posted January 25, 2007 11:56 AM         

LOS ANGELES (Jan. 22) — Dakota Fanning will turn 13 next month, and she has a short answer for anyone who questions her decision to play a 1950s girl who gyrates in her underwear, wakes up as her naked father climbs into her bed, demands that a prepubescent boy expose himself to her in exchange for a kiss and, finally, is raped by a teenager who lures her with tickets to an Elvis concert:

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She’s growing up. Get used to it.

Ms. Fanning, best known for leading roles in children’s movies like “Dreamer” and “Charlotte’s Web,” thrillers like “Man on Fire” and “War of the Worlds,” and the horror film “Hide and Seek,” now is starring in “Hounddog,” an independent film that is to have its premiere on Monday at the Sundance Film Festival. It has already won attention far out of proportion to its budget of less than $4 million.

When “Hounddog” was still shooting last summer near Wilmington, N.C., rumors about the rape scene kicked up a storm on the socially conservative end of the Web spectrum. Some suggested that Ms. Fanning was being exploited by the filmmakers, her parents and her agent. Hundreds signed a petition to persuade a local district attorney to prosecute the filmmakers under a law banning simulated sex with a minor.

The furor hampered the production, and it continues on Fox News and on Web sites like A Minor Consideration (minorcon.org), run by Paul Petersen, an advocate for child actors. Mr. Petersen, himself a former child actor who played Donna Reed’s son on her 1960s sitcom, said in an interview that Ms. Fanning should never have been allowed to play the victim in a rape scene, no matter how much she wanted to or how sensitively it was filmed, and that her doing so violated the letter of federal child-pornography law.

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“Nothing excuses it,” he said. “The plain cold fact is this is illegal, the statutes are what they are, and Hollywood chose to ignore it. If they’d made the character 15, and hired a 19-year-old, they wouldn’t have heard a peep out of me.”

But the Wilmington district attorney, who was shown a cut of the movie, said no crime was committed, and the film’s writer and director, Deborah Kampmeier, said Ms. Fanning was treated more than appropriately: Though her character, Lewellen, disrobes under duress, for example, she is not seen nude, and Ms. Fanning was always clothed during the production.

Ms. Fanning, for her part, says she is mystified by the outcry. Anyone who sees the film, she said on Monday in her first interview on the subject, would understand that the rape scene wasn’t the point of the movie.

“That’s not who Lewellen is,” she said, sitting in her agent’s office in Universal City, braces on her teeth and a small crucifix over her sweater. “Because that has happened to her, that doesn’t define her. Because of this thing that has happened — that she did not ask for — she is labeled that, and it’s her story to overcome that and to be a whole person again.”

“There are so many children that this happens to, every second,” she added. “That’s the sad part. If anyone’s talking about anything, that’s what they should be talking about.”

Her mother, Joy Fanning, waited outside, and her agent, Cindy Osbrink, sat in, but it was Ms. Fanning who fielded the questions, and who made clear that her choices were, well, just that.

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“You know, I’m an actress,” she said. “It’s what I want to do, it’s what I’ve been so lucky to have done for almost seven years now. And I am getting older. February 23 is my birthday, I’ll be 13 years old. And I will be playing different kinds of roles. I won’t be able to do the things I did when I was 6 years old when I’m 14. And that’s what I look forward to — getting to play new roles that aren’t too old for me and aren’t too young for me, that are just at the right time.”

She added: “Lewellen is still very innocent, she’s still a child, but she’s also a little bit wise beyond her years because of the things she’s seen and been through. So I think that I should be able to do what I feel is at the right time for me.”

The story of “Hounddog” is about not just rape but also about the cycle of violence: nearly every major character in it is motherless, wounded, repressed and destructive. Lewellen’s grandmother (Piper Laurie) violates her too, if only with her eyes; her father (David Morse) has been abusing her more directly, and it appears likely that, if nothing changes, Lewellen will become an abuser too.

