I remember Jena Malone's portrayal of an 11-year-old who is graphically beaten and raped by her stepfather in **Bastard out of Carolina**. Was there any brouhaha over that? If not, why over this new film?
Brooke Shields in **Pretty Baby** (which I haven't seen), Jodie Foster in **Taxi Driver** (which I have), etc. .....it's not the first time a prepubescent actor has played a sexualized role. What's so different about **Hounddog**?
There was a thread not too long ago in the Pit where a poster was upset over just this sort of thing. Check it out for yourself if you want to try to get a handle on the logic behind these sorts of complaints.
But, but, it’s Dakota Fanning, don’t you see?! 'Tis blasphemy to sully her! We should be typecasting her as undiluted cute sweetness!
…and yes, folks these days DO get worked up over “raw” scenes involving the pubescent set. What can I say, that particular squick has legs.
I note that Misses Shields and Foster, who broke big onto the big screen playing 12-y/o whores, have turned out quite well with minimal if any episodes of adolescent derangement. OTOH such embodiments of wholesomeness as Lindsay Lohan have ended up going into rehab before being of age to legally buy the booze and flashing a whole theatreful of tweens.
It’s not the first time that there has been a public “flap” about a young actress playing this type of role. I don’t recall Taxi Driver, but being the same age as Brooke Shields, I do remember the huge flap about Pretty Baby (even though it was only two years later). There were places that Pretty Baby was banned precisely because she was so young and playing the kind of role that she was and I remember it being a deal in the media much in the same way that the Dakota Fanning role is now.
I just got back from seeing the premier of the film (yeah, I’m at Sundance!). The rape scene was really mostly implied, and extremely brief. The horror was expressed mostly by the terror shown in Dakota’s eyes. In the post film Q&A Dakota said that the “CANNOT FIGURE OUT SPOILER BOX” scene was more difficult. She’s a pretty confident actress.
All in all, Bastard out of Carolina was a much more disturbing film, and IMHO, a better movie. Jena Malone was amazing in that role.
To make a spoiler box, use brackets and the word “spoiler” to encompass the spoiling material.
Example:
[ spoiler ]Remove the spaces between the brackets and the word to make the box really show up - they’re in place now just to allow you to see how it’s done. Don’t use squiggly brackets like {} by accident, or forget to add the slash to close the box.[ /spoiler ]
And this is how it looks when you do it for real, without the spaces. At least now we can edit posts to fix spoiler box mistakes ourselves.
As far as I can tell, just from things I’ve read about Dakota, her sister, and her family, I think they do a great job of protecting her from the REAL abuse of Hollywood exploitation (financial and social). She seems like an extremely well-adjusted kid.
I believe her parents have her best interests at heart, and I see nothing wrong with a kid portraying someone who is being abused, as long as it’s not taken too far (which, from Lict’s report, it sounds like it was handled properly). It’s a touchy subject, for sure…but it’s not impossible to do it right.
Right. I think the laws regarding child actors has quieted that problem quite a bit, but it still happens to some (cough) McCauley Culkin (cough). My impression is that her folks are straight shooters, though. I don’t think I’ve heard a single word of bad press about them in that regard.
There actually was some over that movie. I believe Ted Turner himself complained, because it was a ‘made for cable’ TV-movie and was shown on his cable network (TNT I think). This was also a reason the brouhaha was much less, it wasn’t released theatrically.
