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Last night I watched Adum from Your Movie Sucks's review of Michael, the recent biopic of Michael Jackson starring his nephew Jaafar. I was not surprised to find that he abhorred the film, taking it to task for its hagiographic approach (not only to its principal, but also to certain members of his inner circle, some of whom acted as producers); the way it seems to encourage an unhealthy parasocial relationship between the late Jackson and his most devoted fans, and how it completely avoids mentioning the child abuse allegations which dogged Jackson in his later years. Adum, for his part, remains agnostic on whether Jackson was guilty of sexually interfering with children: he concedes that it's certainly possible that certain of the complainants' parents coerced them into accusing Jackson of misconduct in hopes of securing a generous settlement agreement, but also points out that even some of the behaviour Jackson admitted to (e.g. sharing a bed with underage boys) was certainly questionable at the minimum.
Near the end of the review (timestamped link), Adum argues that, whatever the truth of the abuse allegations launched against Jackson, it's impossible to talk about these and his other strange behaviour (the cosmetic surgery, the Neverland ranch, the time he dangled his child out of a fourth-floor window) without acknowledging that he suffered a uniquely awful upbringing which can only be described as abusive and exploitative. If indeed he was guilty of child abuse, his own difficult childhood would not excuse his conduct, but the former is inseparable from the latter. Adum muses on how odd it is that essentially every Western nation outlawed child labour decades ago – except for child labour in the entertainment industry, where child actors and singers pass without comment. Adum argues that the existence of this loophole actively incentivises abusive, exploitative child-rearing of the kind Jackson suffered, and that this behaviour will continue as long as the loophole is permitted to remain open. He ends the video with a call for it to be closed. No more child stars. No more prepubescent musicians. Cut it off at the root.
I'm old enough to remember when "former child star" was a stock punchline, with tabloid magazines and edgy sitcoms making hay of the incongruity between adorable child actors later becoming burnt-out husks checking themselves into rehab for heroin addiction. After learning what a large proportion of these former child stars went through upbringings comparable to Jackson's in abusiveness and/or claimed to have been sexually exploited at the hands of adult producers, directors or co-stars, it's been many years since I found jokes at their expense funny. (Examples include Coreys Haim and Feldman, Drake Bell, Amanda Bynes, Jennette McCurdy and Joanna Levesque, among many others.) And that's not even getting into the rare instances of child actors being severely injured or even killed on film sets (e.g. the infamous Twilight Zone movie helicopter accident, which in fairness was in direct contravention of multiple child labour laws even at the time). Even leaving aside the most horrific cases of abuse and exploitation, many child actors and musicians cite their abnormal childhoods as underlying causes in their later mental health difficulties and problems with substance abuse. It's a bit unreasonable for, say, Chappell Roan to complain about the downsides of fame, given that she was an adult when she decided to pursue her career in music, and hence old enough to know that being famous is a package deal. I have a lot more sympathy when a child complains about never really having had a private life, often because of decisions made on their behalf by a domineering stage mom. I'm inclined to agree with Adum that I don't really understand why this loophole exists, and think closing it is a good idea.
What would a world without child actors look like? While child labour laws vary by jurisdiction, most allow sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to work part-time with the consent of their parents. If this law applied to film and TV sets, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who look young enough to pass for thirteen or fourteen would be highly prized, but films with major characters who have not yet hit puberty would be the exclusive preserve of animation. We might allow under-16 actors to make brief appearances in films, but place strict limitations on how large their role can be to prevent the emergence of newly minted child stars e.g. specifying that they can only work a maximum of eight hours every calendar month, or only have X minutes of screentime, or X lines of dialogue. This means that, for example, a short scene in which the adult protagonist of the film says goodbye to his wife and kids before leaving to blow the lid off the Brodsky case is fine; a live-action film in which the protagonist is a prepubescent child (e.g. Home Alone, the Harry Potter films) is not. This is an obvious application of photorealistic generative AI: have the adult characters played by adult actors, and the children played by mo-capped adult stand-ins (perhaps standing on their knees, like Gary Oldman in Tiptoes) who will be replaced by CGI children in post-production.