Ms. Kampmeier said in a telephone interview that she had originally written the character as a 9-year-old, and first signed the actors Robin Wright Penn and Mr. Morse for the project in the late 1990s. But a succession of financial backers withdrew four times in four years, and she set the script aside in 2002 to make “Virgin,” her first feature, about a pregnant girl who believes that she is carrying God’s child; Ms. Wright Penn played the girl’s mother in the film, which received mixed reviews.

When Ms. Kampmeier sent Ms. Fanning the script for “Hounddog” in July 2005, Ms. Fanning said: “The bottom line was, I couldn’t not do it. It’s all I could think about. I knew I was at the perfect age.”

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She had to wait nine months as Ms. Kampmeier hunted for investors; the subject matter remained objectionable to most, even with a proven star in the central role, the director said. (Making the most of that delay, Ms. Fanning said, the director sent her an e-mail message with a new question about Lewellen each morning: Favorite color? Favorite food? “That’s why I was so comfortable in Lewellen’s skin,” Ms. Fanning said, “because I knew so much about her.”)

Ms. Kampmeier said investors kept balking at the rape scene, demanding that it be shunted off-screen, merely implied or removed from the plot altogether.

About the online petitions to have her arrested, she said that the district attorney’s office in Wilmington was busy prosecuting real sex crimes, like one in which a 10-year-old girl was impregnated by her father. “All these cases are reported in the newspaper, and nobody ever calls them about that,” she said. “But they get 10 to 20 calls a day from people insisting that my movie be prosecuted.”

Ms. Fanning said the most taxing scene for her was one in which her sleeping character is covered by snakes that slither in through the open window of her tumbledown shack.

But it may be an earlier pivotal scene that draws more critical attention, should “Hounddog” find a distributor. In it Lewellen sings and dances her best Elvis impression — horizontally, on her bed — upon learning that the singer is coming to town. While she does, however, a teenage milkman is in the room, looking on a little too hungrily.

Overly sexual behavior in minors is often a telltale sign of prior abuse, and provocation is, unfortunately, in the eye of the provoked. But to Ms. Kampmeier’s mind, and more important, to Ms. Fanning’s, Lewellen’s dancing in this scene is as innocent as her already corrupted life can get.

“She’s 12 years old,” Ms. Fanning said. “She’s doing that because that’s fun. She’s not going so far as to think, ‘Oh, am I doing something wrong?’ or ‘Is this going to look in a weird way?’ He’s just her milkman. He’s coming to pick up the empties.”

posted January 25, 2007 12:13 PM         

In the new energy of our planet all things will be exposed so they can be balanced out. ( the light is on now!) It can't be stopped.

posted January 25, 2007 12:23 PM         

I work in the public school system in a poor area of the US, and kids younger than 13 already know about sex and likely have had sex as well. Sexual abuse in rampant here. But that's not the only way these kids are being exposed to sex - a good lot of it has to do with the media and consumerism, which are pushing sex on kids. So by and large, these children as already "sexualized" and are living of the consequences of that.

My point is, why is it wrong to have an young actress who's probably intelligent and supported by her family enough to deal with playing a child who's sexually exploited, in a film that (as far as I can see) is a condemnation of sexual exploitation of children, yet it's OK that our young girls have things like Bratz and Britney Spears pushed on them? That they show up at school wearing clothes a size too small and barely covering their skin? That both girls and boys are entering *middle* school with the mindset that popularity and social acceptence hinges on how sexual desireable and sexual active they are?

As far as I can see, we're allowing our young kids to be exploited and turned into walking child porn stars right in front of us, so why are we expected to get upset only when an actress that same age makes a films depicting how wrong it is to treat kids like sexual objects?

posted January 25, 2007 03:22 PM         

Sure, pedophiles the world over are toasting each other on account of this film, and can't wait to see a girl as young and as pretty as Dakota dancing innocently in her undies. They are overjoyed. Does that make it pornography? No. It just makes them sick and in need of help.

