Journal sielwolf's Journal: I Hate Dakota Fucking Fanning 9
Parents of the world, do not give your children the following first names:
- Vulgar or semi-vulgar slang.
- Names of fictional characters from shows you only liked in elementary/high school/college.
- Names of Popular fictional morons (e.g. Fredo) unless you want him to be a moron.
- Last Names (e.g. Stone, Madison, Chase).
- Proper Nouns (e.g. US states, inanimate objects) unless you live in a tent.
- Mispellings of actual names (e.g. Britney instead of Brittany, see #3).
The Fannings fucked up one this account but that's mostly on them. These rules are to avoid the mistake of having your child with a Fad Name: one that will seem extremely dated by the time they are thirty and will result in years and thousands of dollars in therapy. Just. Say. No. And usually I would leave it alone but I thought it was useful to just lay out those rules (that are too often forgotten). Even the Bible gets it wrong now and then (Methuselah was the Case/Rory of the Old Testament).
But with that out of the way, Dakota Fanning's sins are more profound. She is not a good actress. She hasn't been a good actress. And that isn't because she's only been in shitty movies but because she isn't good at performing the fundamental task of acting. She is bad. Very bad. And it stems from the fact that she, on screen and in person, acts like a little fucking adult. Which is annoying, dumb, and unrealistic. And I would just stop there if it wasn't the fact that she is the iceberg tip peeking out of the water with a large bloated history pushing her up from the waves. The apex of a movement that has been building some time. So let's hit the wayback machine.
Kreepy Kids
This weekend was actually the perfect time to discuss this topic. For one, M Night Shaymalan's Lady in the Water is opening this weekend (read a hilarious review here). Also the New York Times Sunday Magazine is running an article on the takeover of the J-Horror genre in America slasher cinema.
These where two distinct genres that collapsed into the singularity of the Americanized version of Ringu getting released in the US and becoming the best performing horror movie since The Blair Witch Project. The two share many of the same hallmarks of which the Creepy Child is the most prominent. Now in J-Horror it (usually) isn't so bad. J-Horror is built on those old school Japanese ghost stories and many are wierd and elegant and so translated as such. The classic Kwaidan is a good example to see where it came from. But as with all genres the style goes from being about expression to a deathly mechanical rote. Many of the ideas we usually ascribe to J-Horror are actually foreign in origin. You could say that David Lynch was the first J-Horror director with Eraserhead. Content-wise, the early work of David Cronenberg is also highly influential. The sexually born parasites of The Brood, the telepathic/kinetic/pyrokinetic/technokinetic psychics of Scanners. That might also be the first example of the creepy kid in a J-Horror context: one of the major plot revelations is that the psychotropic drug found to be the source of the scanners was actually marketed to pregnant mothers. This is discovered after a scene where the scanners go to an OBGYN and in this bright cheery waiting room of pregnant mothers comes this dull droning thud: the psychic stirrings of the unborn children. But it has also existed in more mainstream American cinema (the perverse devil ramblings of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, who is best known for being privvy to who and who doesn't suck cocks in Hell) as well as foreign (the perpetual child protagonist of Guenter Grass/Volker Schloendorff's The Tin Drum where we get to see a 30 year old with the body of a 8 year old eat out a woman... ahhh Europe in Wartime).
Now the creepy devil child is a perfect mix for the ghost story. And it really opens up the ability to crosspollinate ideas to surreal and freakish effect: young child who skitters up walls like a spider, a young child who groans like a dog, a young child who has the dangerous intellect of something unholy and thousands of years old. It juxtaposes our urge to protect and nurture children with threat and danger. It's easy to let your imagination run free and then just shrug off explaining it with the one line "ghost baby".
And in the J-Horror setting the creepy-child-who-acts-like-an-adult-because-they-are-a-demon is perfectly acceptable as long as the auteurs are able to keep the concept fresh and imaginative. No one likes a horror movie when they know right away who the killer is. And the ability to suspend disbelief is hindered when the child loses the 'super' in the 'supernatural'.
M Night Ego
M Night Shaymalan's time in Hollywood parallels the J-Horror revolution in the 90's. And we can't blame him for making the Creepy Kid a standard (Ringu was released the year before in 1998 and already had the big wide-eyed boy who talked to ghosts). But what The Sixth Sense did, by being really good, was that it started one of Hollywood's favorite activites: duplication. And the formula was pretty much this: take a completely normal setting, drop an elephant into it and have no one notice but the protagonist and the audience. Season with gore, sped-up film and shit jumping out of the corner of the screen to taste. This is where you have your The Fallens, Stir of Echoses, Stigmatas. But Hollywood isn't above actually taking ideas wholesale from successful films... including the Creepy Kid: Bless the Child, Dragonfly, White Noise. M Night wasn't even above stealing from himself for Signs and Unbreakable.
