Dear Readers: Last week, on my May 29th article "A Letter to Smartfiles", the lady herself sent me a long commentary which (as it often does!) elicited so long a response from myself that, once again, I'm packaging it as a column. I almost missed it in all my hectic attempts to put together my new Facebook account. As usual, she presented a combination of relevant facts and speculations, old and new, which set me to thinking. Dear Smartfiles: I can't believe I missed your post until now! I just added on a Facebook account and I'm still exploring its potentials. In the process, I've added on a list of old friends; military, political and other child advocates. God, am I busy! I need to apologize here for not getting out that Ryan Simpkins article this month as I'd planned. Information on her has proven surprisingly hard to come by. [Note to new readers: Ryan Simpkins is an 11 year old child film actress whose resume, since 2006, has consisted of seven straight R-rated films... a record that would even make Dakota Fanning blush! I intended to start off a new series of articles entitled "Exploited Child Actor Of The Month" here in June.] For example: I still know nothing of her parents... not even their names! As Jackie Cooper once said (in regard to this very topic), "First, tell me the composition of their family." One has to seriously know about them to properly analyze why they consented to putting their own little girl in such situations. I also need to find out more about the "track records" of Abrams Artists (the Simpkins' agency) and Sinclair Management. I've heard of both these New York based firms before, courtesy of Janet P.'s input, but nothing in depth as yet. I probably won't like what I find! In fact, I was just commenting to Janet (she and Paul Petersen are associated in "A Minor Consideration's" new Facebook site) about their involvement in the DVD series "An Actor's Journey For Kids". I recommend it highly, by the way. I also mentioned to her that all prospective stage parents should supplement it with that outstanding A & E documentary on child actors; the same one that you referred to, as it so happens. I saw it twice when it aired about two years ago. No single visual source I know of is as educational as to the personal side of the business. And I remember very well Bill Mumy's comments and the segment where his wife and their daughter Liliana were spending a day on-set. They proved how informed and diligent parents can still make it happen- even today- without compromising their acting child in degrading situations. Of course, there's that downside you mentioned. Liliana proved herself as an actress in "Cheaper By The Dozen" and the "Santa Clause" movies. Also, now at age 16, she's no longer just a female reflection of her father at the same age (electric orange hair and freckles!) but has grown into a very lovely young lady. So why, indeed, is she not being much sought after, given that and her proven ability? It's because her father- himself once the top child star in pictures and TV- knew the "ropes" and the hazards of "growing up Hollywood"... even in the more civilized era of the late '50s and early '60s. Unlike other stage parents, he remained more concerned for his daughter's life than her career. [BTW: Did you note Mumy's story about Alfred Hitchcock? Classic!] You also touched on another theme of mine when referencing Jodie Foster. Indeed, I've often placed the true beginnings of of the child pornification trend in Hollywood to "Taxi Driver". In fact, it was Dakota Fanning's own words (pre-"Hounddog") that led me to revisit that film and appreciate its significance. Note the similarities between the two actresses and their defining films. In 1976, Jodie Foster was a very popular child star, noted for her alleged precociousness, but with many good family films (Disney, in her case) to her credit. But she was also then 12 years old, newly pubescent, and therefore in that most "uncertain" part of her career. She was also growing up in the new Valenti Era of Hollywood. Many of the once strict guidelines of decency (that Bill Mumy knew) had already faded. Even so, casting an ACTUAL child in such a role as her's was a big groundbreaker. Only someone as odious as Martin Scorsese would have attempted it. No one before would have thought of taking a popular child star and using her as a prostitute in an R-rated production of the sleaziest order. In fact, even ten years earlier, he would have been thrown in jail for it. But profits outweighed such "minor considerations" as decency of the most basic form. And it worked! Pundits still call it a "classic movie". Thereby, it served to legitimize the use of little girls as sex objects and their employment in R-rated films. Thus, too, did "Taxi Driver" provide leverage for casting directors in recruiting the daughters of ambitious stage parents. Is it any wonder, then, that Dakota was citing Jodie