The 12-year-old actor Dakota Fanning has become embroiled in the latest tussle between Hollywood and the religious right over a scene in a new film in which she is seemingly raped by a teenager.
Hounddog had its premiere on Monday at the Sundance festival of independent films, founded by Robert Redford and held in Park City, Utah. The opening has provoked a flurry of protest from religious groups denouncing the involvement of a child actor in such an extreme sequence.
Leading the protests has been the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Its director, Bill Donohue, has called for the film to be banned and organised a petition against it. Donohue has a track record of such campaigns, including stopping the broadcast last year by NBC of the crucifix scene in a Madonna concert.
He admitted he had not seen Hounddog, but predicted it would appeal to the most degraded elements of society. ”Five or six years ago this girl was on a tricyle. There has to be some line of decency which Hollywood will not cross.”
Donohue said he had been appalled by revelations in recent years about the abuse of children by some Catholic priests. ”We rightly condemn that, yet at the same time how can we celebrate paedophilia in this so-called artistic way?”
In the film, Fanning plays a Southern child called Lewellen growing up in the fifties. Abused by her father, she finds comfort in blues music and on the way to buy Elvis Presley tickets is accosted by a teenager. The filmmakers stress that the scene is tastefully handled through editing rather than any direct physical contact between the actors. It occurs in shadow and Fanning wears a body suit, though she appears to be naked from the waist up.
The producers have also pointed out that Fanning’s mother, Joy, who acts as her agent, was present during filming. ”I have to say I have started to feel very sorry for these people who are out to silence this,” the director, Deborah Kampmeier, told the Los Angeles Times.
Kota, as the child actor is nicknamed, began acting in a Tide commercial at the age of five and already has 33 credits to her name, most recently in the adaptation of the EB White classic Charlotte’s Web. In that film she plays Fern, a sweet child who tries to save a pig from the smokehouse. In Hounddog, however, she makes the transition to a much more complicated and edgy role. Early reviews suggest she pulls it off with astonishing aplomb.
The controversy can only fuel public interest in her, as it did for two of her predecessors, Brooke Shields, who appeared in sexual scenes in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby, and Jodie Foster, who played a child prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
But further complaints have been raised by organisations working with child actors. Paul Petersen, who became known in 1958 aged 12 in the Donna Reed show but struggled to sustain his career after the sitcom ended in 1966, warned that ”there are no after-care centres in Hollywood”.
Though the final film might be mild in content, Fanning had had to work with the original script and its rape scene. ”She is a 12-year-old child. If I put her through these things for my home video I would be in jail.” – Guardian Unlimited Â