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Movies: Thirteen as Therapy New York Times August 24, 2003 Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/24/fashion/24THIR.html August 24, 2003 'Thirteen' as Therapy With an Upright Couch By LINDA LEE O promote new movies, studios have sent out cans of spaghetti sauce (for the coming film "Mambo Italiano"), pretended that made-up events really happened ("The Blair Witch Project"), even encouraged coverage of odd romantic couplings (Ashton and Demi). But how often does a studio cross-promote a new film with self-help groups? Or a director set out to make parents and their teenage children cringe, as Catherine Hardwicke did with "Thirteen," a film about girls gone bad? "I wanted to spark a debate," Ms. Hardwicke said. "I wanted something that could connect to kids and moms so they would realize they were not alone." She calls it "cinematherapy." "Thirteen," a .5 million film that opened in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto last week, portrays 13-year-olds who steal, lie, shoplift, snort Dust-Off and have promiscuous sex. With no promotional budget to speak of, the film is trying a novel marketing ploy: it is being sold on its therapeutic benefits. At a screening in Manhattan last Tuesday for parents and their teenage children, brochures were available from DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). Family therapists and policy makers have been invited to other screenings. But will this film be salvation for troubled families, or merely shock therapy? Walter Baker had dragged his daughter, Amanda, to a screening in Manhattan, hoping for a good post-movie talk. By evening's end, he was ready for the couch. "Any complaints I ever had, I put aside after watching this. I think I'll go home and have a drink." Amanda Baker, 16, fled after the movie ended — before any talking could begin. The characters, she said the next day in a telephone interview, "were just so bad, they didn't know what was right or wrong." "They were teenagers but they were so extreme that I just wanted to cry," she said. I don't know why. At the end of the movie I was so shocked." The term "cinematherapy" — exploring feelings and social issues through films — has been around for at least a decade, and is based on the idea of bibliotherapy, developed by the psychiatrist Karl Menninger. But suggesting a couple of gal pals sit down and shed a tear over "Terms of Endearment," or that a classroom explore custody battles via "Kramer vs. Kramer" is a far cry from proposing that parents with teenagers in full crisis mode haul them to a movie theater. "If you haven't had the good conversations with your kids already, don't take them to see this thing," said Sharon Lamb, author of "The Secret Lives of Girls," an examination of teenage behavior. "This shock and awe treatment is not the best way to go about it." Laura Fieber, the head of the screening committee for New York Women in Film and Television, pointed out the paradox of promoting this R-rated film (cited for "drug use, self-destructive violence, language and sexuality all involving young teens"). "The problem with the film is that the kids can't and the parents won't want to see it." NIKKI REED, who lived or saw much of what is portrayed in the film, and appears in it as the bad influence, has mixed feelings about being a model for dysfunctional youth. Last Tuesday night, sitting with Ms. Reed at a sushi restaurant in Greenwich Village, Ms. Hardwicke recalled how she had taken segments of "Thirteen" to a juvenile hall for teenage girls in California the previous weekend. Ms. Reed had stayed away. "I couldn't do that," said Ms. Reed, now 15. "They are locked up at 14, and I get up and say, `Have you seen `Thirteen'? I didn't want to be a spokesperson for troubled girls." Ms. Hardwicke added, "The things they were in for made our movie look like `Winnie the Pooh.' Their lives are so radical." (Yes, Ms. Hardwicke lives near the beach in Venice, Calif., and surfs.) Ms. Reed, wearing a gauzy slip dress she had borrowed from the wardrobe closet at Fox Television (Fox Searchlight is distributing the film), confidently dug into her eel sushi ("hold the wasabi, I'm allergic"). She cooed when she discussed her five rescued dogs, and she still has trouble walking in high-heeled sandals. But she is supremely composed and articulate — reassuring to parents whose own children have gone over to the dark side — and looks at least 18 in full makeup. "Miss, may I buy you a house?" a man at the bar proposed as she walked by on the way to the ladies room. "And," he continued, "can we have five children?" Ms. Hardwicke leaned in before Nikki could respond. "She's 15," she said. "Thirteen" depicts two teenagers, one corrupted by the other, heading off to get various body parts tattooed or pierced. The more innocent of the two, played by Evan Rachel Wood, privately mutilates herself. Ms. Reed is an expert at body piercing. "I pierced my belly button myself when I was 9 years old," she said. "I tried to pierce my own tongue, but it hurt and there was blood everywhere. You can buy kits online for ." Ms. Hardwicke once pointed out that Ms. Reed was an overachiever even when she was being bad. Ms. Reed said she thinks her film is "for 18-year-old film buffs." Or, alternately, she suggested, parents can legally take their teenagers. Sharon Barnett, a Westchester mother who took her 18-year-old daughter to see the film, thinks it should be shown as early as fifth or sixth grade. "There are tons of dangers that lie ahead," she said. She has another daughter who ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning when she was in middle school. "We went through everything," she said. "I even had my daughter abducted and sent away" to rehabilitation. "It was really awful. I don't know how we survived. And I was far from alone." If she had her way, the ads would say, "You need to see this movie." "None of us want to know, but we need to know," she said. Some 20-somethings are finding the film on their own. Julia Scott, 24, a recent graduate of St. Johns University, saw the film Wednesday night at the Sunshine Cinema in the East Village because the movie she wanted to see was sold out. "It was really accurate," she said. "It could have been made about my childhood. I was even worse." Dr. Joy Browne, a clinical psychologist who is the host of a daily syndicated radio talk show on WOR-AM, said that the movie, which she has seen, could provide talking points for parents and the children, only if parents ask the right questions. "It's not, `Are you having sex,' " she said. "And moms can't say, `This is why I don't want you to hang out with that girl.' Instead of lecturing, if the mother says, `Tell me what you think about this,' or `Were the kids happy at the end?' and if she listens to the answer, that's useful. If the parent uses it to emphasize their paranoid view of the kid, all is lost." Last Wednesday night, Linda Burton, an investment banker and single mother, came out of a theater on the Upper West Side ready to talk to her 12-year-old, who had accompanied her. Ms. Burton said, "I know there's a lot I want to talk about tonight, but I don't know if she will talk to me about it." "I think I found it terrifying," she said. Her daughter, Tara, who will start Hunter College High School this fall, noted that they cast a glance at each other during the movie, not over the drugs or tattoos or shoplifting, but over a scene in which Ms. Reed instantaneously transforms herself from schoolgirl to siren: with a single yank, her tube top becomes a micro-mini skirt. "I don't know the difference with fashion," Ms. Burton said. "I don't know what's trashy and what's not." "You're never going to let me wear that black tube top, are you Mom?" her daughter said. "If I turn out like her, don't blame me." "How will I know?" her mother asked her. "You'll still be wearing the same slutty clothes." Perhaps that was the kind of refreshing exchange Ms. Hardwicke envisioned when she mentioned cinematherapy. But as a young woman waiting to see the film, Nichole Vasti, 19, pointed out, "The type of people who see this film together are not the type of people who need to see it." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |
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