Dakota Gets Raped In Utah Tonight
Hounddog is set to have its premiere at Sundance tonight amidst much controversy…
Furor Over 12-Year-Old Fanning’s Rape Scene
The New York Times —
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:
Sheâs growing up. Get used to it.
Ms. Fanning, best known for leading roles in childrenâs movies like âDreamerâ and âCharlotteâs Web,â thrillers like âMan on Fireâ and âWar of the Worlds,â and the horror film âHide and Seek,â now is starring in âHounddog,â 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 âHounddogâ 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 Reedâs 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.
âNothing excuses it,â he said. âThe plain cold fact is this is illegal, the statutes are what they are, and Hollywood chose to ignore it. If theyâd made the character 15, and hired a 19-year-old, they wouldnât have heard a peep out of me.â
But the Wilmington district attorney, who was shown a cut of the movie, said no crime was committed, and the filmâs 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 wasnât the point of the movie.
âThatâs not who Lewellen is,â she said, sitting in her agentâs office in Universal City, braces on her teeth and a small crucifix over her sweater. âBecause that has happened to her, that doesnât define her. Because of this thing that has happened â that she did not ask for â she is labeled that, and itâs her story to overcome that and to be a whole person again.â
âThere are so many children that this happens to, every second,â she added. âThatâs the sad part. If anyoneâs talking about anything, thatâs what they should be talking about.â
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.
âYou know, Iâm an actress,â she said. âItâs what I want to do, itâs what Iâve been so lucky to have done for almost seven years now. And I am getting older. February 23 is my birthday, Iâll be 13 years old. And I will be playing different kinds of roles. I wonât be able to do the things I did when I was 6 years old when Iâm 14. And thatâs what I look forward to â getting to play new roles that arenât too old for me and arenât too young for me, that are just at the right time.â
She added: âLewellen is still very innocent, sheâs still a child, but sheâs also a little bit wise beyond her years because of the things sheâs seen and been through. So I think that I should be able to do what I feel is at the right time for me.â
The story of âHounddogâ is about not just rape but also about the cycle of violence: nearly every major character in it is motherless, wounded, repressed and destructive. Lewellenâs 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 âVirgin,â her first feature, about a pregnant girl who believes that she is carrying Godâs child; Ms. Wright Penn played the girlâs mother in the film, which received mixed reviews.
When Ms. Kampmeier sent Ms. Fanning the script for âHounddogâ in July 2005, Ms. Fanning said: âThe bottom line was, I couldnât not do it. Itâs all I could think about. I knew I was at the perfect age.â
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? âThatâs why I was so comfortable in Lewellenâs skin,â Ms. Fanning said, âbecause I knew so much about her.â)
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 attorneyâs office in Wilmington was busy prosecuting real sex crimes, like one in which a 10-year-old girl was impregnated by her father. âAll these cases are reported in the newspaper, and nobody ever calls them about that,â she said. âBut they get 10 to 20 calls a day from people insisting that my movie be prosecuted.â
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 âHounddogâ find a distributor. In it Lewellen sings and dances her best Elvis impression â horizontally, on her bed â 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. Kampmeierâs mind, and more important, to Ms. Fanningâs, Lewellenâs dancing in this scene is as innocent as her already corrupted life can get.
âSheâs 12 years old,â Ms. Fanning said. âSheâs doing that because thatâs fun. Sheâs not going so far as to think, âOh, am I doing something wrong?â or âIs this going to look in a weird way?â Heâs just her milkman. Heâs coming to pick up the empties.â
Written by: Cybergosh
The paradox of Dakota Fanning is that she’s a famous child actor and yet she has a way about her that seems more mature than most of the adults I know. She’s tiny and cute, but in an adult trapped in a child’s body kind of way, witness her precocious turns in Uptown Girls and Hide and Seek. Her obvious emotional maturity lets her handle harder roles that require more than what would be asked of a typical kid actor. For this reason, I find her casting in Hounddog to be completely wrong.
The filmmakers want this character to be wise beyond her years, that’s fine. Dakota is 12 in the film, and at this point in society you don’t have to be wise beyond 12 to be a sexual being, watch Maury Povitch or the Bratz cartoon if you don’t believe me. Dakota is simply too old to play this part, compounded by the fact of her obvious maturity in real life that, as good an actor as she is, she can’t hide.
I don’t want to see a mini adult performing this role. It takes away from what you’re supposed to be feeling, like knowing those girls in Tight are all actually over 18. The filmmakers chose the wrong Fanning. They should have cast Dakota’s real life sister, Elle Fanning, also an accomplished actress. Elle is only 8, and she looks and sounds it, but she’s a good enough actress to convey the innocence with an edge that Dakota is simply too mature for. Seeing a probably unfamiliar 8 year old in Hounddog’s controversial scenes packs more of a emotional punch than seeing a 12 year old star in the same role. I understand the financial need to go with name talent, but the filmmakers should not have sacrificed a purer, most realistic vision for box office.
I’m just glad to see that us snakes are sssssstill getting work! We were robbed with the nominationssssss this year. Perhapssssss this will be more in line with what the acdemy considers osssssscar-worthy.