Dakota Porning?

So there is a controversy swirling around the new Dakota Fanning movie. You know Dakota, she’s the kid actress who has worked with better actors than Nicole Kidman and has resume that is more impressive than Drew Barrymore’s. Well it seems little Dakota, who is now all of 12 years old, is in a new indie movie “Hounddog” in which she plays a rape victim. And they actually filmed the scene. Putting people up in arms over how anyone could let this happen. Without seeing the movie and the scene, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this.

My gut tells me they could have told the story and left out the scene. Maybe what we need is to actually see the brutality of the crime. But there have been great movies that dealt with awful things such as the Holocaust, that didn’t have to show us men, women and children in the gas chambers and I don’t see how they could have been any more poignant. And even if the scene makes the movie, and goes beyond that to reach its audience and even cause some sort of change, is it right to film it? Is it child pornography? Is it unfair to Dakota, who is now telling the media that “it’s called acting.”

Really though, no 12 year old can handle this. Sure she understands how awful rape is, and she gets that it makes for a powerful scene. And of course she wants to do something shocking that garners attention, what 12 year old girl doesn’t want that? There’s just no way she can see how this could traumatize her down the road. I know Jodie Foster turned out okay after “Taxi Driver” and Dakota “saw” some horrible acts of violence in “Man On Fire” and “War of the Worlds”, so maybe she’ll turn out just fine and this won’t affect her. Or maybe she, and other child actors, shouldn’t be in subject to most of the violence in their movies.

Let’s assume she’s fine, that it doesn’t screw her up and we never see her on “E! True Hollywood” stories talking about how she turned to doing coke off of the DVD box to “Hounddog” and taking late night calls from Charlie Sheen. Okay, that doesn’t happen. She goes on to have a career like Jodie Foster, and she wins more Oscars than Meryl Streep. Now if that’s how her life turns out, great, but what about the impact the scene has on others? Is it worth it if some guy rents the movie after stopping off at the drug store to stock up on Kleenex and baby oil. Then takes it one step further and starts watching the playgrounds before he snatches a kid up and acts it out? No of course it wouldn’t be the films fault; people are responsible for their own actions. And that sick fuck was probably going to do something eventually anyway. But then he gets arrested and ends up being interviewed by Matt Lauer Jr, and he blames the movie. This then leads to a screenplay about the crime, which of course includes a reenactment of both the scene in the movie and his actual crimes. Then what? Or maybe I’m just getting ahead of myself.

I know this, watching that scene is going to fuck up someone. Maybe the actors involved will come out unscathed, but I guarantee some ones uncle or parent, brother or sister is going to need some serious therapy. If one of my nieces or nephews was acting, and they were part of this scene, I would go absolutely nuts. Oh, and the reviews of the movie are pretty horrible and no one seems to want to pick up distribution.


On a lighter note, here are two new additions to the list of things that bother me:

Very cold toilet seats
Oddly warm toilet seats