Things Fall Apart
And that is the killer. There is no more blood to get out of the stone. There is no more gristle or bone to beat out of the horse. The Creepy Kid is a cliche. And it wouldn't be so bad if we where just talking about fads like Tarantinoesque pithy conversations about nothing or semen-drinking teenager sex romps. The problem is that the Creepy Kid cliche has infiltrated into how filmmakers now write children. And that's a sad and terrible thing. Why?
Because at one time filmmakers knew how to write children plausibly and realistically. Writing children is hard. Children act differently at different ages. It is hard for an adult to associate with them, to get in their minds and so writing dialogue and action is a tightrope. The problem is that the Creepy Kid is a tempting carrot and an escape hatch. Basically the Creepy Kid is just the simple arithmetic of:
Child Actor + Adult Dialogue = $$$
Simple. Screenwriting regressed. You just write children the same way you write adults. No difference except that when we wake up in the morning, the parents go to work and the kids go to school. But motivation and conversation wise? They are interchangeable.
And Dakota Fanning has made a career out of it. Transcribe all of her dialogue in Man on Fire or War of the Worlds and put in an 18 year old actress instead: same difference. Actually it'd make more sense then. You suddenly accept the fact that she was able to offer advice to Denzel Washington or of the same mental age as Tom Cruise and her brother. That she is smarter and more wise than Brittany Murphy. But for a twelve year-old? It's a bad joke. It's cheap and convenient. Her pose, her manner, her delivery, her awareness and content are all adult. No, the pose of an adult. Look at her as she stands around in her lil'Versace dress on the red carpet giving her lil'blurb to E! News as she gives lil'smiles and does lil'press junkets. And it comes off incredibly fake and contrived.
Ironically, that's the most authentically child-like thing about her.
Ladri di Biciclette
So how should a child behave in a movie? Oddly, Hollywood knew how to do this way back in the 40's. And they probably still do. I'd suggest watching The Sixth Sense or A.I. for HJ Osment's work. Though right at the tipping point of being intolerable, Osment is able to hold on to that bit that still makes him seem like a kid. The problem is that directing children is a task that isn't the same as directing anyone over the age of 17. You can tell because there are always the directors who seem to be able to really bring out the performance of young actors (see young Spielberg). Just as there are directors who specialize in theater-types (Mamet) or those who work best with stoic Victorians (Merchant-Ivory) there are directors who excel at directing children. Probably the best was Vittorio De Sica and this is easily illustrated in his movie The Bicycle Thief.
The film is simple (in that Italian neo-realist way) *start spoilers*: an unemployed man, Antonio, finds a job but needs a bicycle. Because he has a family he goes into hock for it. While working his bike gets stolen. He and his son look for it. They don't find it. In desperation he steals a bike, gets caught, gets let go. The End *end spoilers*
Actually the story's so simple that the spoilers really aren't spoilers. It's all about the presentation and little stuff that makes the movie work. The simple story is just a vehicle for character studies and self-examination (would you judge a thief if you knew his own desperation first hand?). Getting into Antonio's skin means getting into his relationship with his wife, with his friends and with his son, Bruno.
In The Bicycle Thief Bruno is important because he is a physical manifestation of Antonio's drive to get a job. Bruno is the family and household Antonio is responsible for. He is duty. And having his son there instead of, say, his wife, allowed De Sica to let us study a man's relationship with his duties.
Bruno is an interesting character. We meet him about 20 minutes into the movie where he is seen in the morning before Antonio's first day of work polishing the bike. He and Antonio leave and Antonio drops him off at what appears to be a gas station for what is his job (a bit shocking since Bruno is probably only eight years old). When the two head off they do matching grooming in front of the mirror (fixing their hair, their uniforms), put matching sandwiches from mama in their pockets and walk out together to their jobs.
The brilliance of De Sica is that he doesn't have Bruno hit this one note of just being a lil'Antonio. Compare his cocksure pose during their morning routine to his baffled look in the heart of their doldrums. We all know that our first words, our first motions, our first steps are all mimicry done out of observation. The child watches and then parrots the moves of an adult. He wants to do those things (get the cookie off the counter, play with the microwave, have money in his pocket, be the curious center of attention, get other people to laugh). So he repeats them, studying the cause and effect. It's the deepest form of respect: sons walking like their fathers. Dressed up in those clothes, with the same big shoes.