Directors and producers might complain about their creative freedom being unduly curtailed by regulations of this type. But this objection reeks of status quo bias to me. The famous "no animals were harmed in the making of this film" disclaimer is barely fifty years old. I'm sure if the American Humane Society had existed at the time Ben-Hur was being made, the directors would have complained that their creative freedom was being compromised by the insistence that they not intentionally kill upwards of a hundred horses in order to produce suitably exciting cinema. Eventually, we collectively decided that no artistic statement justifies pointless animal cruelty on this scale: it's only a movie. Sufficiently talented directors managed to find creative solutions for how to film movies without being gratuitously cruel to our four-legged friends. In the future, the "no animals were harmed..." disclaimer might well be followed by another reading "no child labour was exploited...".
If outright banning child actors and musicians isn't yet a practical possibility, an interim solution might be to have all compensation they earn from their performances paid into a trust that they (and only they) can access, and only when they come of age. The only compensation their parents could receive directly would come in the form of reimbursements for e.g. travel expenses, acting classes, music classes, accommodation etc. Many film studios are understandably reluctant about paying children their acting fees directly, fearing that they might squander their earnings; on the other hand, there have been enough cases of parents financially exploiting their children (and the child consequently ending up empty-handed when they come of age) that I'm not convinced paying a child's fees into a bank account to which their parents have access is a viable solution. If parents were unable to directly financially profit from their children's labour, that would also work to disincentivise the most egregious forms of abuse and exploitation. (A Google informs me that similar legislation has been on the books in California since 1939.)
It's bizarre to react to child abuse by taking power away from the child and concentrating it in the hands of their abusers. Parents abuse some children who made a name for themselves and a lot of money, you take the childrens' ability to make money and fame away and leave them with their child abusing parents as a result? Why?
I'm guessing you blank slated it and assumed that Hollywood caused the abuse in the cases you cited, not the parents. That would be a red herring. Make no mistake, these families are mentally ill, parent and child. Jeanette McCurdy has inherited bipolar/borderline personality disorder. If she were instrinsically non-mentally ill, she would be enjoying being rich and famous. She dwells on the past not because her mom was a bitch, but because she's a bitch too, and she's in a protracted bitch-fight with her mom. Hollywood didn't do it to either of them. The same goes for when these Hollywood narcissists (tip: fame seekers tend to be narcissists) claim sexual abuse. Normal people just get over a sexual encounter they later regretted. They're in therapy 20 years later because they are mentally ill and would have arrived in therapy anyways, blaming something extrinsic is just a narcissistic coping mechanism they come up with, often with their therapist who is getting paid a lot to feed their egos. And in both cases people fall for their publicly stated copes and try to transform society to be an overall worse place based on the feverish delusions of mentally ill people. Witch-hunt high status men who had sex, take even more liberty away from children, yes that's the recipe for Utopia, sure.
Uhh, no? I literally have no idea where you got that impression. The post begins with a lengthy preamble talking about a child who was horrifically abused by his father, not by Hollywood.
Jennette McCurdy specifically alleges that Dan Schneider, the creator of iCarly, engaged in some deeply suspect behaviour on-set. She is far from the only child actor who worked with Schneider to make similar claims. I don't know what, specifically, you're claiming Hollywood "didn't do" to McCurdy, but Hollywood did do something to her.
It's meaningless to talk about children "regretting" sexual encounters, because children cannot consent to sex and every sexual act between an adult and a prepubescent child is statutory rape.
In that part I was referencing the Weinstein scandal for the most part. AFAIK non of those women claimed to be underage when they allegedly had sex with him.
However, it would fit Epstein too, as I think those women were all old enough to scientifically consent and then regret. McCurdy was around that age during her iCarly career so, I guess it would apply to her too.
That guy was creepy, not the part where she got rich and famous.
I have absolutely no idea why you're bringing up adult women who claimed to be the victims of sexual misconduct when my post was specifically (and very explicitly) about child actors of both sexes.
