TMS Discussion: Hollywood's Infamous History of Portraying Juvenile Sexuality
(MGM Pictures / Columbia Pictures / Paramount Pictures)
In the late 1970s, there seemed to be four child actresses who dominated the zeitgeist of the era: Jodie Foster, Tatum O’Neal, Kristy McNichol and Brooke Shields. Three tomboys and a girly-girl. While watching Lana Wilson’s new Hulu docuseries, Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby, I was very surprised there weren’t any references to Brooke’s three peers. True, Jodie, Tatum and Kristy weren’t as wildly glamorized or dolled up as Brooke in photoshoots and at events. But you could argue Brooke’s debut in Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby (1978) might not have happened without Jodie’s presence in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976). One of Tatum’s mentors, production designer and producer Polly Platt, conceived and pitched Pretty Baby to Louis. Bizarrely enough, there isn’t any mention of Polly anywhere in Lana’s doc either. My consensus on the new feature is that it was great to hear Brooke go into depth on her rollercoaster of a career, personal struggles with mother/manager Teri and first husband/tennis player Andre Agassi, and her battle with post-partum depression. But Lana’s direction left a bit to be desired.
A couple things did stick out to me in BS:PB all the same. One is the doc suggesting the concept of ‘jailbait’ blew up specifically with Brooke; and that before her, you had young, legal age women like Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe as on-screen sex symbols until they were suddenly barely pubescent like Brooke. I’m not sure if this is entirely true. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was published in 1955 to much controversy and misinterpretation; and Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film adaptation in particular was marketed with the provocative teenage girl angle via Sue Lyon. Even going farther back, we contemporarily have film fans noticing how strange it is Shirley Temple’s sidekicks in her hit movies from the 1930s were usually a full grown man, and not a child her own age or even an animal. 1968-69 had quite a bit of platinum blonde jailbait through Ewa Aulin in Christian Marquand’s Candy (1968), Alexandra Hay in Otto Preminger’s Skidoo (1968), Connie Kreski in Anthony Newley’s Heironymus Merkin (1969) and Linda Hayden in Alastair Reid’s Baby Love (1969). The first three are ‘trippy’ comedies that feel like an excuse to be risqué and push the envelope, while the latter is softcore porn disguised as a cheap melodrama. Since it’s always been common for young adults to play teens in movies and series; Alexandra and Connie were in their early 20s while filming Skidoo and Heironymus Merkin, while Ewa and Linda were in their late teens during Candy and Baby Love. In Kubrick’s Lolita and Adrian Lyne’s 1997 screen adaptation of the same book, Sue’s and Dominique Swain’s title character is aged up to high school instead of 6th grade like in Nabokov’s original novel.
Twelve-year-old Jodie as child prostitute Iris Steensma in Taxi Driver might be the first time an actress who literally just hit puberty played a sexualized role in a mainstream film; followed shortly by Brooke at the same age with a very similar part of Violet in Pretty Baby. The raciness of both castings shocked and appalled many viewers, though did well with critics; especially Taxi Driver, which received four Oscar nominations, including Jodie for Best Supporting Actress. Taxi Driver’s praise and iconic status have continued to grow over time, while Pretty Baby’s controversy now mainly overshadows the film itself. You might be wondering why this is if you haven’t seen either feature. For the most part, it’s because we never actually see Iris ‘on the job,’ save for a chilling slow dance between her and Harvey Keitel’s Sport. With the exception of the shoot-out in the last ten minutes, Taxi Driver is primarily a gritty, dialogue-heavy character drama focused on Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle. Jodie doesn’t even appear until the second half of the runtime. In Pretty Baby, Brooke is our lead in a 1917 New Orleans brothel, and Louis actually goes as far as to shoot two scenes featuring Violet nude without an older body double. We also get a closed-mouthed kiss between Brooke and Keith Carradine’s EJ Bellocq. But fortunately, the majority of the sexual content is focused on Violet’s mother Hattie played by Susan Sarandon. Yet the brief nudity and general plot of a girl growing up in a brothel is naturally enough to make most people uncomfortable.
Unlike the persistent criticism surrounding Pretty Baby, I don’t think the infamous movie was intended to be legitimate child porn, though I agree parts of the film are awkward now. Viewing the film, we can see that Louis and Polly want the audience to sympathize with Violet as a person more than exploit Brooke. But since it’s the 1970s, the decade of scandal, graphic content is also included. Similar to why Jodie was cast as Iris instead of an actress the age of the real girl the character was based on [18-year-old Garth Avery]. Ironic how this is the opposite logic for Sue and Dominique cast as Lolita. If Pretty Baby or Taxi Driver were made today, Iris and Violet would be played by actresses around 18-21, and the filmmakers would ram it home how unethical and immoral statutory rape is instead of portraying the stories with the nuance and ambiguity of previous eras. I’m fine with this, since I don’t exactly think we need underage actresses with nude scenes or as sexualized characters, even if it is legal with a guardian’s approval. You’ll notice as the years go on, the industry start leaning toward legal age actresses playing sex kittens; such as Heather Graham in PT Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997), Mena Suvari in Sam Mendes’ American Beauty (1999) and most recently Lily McInerny in Jamie Dack’s Palm Trees and Power Lines (2022). Many argue that even though the actresses are young adults, it’s still sketchy to have the roles written as high-schoolers.
(Samuel Goldwyn Co. / New Line Cinema / DreamWorks Pictures)
For a while, there was a mix of young women and real teen girls participating in sexual scenes. Gen X and millennial movie fans might be aware Uma Thurman, Milla Jovovich, Keira Knightley, and Mena’s American Beauty co-star Thora Birch are a few movie stars whose first topless scenes were when they were minors. Drew Barrymore went through an infamous wild child phase which included starring as teen fatales in Katt Shea’s Poison Ivy (1992) and Andy Tennant’s The Amy Fisher Story (1993). Anna Paquin went from Oscar winning child star to playing sexually active teens in Anthony Drazan’s Hurlyburly (1998), Robert Iscove’s She’s All That (1999) and Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000). There’s sometimes even the rare instance of young starlets playing roles that are written as substantially older. Keira and Scarlett Johansson were both 17 when Scarlett starred in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003) and Keira in Richard Curtis’ Love Actually (2003), while Jennifer Lawrence was 21 during production of David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook (2012). Scarlett and Keira portray 22-year-old newlyweds, while Jennifer is cast as a recent widow originally written as 30. And no, that famous opening shot of Scarlett’s rear in Lost in Translation isn’t a body double.
But within the past 15 years or so, Hollywood producers and filmmakers started gradually realizing maybe it’s not actually necessary to include nude shots of very young actresses, or cast them in visually mature roles. When I saw Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon (2016) back in theaters, I cautiously pondered if it was going to be barely legal Elle Fanning’s first foray into this type of exposure. Was I really about to see Dakota Fanning’s little sister’s chest exposed? Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Though the film is plenty gratuitous, at least there aren’t 17-year-old breasts.
I suppose my conclusion to this longwinded exposé is that, though it’s good Jodie and Brooke don’t consider their experiences making Taxi Driver and Pretty Baby as traumatic, we don’t need to subject minors in entertainment to the same pressures as adults. As we’ve seen with Tatum and Kristy, it can already be tough enough growing up in Hollywood with age appropriate roles in family films. Let kids play kids, and grown-ups play grown-ups.