So in the activity of the familiar morning activity, Bruno is brave and confident like his father. But with the bicycle lost and his father at his last end... he too is lost. It's brilliant subtlety by De Sica. And notice how in both Bruno is looking up at his father expectantly. It's a look studying for approval. Searching for adulthood. It would be foolish though to have just one reading of it. A similar look can have can arise from the complication of the scene, such as when Antonio accuses a young man of stealing the bike only to realize his mistake of doing it in the boy's neighborhood. It's a look of fear and seeking protection.
[At this point I accidentally deleted the rest of it and had to rewrite it from scratch]
De Sica goes even further with this interplay. At one point as their search turns more dire, Bruno paternally scolds Antonio for losing the bike in the first place. It's the belittling petty tone of a spouse. Probably picked up from Antonio's wife. Antonio hits him and instantly realizes his mistake. At once Bruno falls back into his natural childishness and begins crying. He scampers away into the woods. Antonio asks for forgiveness. He tries to reason with his son. Bruno threatens to tell his mother. They continue their search but no longer hip to hip. Antonio leaves Bruno at a bridge and, as he's walking away, he hears a crowd cry out that a boy has fallen in and is drowning. Antonio rushes over only to see its some other, older boy. He turns and sees his son watching him. It's really a smart scene, showing a deft touch. No dialogue passes between them but the look is one that understands that the father still does care deeply for his son. Antonio then plies his son with food. Hungry they go to a restaurant and he buys his son food and wine (noting that his mother will just have to accept that "we" deserve something for all their hard work). Bruno is happy, playing with his food, eager for the adult treatment.
De Sica also plays this child-adult duality for comedic effect. When a downpour hits and the father and son seek shelter under an awning, Bruno slips and falls (rewatching it the fall looks authentic. De Sica probably decided to just go with it). Antonio doesn't notice until he turns to see his son wiping mud from his legs.
"What happened to you?"
Bruno looks up, hesitates for a moment and then gives the perfect appropriation of a bitter old Italian man, "The streets all slippery and I fell down!" You half expect him to curse the street's mother and spit on it.
By the end of the day the two are exhausted. Bruno lags and then races to catch up, at one point slipping again and almost getting hit by a car. Antonio is too lost to even notice. At this point, he decides to finally steal a bicycle himself. He gives Burno money and tells him to take the trolley home. Tired, Bruno doesn't even notice the look in his father's eye. But he misses the trolley and turns around to see his father circling a bike leaning in a doorway. The boy doesn't seem to comprehend until Antonio jumps on the bike. Sadly the man isn't as good or as lucky as the thief who stole his bike. He is instantly spotted and a mob starts chasing after him (bitterly, since no one came to his cries earlier in the movie). He tries to amateurishly escape only to get caught. The mob starts to beat him and drag him to the police station.
Bruno has been watching and runs to him. He hugs his leg and screams out a pleading "Papa! Papa!" It's a bewildered cry. Antonio has no answer for him. He is ashamed, humiliated, and now to be punished. The bike owner notice Bruno and says he's not going to press charges. Having his son to see what he's done is bad enough. Antonio and Bruno begin walking. For the first time in the movie, the father reaches out and takes the hand of his son. They melt into the anonymity of the crowd.
Where We Are and Where We Are Going
Now compare that to every movie Dakota Fanning has been in. Each time she's been a pompous micro-adult. A convenient writer's shortcut for creating a victim or explaining a bad plot to everybody. You can use her to tell a character everything that's wrong with them instead of using shit like, I dunno, pacing and direction. Simple-minded and dumb. Every time I see that she's in a movie I know that a director is going to use her as a plot device. If she could transform into a briefcase she could work part-time as a McGuffin in every heist movie and corner the goddamn market.
Last Friday I saw on CNN Ms Fanning had just finished up a movie where she is raped. The segment naturally focused on the morality of having a twelve year old playing a twelve year old being raped. What was more interesting was the bit about how "Dakota's people" had "calculated" that this was a great way for her to get an Oscar. And we can just see the braintrusts figuring that one out.
We all know the list. The "Play This in a Movie and Get a Statuette" list: mentally handicapped, mentally ill, physically handicapped, gain a lot of weight in a role, lose a lot of weight in a role, wear prostheses to make yourself ugly, get raped, be gay, be a famous person famous mostly for having killed themselves, be a famous person famous mostly for being killed.