The pilot was filmed in January of 2007, when she was fourteen. I have no idea what "scientifically consent" is supposed to mean, but it sounds extremely noncey. California's legal age of consent is eighteen.
They have something in common which I discussed above. If you can't figure it out, I recommend this book. Hint: it's somewhere in this block of text
...
Whether or not someone is smart enough to consent to sex, independent of the legal fiction of their present country. A useful distinction for speaking to someone based in the 21st century Earth region of space time, since various factors unknown to them have causes many of their governments to make legal ages of consent above their populations median scientific age of consent.
Stop that. It's like saying using the word noncey sounds extremely British-prole.
This is literally not even a grammatical sentence. If you're going to go full what-if-the-child-consents-tho, you could at least do me the courtesy of doing so in a semantically accurate fashion.
So you've never heard „it's giving cringe” before? And your big retort is to go primary school English teacher / grammar Nazi on me? For real?
I don't see the point in debating the ethics of child labour with an admitted nonce. The inferential distance is just too wide. Best of luck to you.
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I’d take this post as an opportunity to bring up the suicide victim and late British celeb Lil’ Chris, although strictly speaking he was not a child actor but a reality TV star, someone I never heard of until coming across his story in one of those ‘ list of people who could not get over it that their 15 minutes of fame was over’ Youtube compilations. I think it was kind of a shitty move on the part of Gene Simmons and the TV producers involved to take a teenage boy from an English prole family with obvious unresolved psychological tendencies of attention-seeking and other mental health issues, sell him the fake fantasy that he’ll become some huge rock star and then throw him on the scrap heap when no more money could be milked from him.
What was so scummy about what Simmons and the show producers did? It doesn't look like either Chris or his family blamed them for anything. It looks to me like Gene Simmons promised some troubled teen he'd make him a rock star, then... did? The guy had a number 3 hit single, opened for huge bands on international tours, hosted his own tv show. His career fizzled out after 7-8 years, and then he killed himself 9 years after appearing on Rock School.
While I'm sure the life of a low-tier rock star/reality tv personality is not necessarily the healthiest or most spiritually fulfilling, do we have any indication his likely alternative life paths would have ended any happier? He was the 4' 11" tall son of a slaughterhouse worker with a history of mental health problems, who grew up in a dying town with an 18% unemployment rate. L'il Chris wasn't exactly on the path to success before Gene Simmons came along, and there are no allegations I'm aware of that he was mistreated by the industry in any way. He was promised a big break, received it, then took his own life 9 years later once his time in the spotlight was over (probably along with several other personal reasons we're unaware of that likely have nothing to do with the entertainment industry). It's tragic, but I don't see any villains in this story.
No. He probably would have been a teenage suicide on account of being 4'11" if not for the fame opium.
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Chris envied adult rock stars, as it was made clear in one segment of Rock School I saw on YT, and wanted to become one of them. Obviously neither Simmons nor the producers, nor anyone in his social circle was enough of an asshole to point out to him that, as far as I know, not one rock icon started out at age 15 as a reality TV contestant, and in general they never start out as kids, so it was not like his chosen path offered real chances of making his dream true. It also seems obvious to me that both Simmons and the producers were more or less aware that he had no real staying power because there was no originality to whatever talents he had (I suppose). The novelty aspect of it all was bound to peter out eventually, and he was going to fade away. I doubt anyone explained all this to him.
It was also clear as day by this time that fame can be a heavy burden that not all people are mentally equipped to handle. If you’re convinced that fame is what you want and you end up getting it, you also lose what you had i.e. an ordinary life, which will not seem like a loss at first, but you’ll likely end up feeling lost later. Your entire social circle, everything and everyone you’ve known, will dissolve, and you’ll no longer know whom to trust. And if you also lose the limelight in the end because the audience becomes bored with you, you end up with nothing, staring into an empty abyss. Again, probably none of this was explained to Chris.
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What a sad story. Simmons and co. should be ashamed.
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You are correct that having child actors is out-of-step with how moderns treat their children, which is to bubble-wrap them.
Do you think modern children should be bubble-wrapped more?
