by the individual case. In the most general sense, for something to be legally “child porn”, you need those two things: a “child” (meaning a legal minor), and said child doing “porn”. One but not the other? No child porn.

Now, however… if you have minors letting it all hang out and acting like they get jiggy in your film, even within the law, you may still piss off public opinion, get picketed by the church groups, have a hard time getting an MPAA rating, have a blowhard politician bewail your bad influence, have distribution problems with spineless theatre-owners and generally be unable to make a buck off it… but not prosecuted.

The attempt in the 1990s to enact legislation that would classify as CP anything that conveyed even the appearance of minors engaging in lewd conduct was* overturned by the courts * for being overbroad and impinging upon legitimate expression. So this flick would not be in trouble with US child porn laws but could have trouble with US prudery and the “think of the children” brigade…

19

…OTOH, that picture gallery includes one shot of Patrick Swayze in a red leather thong, which definitely should get the makers of this film accused of some sort of abominable offense… :eek:

20

No it didn’t. Romeo and Juliet was originally rated G and later rerated PG. Besides she was of age when it was released. It’s perfectly legal for minors to appear nude of film in the US. It’s just become very rare. Now and Then had several underage (including preteen) actors appear nude in a skinnydipping scene. Hell Disney’s Pollyanna opens with a boy skinnydipping.