The goddamn comedy of this list is how fucking BS it is. Before the Creepy Kid/Micro-Adult, my most hated Hollywood trope was the Magical Retard. First we had Rain Man which was followed by Forrest Gump, The Other Sister, Radio, I am Sam and Keanu Reeves's career. The killer is that those movies precipitously drop in quality. By the end their motives are so telegraphed and blatant that people just laugh and point.
And anyone with a brain would tell you that it doesn't work. That The List is all just catalogued from movies where the character being insane or gay was just an artifact of the movie... which was usually really fucking good. Did Bobby D's Jake LaMotta in work because he got real fat at the end? Or was that it that he was Bobby Fucking DeNiro, costarring with Joe Fucking Pesci in a movie by Martin Fucking Scorsese in what was the best movie of the 1980's? It was Raging Fucking Bull. DeNiro gaining the weight is shocking but then the audience soon realizes that the movie is really fucking good regardless.
Getting her twelve year old ass raped is (on the other hand) just boldface calculation on Ms Fanning's (and her "people's") part. And I'm not shocked or appauled. I just don't care. See, as a single guy most of my interactions with children are when I'm at a party and some parents bring theirs along. Now every once in a while when you are introduced you run into a kid who really digs it that an adult is talking to him. Hell, I was that way. There's something revealing about getting treated like a peer. Having someone really listen (which is something adults usually like as well). It's understandable. Probably the only adults in their life are their parents and their teachers. All of them authority figures. Now they get a chance to talk to an adult and this person is responding to what they're saying (instead of telling them what to do)? Sweet!
Of course for the adult it's a little different. We see the illusion. The kid is playing big but they don't see we're playing small. You're being nice and it's cute but since I'm not in the child-rearing business I have better things to do than talk to a kid. And there will be a time when the kid grows out of it. When he realizes how annoying and unadult he acts. That little seed of embarassment hits and they learn once more what it's like to be like an adult.
But when I throw down nine of my good dollars and have some director and punk kid pull the same trick on me, I've got no reason to give some rah-rah Special Olympics "everybody gets a trophy because everyone tried real hard" shit. I'm not in the business of paying money to make someone feel good about themselves. Dakota Fanning has been in a lot of movies and probably has a lot of money. She probably needs someone to give her the hard objective truth: she sucks. She doesn't even know how to fucking act her age let alone as a different character who thinks and sees and feels. She plays a sock-puppet with the screenwriter's fist up her ass and expects us to laud the fact that chimpanzees do the same thing when we give them cigars and little bicycles. She's someone's snotty kid who only seems to exist to annoy the shit out of everyone. Lucky for her she's young and has time to get introspective and actually learn her fucking craft. Either that or she can hope to pull a Natalie Portman and grow up to be really cute and not have to learn to act. It's-
Hold on.
*picks up cellphone*
What? Yeah? Oh yeah?... Ok, I'll see you there.
*puts cellphone away*
Hey, there's a meeting at Paramount I've gotta be at fifteen minutes ago. Listen, there's a brunch I'm having tomorrow with Spacey and Fareenz at Spago. Stop by 1-ish and we can hammer this out and maybe you can figure out how to show up on a movie screen and not make everyone throw up in their mouths. Waddaya say? No? Then jump on a rusty spike and fall in a fucking fire.
Ciao!
Dakota Fanning (Score:2)
Re:Dakota Fanning (Score:2)
Re:Dakota Fanning (Score:2)
Which is a whole different post...
Sounds familiar (Score:1)
I guess we know where Jon Benet wound up.
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:2)
All part of the same machine. Still the same wierd inversion of the usual cultural youth obsession. You think people would be interested in what childhood is and isn't instead of trying to make up something completely different.
WOnderful violation of "teh" rule: (Score:2)
Re:WOnderful violation of "teh" rule: (Score:2)
The fact she is also superfoxy and superfun helps too. BTW, she was really good in A Scanner Darkly, hell everybody was... except for Herr Reeves. He is SO mediocre it stands out with everyone else being incredibly on point. Still, a great movie. Luckily he spends about half of his time with his dumb
shama-nama-shama-to night! (Score:2)
That review lacked all subtlety; and the vituperative content smacks of a B list weekly newsprint 'magazine', a la any City Paper. When you pack in that much condescension into a review the reader becomes far too aware of it and begins to question both the writers motives and the writers pathetic excuse for a life. It backfires.
Plus, I like the village and NEED to create one of those "Spiny Norman" costumes for Halloween.
perhaps one day I'll have membership to
Re:shama-nama-shama-to night! (Score:2)
I'm totally ready for the Cory's storm through the world of international award shows. Then its the return of white kids dressed like Michael Jackson!