Yes: that's a false dichotomy, on its own. One can certainly believe that modern children should, in total, be infantilized less while still thinking that Hollywood is no good for them.
But I still look askance on adding yet another delay to adulthood compared to how things were before. I think we are expecting too little of our youth, like "being able to read in order to get a high school diploma" or "being toilet-trained upon entering school." I think letting people stay infants until "their brains have finished developing (at age twenty-five, of course)" is worse for them than letting them grow up, even though sweeping all adversity out of their way feels kinder in every moment.
Partly since said adversity is required to make those brains develop properly!
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I agree, and part of the reason I object to child actors is because in many ways it's an extension (or intensification) of some of the worst parts of bubble-wrap parenting: it's yet another instance of children being kept indoors under the direct supervision of adults, rarely interacting with their peers directly, optimising their appearances and mannerisms for how they'll look in a camera lens. It used to be that only a tiny minority of children would ever even consider pursuing a career in the entertainment industry, but now "YouTuber", "influencer" and "streamer" are among the most popular career aspirations for Gen Alpha, and they spend hours every day using devices with which they could in theory pursue these careers.
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I feel like whatever issue there is with child actors will just be part of a larger trend with actors in general with AI. We may look back at the 20th-early 21st centuries with their actors performing in front of a camera to be displayed on a screen with quaint curiosity and a bit of horror like how we today look back at Buster Keaton hanging off a train for films in the early 20th century. I.e. we just no longer need to place real humans in such dangerous or effortful situations anymore, thanks to being able to show the same thing using computers.
I think the bigger thing may be social media celebrities, which will also be easy to fake, but which will naturally draw people - including children - in who are attracted to fame. The photos and videos might be computer-generated, but the faces and voices will be that of real, likely fame-hunting, humans, again including children. I don't know how we would or could protect children from early fame from such things. As someone else alluded to here, they'll most likely be "groomed" by the "algorithm" to creating and even enjoying creating certain types of content that I personally don't think would be good for there to be more of for society or for the children in question.
A reign of terror a la
Scott AlexanderChina that just dictates how the algorithms work might work, but I can't see that being likely in the United States or even particularly desirable, as the cure may be worse than the disease. Age limits on social media are being tried in various places, but I'm skeptical that they can work without some massive cultural shift, which also seems unlikely. When the "winners" of social media are, almost by definition, high status, it's going to be hard to get people in general not to want to ape them, especially given the far lower costs of attempting compared to e.g. trying to become an actor, musician, or professional athlete.Maybe the only way out is through, by sticking each of us in our own personal Matrix.
I feel like whatever issue there is with child
actorswill just be part of a larger trend withactorshumans in general with AI, i.e. we just no longer needto placereal humansin such dangerous or effortful situations anymore, thanks to being able to show the same thing using computers.After all, life is dangerous and risky, and humans are no longer working animals.
As such, some consider it on par with animal cruelty the notion that someone would ever consider having kids.
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A sufficiently creative director could probably make a movie in which legal adults played the role of children and still have it be "believeable" within the confines of the world he is creating. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this type of stuff is not uncommon in theater. If the audience is willing to suspend their disbelief a man can play a woman, the guy wearing all white does not exist, and putting on a crown and speaking in an accent makes you a king. In a world where child actors were never normalized this does not seem unrealistic.
In our world however, modern movies go for maximum immersion. Everything must look as true to life as possible. So the more realistic scenario is that children's movies without child actors would make heavy use of animaton, puppets, or full-body costumes that make the features of the adult actors invisible.
Contrary to your suggested complaints, I believe this is the exact kind of restriction that breeds creativity. Using child actors is the easy way out. Forbid that, and now the directors and producers are forced to think outside the box, which will lead to more creative ideas.
Oh I agree, absolutely. I think the hypothetical directors who would complain about no longer being permitted to use child actors will eventually sound as ridiculous to us as directors from previous generations who would complain about not being allowed to endanger, maim or kill animals to get the shot. Photorealistic generative AI is one example of how a creative director could get around this restriction.
