Word: hounddog
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...Dakota Fanning tries something dangerous - skiing: The most controversial film going into the festival was Hounddog, in which 12-year-old Dakota Fanning plays a victim of sexual abuse who finds comfort in Elvis Presley music. Protested by religious groups and child advocates, the movie's much-debated rape scene turned out to be disturbing but not at all graphic. The camera fixes on a closeup of Fanning's face while the actions of a predatory neighbor boy are mostly implied. Despite protests, it appears the young star of Charlotte's Web and War of the Worlds was not harmed...
What film festival would be complete without some conflict? Before the premiere of Hounddog, in which DAKOTA FANNING, 12, plays a victim of sexual abuse, religious groups and child advocates were condemning it as child pornography, and former child actors like Alison Arngrim (Nellie from Little House on the Prairie) were saying Fanning was being exploited. In the disturbing, if not explicit, scene that inspired the controversy, the camera fixes on a close-up of Fanning's face while she is raped by a neighborhood boy. But the young actor said the toughest scene for her was actually one with...
Rumors swirled on the ticket line that protesters were being bussed in and festival-goers were being frisked. Neither occurred, but the credits to the Jan. 22 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Hounddog might as well have included the tag line: "Dakota Fanning was not harmed in the making of this movie." Fanning, 12, plays a victim of sexual abuse who finds comfort in Elvis Presley music in the film, which has been condemned by religious groups and child advocates as child pornography. Former child actors, like Alison Arngrim (Nellie from Little House on the Prairie) and Paul Peterson (Donna...
...Uproars like one surrounding Hounddog also arose in 1978, when 12-year-old Brooke Shields played a child prostitute in Pretty Baby, and in 1997, around a remake of Lolita. "The controversy comes from a societal terror that we have," Hounddog's writer-director Deborah Kampmeier said after the premiere. "A lot of people think we're gonna die if we tell this secret." The secret to which Kampmeier refers is that of sexual abuse of children. At the screening, representatives of the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) took the stage and delivered the statistic that...