Before she celebrates her 13th birthday next month, and becomes a proper teenager, Hollywood starlet Dakota Fanning, who has just starred in a charming adaptation of children’s classic Charlotte’s Web, has a controversy in store.
A row is set to erupt at the Sundance Film Festival later this month over her latest film, Hound Dog, because she is featured in a graphic rape scene. Word of the film’s content has provoked accusations of exploitation on the part of Fanning’s mother, Joy, and her agent, Cindy Osbrink. It has also sparked calls for distributors to boycott the movie.
The uncompromising subject matter also caused unease among financial backers during the film’s development last summer. Ted Baehr of pressure group the Christian Film and Television Commission is calling on distributors to reject the film and report the filmmakers to legal authorities.
He has been quoted as calling the film — an independent release that also stars Robin Wright Penn and Hollywood veteran Piper Laurie — ”paedophilia”.
Writer-director Deborah Kampmeier has responded by urging critics to see the film before they cast moral judgement, and representatives for the film have released a statement from the American Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, which applauds the film’s sensitive treatment of the issue of child abuse.
When Fanning was asked, in a recent interview in Time magazine, about her involvement in scenes with such adult themes, she avoided the issue and focused on her feeling for her role.
”It’s about a young girl in the South. She has overcome some really hard things in her life through music, especially the blues and Elvis Presley,” she said. ”I have to sing a little bit in the movie. It’s the period when Elvis is touring in his pink Cadillac and starting to get really popular, so I had to learn about that. It’s about overcoming adversity and still being yourself and not having to change who you are.”
Fanning has confirmed she is planning to attend the film festival premiere of Hound Dog in Utah on January 22. ”Yeah, I’m so excited. I’ve never been somewhere where there’s that much snow,” she said. ”I totally want to go skiing.”
The controversy echoes previous storms over the morality of casting actresses in sexualised parts in films they would be too young to see in the cinema.
In 1996, Jena Malone portrayed a child rape victim in Bastard Out of Carolina, while in 1978 a pre-adolescent Brooke Shields’s virginity was auctioned off in the Louis Malle film Pretty Baby. Perhaps the most high-profile outrage focused on Jodie Foster’s role as a prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 Taxi Driver. Like Fanning, these actresses were all under the age of 15. — Guardian Unlimited Â