Foster as her "role model" months before her own "groundbreaking event"? Despite the fact that they'd never even met? Who put that into her head, hmmmm? Can anyone reasonably doubt that her own handlers did so... as a vital part of her "conditioning process"? You can't just tell a child to perform in perverse sexual scenes- in defiance of their every natural inclination- without first twisting their sense of right and wrong. Certainly not at the age of 12! How Jodie herself was made compliant is a story that needs to be told. But what can't be denied is that her example, in turn, was used 30 years later to influence another 12 year old girl. And that influence made possible the achievement of the next level of cinematic depravity; actual child porn itself. "Taxi Driver" was, indeed, the illegitimate father of "Hounddog". Note, too, that quote of Foster's that you mentioned. "I knew I wasn't REALLY a prostitute... etc." Of course she didn't. But she had to understand the concept and reality of child prostitutes in order to effect the role and, being a child at the time, virtually live it in her mind. Likewise, Dakota Fanning issued a similar, scripted line for interviewers in regard to her Lewellen role when the storm over "Hounddog" erupted. It was, also, equally duplicitous and for the same reasons. Both were very popular kids, both had been marketed extensively as "precocious little adults" (but none- ever- so much as Dakota has) and both were pandered off at a soulshakingly early age into a sex-driven performance, the like of which was unprecedented, to effect an adult career. And both dutifully repeated the lies they were told by their exploiters to say. What does it further do to little girls- after making a movie of sex and violence and, resultingly, sacrificing their clean image with their supporters- to be led to tell public falsehoods? And those falsehoods (as they must have dimly suspected) were not only aimed at justifiying their obscene enactments, but mainly at protecting their exploiters from criticism and possible prosecution. And just when, in unconscious self-defense, do they begin to believe it themselves? Bill Mumy and his wife apparently understand this. One compromise, for a child's career's sake, only leads to another... and another. It's a story older than Hollywood itself. But now, since "Hounddog", nearly all moral constraints are off the table in the Film Industry. And, as a VERY experienced child star himself, Mumy knows how a child's developing character is affected by such unnatural surroundings, even under the best of circumstances. [Note: I wrote this complete column several days BEFORE the untimely death of Michael Jackson!] And "Hounddog" is, to date, the worst of those circumstances given form. One can readily look to Jodie Foster's life after "Taxi Driver" as a harbinger for Dakota Fanning's future. In addition: Dakota been well-guarded ever since 2006. Her once spontaneous, light-hearted interactions with her fans have largely receded into history. She's since become the junior member of a new, Kristen Stewart led "brat pack" and has been spotted in Hollywood clubs where she could not legally go. She dresses in chic jeans and pumps like a prowling, upper class prostitute; an image at incredible odds with that of the Clean-Teen-Schoolgirl-Cheerleader her handlers try to project- itself a continuation of the equally false cookie selling Girl Scout ploy of earlier days. She has, in fact, become an pathetic, underage Hollywood sex object and is (consciously or not, as with Jodie Foster) living the role that was imposed on her by her handlers. It's really been that way since 2006. And now, with the upcoming "Runaways" film, she'll be living her most exploitive role since "Hounddog". If she's called upon to GRAPHICALLY portray the life of 15 year old rocker Cherie Curry (whom she's been seen palling around with) just low low will that portrayal get? What's the bottom rung for the girl who's been Hollywood's youngest ever screen tramp for the last 3 years? Every day I turn on my computer and view the AOL news flashes, I expect to see what must inevitably occur. A stalker incident. Public misbehavior. An arrest. Sex, drugs, alcohol... it's all coming. The pattern has already become well established in Tinseltown. But the worst part is that Dakota's story, piled on that of Jodie Foster's, will itself serve as the foundation for the even grosser exploitation of other children. In fact, it already has! And the youth audience, many still knowing Dakota only from "Charlotte's Web" and largely ignorant of "Hounddog", will themselves have to struggle with THEIR concepts of right and wrong as a result. Like I've said so often over the past three years, "Depravity- unchecked- only leads to more and greater depravity." And, tragically, that depravity ranges far beyond Dakota's doorstep and the borders of Hollywood... right to our own doorsteps. | 
