Among the offerings at this year's Sundance Film Festival, held January 16-26, was a movie titled Thirteen. Co-written at 13 years of age by the now 14-year-old Nikki Reed and film industry veteran Catherine Hardwicke, it was the first film at the festival to sell distribution rights. Hardwicke received a Sundance Film Festival Directing Award in the dramatic category. Thirteen is Hardwicke's movie directing debut.
In an article published on January 22, 2003, in the New York Post, Megan Turner described the movie as being "about 13-year-old girls who have threesomes with older men, get high on pot, prescription pills and nitrous oxide and wear outfits that would make Christina Aguilera blush."
On January 26, 2003, in a New York Times article, Linda Lee wrote of the girls' other activities, which included alcohol abuse, shoplifting, body piercing and cutting themselves with razors.
"There was a lot of stuff that didn't make it into the film," said Reed, according to the New York Post article. Reed, who also acted in the film, based the play (at least in part) on her own life experiences.
Hard to believe, but according to an August 13, 2002, L.A.Times.com article by Patrick Goldstein, Reed's mother, Cheryl Houston, was on the set of her daughter's movie every day.
"Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood, the teen stars of the movie Thirteen, are sprawled one atop the other, playing a scene in which they make out on the floor of a bedroom," wrote Goldstein. "They experiment with several seductive kisses, their willowy bodies a tangle of braided hair and bellybutton rings."
"Nikki will tell me what they're shooting and whether it's OK for me to be around," said Houston, according to Goldstein. "And let me tell you, when she did the scene where she gave the next-door-neighbor a lap dance, that was definitely a mom's not-to-be-around day."
The film's director, Hardwicke, first came into Reed's life when she dated her father. During a telephone interview with Stephanie Holmes of the Monitor, a newspaper in McAllen, Texas, Hardwicke expressed her hope that the success of this film would be her passport into the more prestigious world of writing and directing, allowing her to leave behind the production designing that she has been doing for 15 years. "I knew I was going to make it somehow," she said.
Aside from a parent and family friend who apparently see, hear, and think no evil about the film, the set of Thirteen also hosted a representative of the state — child welfare officer Honore Sato. Her task, according to the Goldstein article, was to enforce child labor law time limitations and "to arbitrate decency issues."
"The bong is OK as long as the girls aren't actually smoking it. With the seduction scene, the big issue is touching. The girls can take the guy's pants off, but they couldn't touch his zipper or crotch or his nipples," said Sato, speaking of a scene in which the girls, with their bong, try to entice a 24-year-old neighbor.
Certainly this speaks volumes about the state's commitment to protecting children. I cannot imagine a sum of money that would induce me to allow my 14-year old girl to take off a man's pants, touching his crotch or not, or to practice "seductive kisses" with another 14-year-old girl. I cannot imagine a state that would send a representative to watch it happen.
The film will be rated R, and theoretically children under 17 will not be admitted without a parent or guardian. However, if children aren't the target audience, who is? Which adults will be buying tickets to be entertained by two attractive young girls in skimpy clothes acting out sexually and abusing themselves with various substances? What has happened to our culture that would make Fox Searchlight Pictures believe this is acceptable entertainment?
We need to consider that question in particular, as the sexual exploitation of children seeps into mainstream culture in the same way that "adult" pornography has. Already, we've witnessed a disturbing trend towards sexualizing our children, particularly in the advertising and apparel industries. Mainstream companies now sell revealing clothing and miniature lingerie-styled undergarments, including thong underwear embroidered with such phrases as "eye candy" and black lace bras for preteen girls. Cosmetic companies have created a variety of cosmetics produced for young girls. Introduced in 1998, marketed to girls 12 to 19 years of age, represented in 2001 by Christina Aguilera, and currently popular with teens and preteens is a brand named Fetish. This simply has to stop. They wouldn't sell it if we didn't buy it.