In Lewis Carroll's day, there was a fascination with prepubescent bodies, and photographs, paintings, and sculptures depicting young children, often nude or nearly nude, were viewed as acceptable and beautiful things by members of high society. They were appreciated for their beauty, not their sexuality. It was widely agreed that they inspired contemplation of innocence (and innocence lost), but not sexual fantasies. Carroll himself is surrounded by contraversy over his uncommon affection for the girl, Alice Liddell (the model for his Alice in Wonderland character), and his own participation in this peculiar, yet widely popular, pasttime, despite the fact that there is no evidence or testimony to support the allegation that he ever did anything besides take photographs (again, just like many artists of his day, sensitive to the artistic climate of the culture to which they belonged). We may think of 19th century England as utterly repressed and find this contrast peculiar, although, it may in fact be a direct result of the repression, if not a purely innocent phenomenon, made possible by a climate which was still largely innocent itself, and unmindful of the ways in which a dirty mind might approach these objects.

I dont think there is anything wrong with films like these (taxi driver, b*stard out of carolina, hounddog, and others). We do need to raise consciousness about childhood abuse (be it sexual, physical, or emotional), and the controversy surrounding this film is probably going to prove more effective in accomplishing that than the film itself. I think its awesome.

hsc

posted January 25, 2007 03:31 PM         

quote:

---

I don't know how anyone can have an opinion on the scene unless they've actually SEEN it.

---

Well said.

The illusion of enlightenment is in the eye of the beholder.

Shared opinions just allow people of like minds the opportunity to recognize each other; they do not necessarily indicate enlightenment.

posted January 25, 2007 04:11 PM         

Trillian - And *your* point is what exactly? I don't see anyone here saying they have an opinion about the film itself without having see it. We're expressing our opinion about the *media reaction* to this film, as presented in the article above. What the f is the problem?

I have bitten my tongue more times than I recall when reading some of your own pompous, smug BS. But this time, you are so far off mark it's just plain insulting. Your own illusion of enlightenment apparently stems from assuming everyone else is talking out their a@@es and giving themselves ego strokes except for you, the good and pure trillian. However, in this case, that would be a very *wrong* assumption on your part.

posted January 25, 2007 05:33 PM         

Let me put it this way...i appreciate that people have an open mind towards the movie. And that they are expressing their opinions about the media reactions in a very balanced way. One of the possible reactions cud have been to condemn the movie without even watching it. but it is not.

Of course we cannot comment on the movie (and nobody is saying tht its a wonderful movie! all we are saying is that it is high time that such movies were made). but we can comment on the issue at hand, which is the right to make a movie that deals with such social issues.

ILWL

btw. i do have the right to decide for myself what i consider a 'higher' way of thinking. (and its no coincidence that it coincides with my way of thinking...after all i wud like to have opinions/values which i consider take the higher road). that's my personal opinion. and i am expressing it. i recognize of course that it may not be the same as yours.

posted January 25, 2007 11:43 PM         

But hey if it pays the bills what can you do?

posted January 26, 2007 04:00 AM         

we have a bit of a timebomb waiting to go off in this country with regards sexually transmitted diseases - kids think they are so streetwise and yet stds and teenage pregnancies are a real problem.

how many of the people objecting to the film allow their young daughters to go out wearing clothes that are entirely inappropriate for their age? i'm not being prudish but teaching a group of 11yr olds and seeing thongs riding high above their tight trousers actually makes me feel sick...it is just soooooo wrong.

posted January 26, 2007 04:10 AM         

In my time here, I've yet to see Trillian say anything pompous or smug. Maybe that's in the eye of the beholder, too? Possibly it says something about them as well.

posted January 26, 2007 07:54 PM         

Man, I loved those aunts in uncles in the film. That's whay I'm talking about! A good old Southern Beat down!