Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

CHILD RAPE IS NEVER 'ART'

In two very different new films, the issue of child sex abuse rears its ugly 
head, raising troubling questions about whether we are moving forward or 
backward in the fight to protect children from sex crimes and exploitation. 

In the movie Hounddog, prepubescent child actress Dakota Fanning plays out a 
scene where she is sexually assaulted and raped by an adult male.  The images 
are so disturbing it reportedly took the filmmaker ten years to finish the 
project because she refused to cut the scene from the film.  The obvious 
implication is that in the past ten years, something happened that pushed us 
over the line of social tolerance for conduct that should never serve as 
entertainment.

At roughly the same time that Hounddog came out, Hollywood gave us Little 
Miss Sunshine, a very different film dealing with the same topic and starring 
an even younger actress named Abigail Breslin.  Breslin literally performed a 
strip show in the film (though not to the point of revealing naked private 
parts) acting out behavior that, as with the conduct on display in Hounddog, 
no child should engage in for real.

Two films, each using a child actress to dramatize harmful behavior, caused 
very different results because while Little Miss Sunshine condemns child sex 
abuse - Hounddog makes it seem like "normal" eroticism.

In Hounddog, whether the child actress was in fact sexually assaulted in 
order to make the film remains unclear because while there are no explicit 
visual depictions of criminal penetration, the images raise serious questions 
about what was left on the cutting room floor.  And whatever the child went 
through in reality, the fact that the film includes a scene where the child 
is involved in mutual masturbation is more than enough evidence the movie is 
oriented toward the idea that children are "naturally" sexual.  This supports 
an erotic rather than criminal perspective on the nature of child rape.   

To make matters worse, the film gives all child pornographers a leg up on the 
argument that their work is legitimate "art".   Think about it from the 
"camel's nose in the tent" perspective.  What pornographer wouldn't cite 
Hounddog as evidence that it isn't necessarily “harmful” to make movies 
showing children being raped?  When the people engaged in sexual behavior on 
film are adults, it's acceptable to argue about where to draw the line 
between eroticism and harm.  But do we really want Hollywood helping child 
pornographers create gray areas around the sexual abuse of children?  It's 
tough enough to beat back a multi-billion dollar industry without movie 
producers creating reasonable doubt in the minds of all potential jurors by 
selling child rape as art.

By contrast, Little Miss Sunshine is a gem of a film that depicts a little 
girl acting out a strip tease during the talent portion of a beauty pageant.  
Parading around in swimsuits and garish makeup, other little girls are 
celebrated for their seductive performances and suggestive behavior.  But 
Abigail Breslin mocks the whole lot of them when she starts to strip, making 
it clear to the audience that only idiots fail to see through thinly-veiled 
entertainment propaganda that normalizes the idea of children as sex objects.

Too bad Little Miss Sunshine couldn't have dropped a filmmaker's footnote 
referencing Hounddog as propaganda Exhibit #1. 

Maybe Hounddog will lose tons of money, Little Miss Sunshine will win tons of 
awards and society will be transformed.   But I doubt it.

More likely the actions of one rogue filmmaker will lead to more 
inappropriate films, fewer protections for children and more sexual abuse and 
exploitation of society's most vulnerable in the name of profit -- 
oops, I mean art.

Wendy Murphy
617-422-7410