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Sean Hannity vs. Dakota Fanning
Ladies and gentleman, let’s get rrready to rrrrrumbllllle, this is the main event! In this corner, weighing in at 500 pounds of hot gas, conservative talk show host Sean Hannity!
And in this corner, weighing in with more sense than people four times her age, accomplished child actress Dakota Fanning!
I love it when hot-button pundits take on the movies because they are usually spectacularly wrong about them. Why? It’s often because they don’t know jack about how movies are made. For Hannity, being spectacularly wrong is nothing new - he makes a regular habit of it. However, this dust-up over Fanning is especially intriguing.
Here’s the deal: Fanning stars in a movie called “Hounddog,” which is playing at the Sundance Film Festival. In it, her character is raped, and apparently, we see this onscreen briefly, and nothing is shown in detail.
But as Hannity and his minions so often do, they refuse to look beyond the surface issue and choose to blow a lot of smoke about it. Fox News runs the simplified headline “In New Film Child Actor Dakota Fanning Is Raped.” Cue Hannity and the soldiers of righteous indignation, who collectively gasp and wag their fingers, with some calling for criminal prosecution of those responsible for the scene. Never mind that scenes like this are very carefully shot, usually on a closed set with a parent present, as was the case with “Hounddog.”
He huffs, “This is a 12-year-old little girl. We have an obligation to protect this little girl’s innocence.”
No we don’t, Sean. Because here’s what helpless little Dakota has to say about people criticizing her mother for letting her film the scene: “I can let other things go, but when people start to talk about my mother, like, that’s really bad in my opinion … that’s an attack, and that’s not fair. They hadn’t seen the movie,” she added.
And there’s the key phrase: “hadn’t seen the movie.” As has happened so often, the people making the most fuss about a movie haven’t seen it. Granted, it’s not in general release, so they haven’t had the chance to see the movie, and I haven’t either.
But check out the verdict of people who have seen the movie:
“Nothing to see, nothing to release, nothing to rent, nothing to get shocked or stirred about…just another neo-Faulknerian Southern gothic wallow with a tasteful, non-inflammatory Dakota Fanning rape scene.” - Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere
“The problem, however, is not that pivotal (rape) scene, which is tastefully handled, but the fact that, after a reasonably atmospheric, if uneventful, first hour, the picture runs right off the rails. Aside from Fanning and the controversy, the film has nothing going for it commercially…” - Todd McCarthy, Variety
So, as usual with Hannity and his ilk, it’s much ado about nothing in the end. Even though the film probably won’t play in the Miami Valley at all, I still say Fanning wins this battle, for coming across as wiser than everyone around her, including Hannity and, seemingly, the director of her film.
What do you say?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Celebrities, Sir Critic muses
Comments
By SRCputt
January 25, 2007 2:27 PM | Link to this
How about an investigation of all the murders simulated in The Hitcher and Smokin’ Aces?By SRCputt
January 25, 2007 2:25 PM | Link to this
Quick! Let’s launch criminal investigations into the traumatizing of Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver and Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby!By Allie D.
January 25, 2007 1:14 PM | Link to this
This is so damned ridiculous. Were they also up in arms over a movie like A Time to Kill where an 8 year old girl was raped? I think these people are just effing bored. Hannity doesn’t want to discuss the failure of the administration he regularly fellates, so it’s time to move onto the conservative “ace in the hole” of attacking Hollywood.