Dakota's Drama

Controversy continues to escalate over a brief scene in the Sundance-entered film Hounddog in which a character, played by 12-year-old Dakota Fanning, is raped by a teenager. The rape, which takes place during a thunderstorm, shows two brief flashes of Fanning's face and her voice can be heard shouting "Stop it!" on the soundtrack, but there is no nudity and no graphic description of the rape. New York Sun writer Darrell Hartman wrote, "What the scene makes clear more than anything is that the filmmakers ... are as horrified by the rape of a child as the rest of us." However, FoxNews.com's movie writer Roger Friedman wrote, "The rape scene, no matter how it's spun, is disturbing and unsettling in fictional terms. In real life, though, it's creepier to think that Dakota's parents considered this a scene that was appropriate for their daughter." Fanning herself told Wednesday's edition of USA Today: "Pretty much everybody who talked about [the scene] attacked my mother, which I did not appreciate. That was extremely uncalled for and hurtful."