That being said
I'm not sure if I really agree with this. Modern Hollywood movies don't really look anything like real life. Even when they aren't primarily filmed on a green screen, they tend to use much more aggressive colour grading than the films of earlier decades did. Actors tend to be perfectly made up: it is rare to see a character in a tropical climate who is dripping with sweat (as was done in, for example, Sorcerer). Modern Hollywood films tend to be stylised to within an inch of their lives and drained of weight and tactility.
My point was that watchers of modern movies and TV-series don't expect the to suspense their disbelief to the same extent as people who go to the theater. Thus, the same tricks that work in a physical theater are unlikely to achieve the same effect on a screen. But thinking about my phrasing, yeah you are right that "true to life" does not hold up to scrutiny.
Yeah, that's true.
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Was? The Boys mocked this just seven years ago in their first season (damn, time does fly!) by getting the former kid from The Sixth Sense to play a parody of himself.
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Absolutely. Fuck any real representation and wish-fulfillment for ~10% of the population. Self-actualization should be confined to grownups only.
(Ironically, most kids and teens in animation are usually voice-acted by grown women; the few notable exceptions to that off the top of my head being TAWOG, Chowder, and the Iron Giant.)
You can fix most of the other issues with payment later or with some other contrivance, but I'm firmly in the 'stay in Omelas' camp here; the ideal number of burnt-out child stars in a healthy society is not 0 specifically for that reason.
"But muh creative freedom" is a nonsense complaint here, because what you're suggesting would completely destroy the ability to have sitcoms that feature families (alongside, uh, most of the Spielberg catalogue). Erasing portrayals of that from TV and film because it's Unsafe will surely help TFR.
Bluey somewhat famously uses an anonymous pair of actual kids as voice actors for at least the two main child characters. Perhaps that's a reasonable balance?
Actually, MLP G4 does this as well for 3 characters in particular, come to think of it.
No, it really isn't.
I get that nobody really watches sitcoms any more, but I'm really not interested in making The Cosby Show or Home Improvement (or Two and a Half Men) illegal to produce simply because there's significant value in retaining an environment that can produce them.
I think removing the conditions that make filming Stranger Things or Terminator 2 (or IT, Super 8, ET, etc.) possible/practical would be harm to broader culture that far outweighs the higher variance in outcomes the child actors in them have as-is. You're not picking an adult up off the back of a dirtbike they're too big for and then CGI-ing it into something else.
I mean, there are plenty of points in T2 where Edward Furlong is pretty obviously replaced by a stunt double. Arnie too, for that matter.
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I think Adum is a bit confused about the genre of this movie, they wanted to write a myth not a historical inquest. And it's hard to make the latter into a movie that's interesting, you have to be especially dry, so a lot of biographies end up falling into one of two categories: the mythology and the character assassination.
Leaving neverland was the other side of the equation, possibly even more dishonest since it's (IMO) more likely than not that the accusations are fabricated and it was done to someone that can no longer defend himself, on account of having been dead for over 10 years.
Imagine trying to portray the accusations of pedophilia in a way that doesn't make them come off as either indisputably true or slander, but rather something that's likely not true but maybe? How do you do it? Who is the point of view character? You have to put some third party character into the movie that sees the event as we, the general public, saw it. It's a different genre.
As for the child actors, is there even a problem? We all know of the cases where things go bad because they are reported on by journalists (Jake Lloyd podracing in real life amiright?) but when the child actor goes on to become an electrician who's going to inform you?
Andrew Jarecki gave it his best shot.
Couldn't one make the same argument about any kind of child labour?
I wouldn't be entirely opposed to it. Those laws were created at a different time.
Guess we've got ourselves a modus ponens.
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This leaves out the major complication- the kids want to act.
Yes, you can terrorize a child into obedience, you can train them to want different things. But the desire to participate in acting just keeps resurfacing in kids whose parents would much rather have something other than plays to go to- sort of like music. I have no difficulty believing that 100% of child stars originally had a strong desire to act, to dance, to do music. Obviously, stronger limits are needed, but there seems to me no obvious reason that kids can’t be paid for doing something that they want to do.
There are many things that children want to do which we deny them because it's not in their best interests. I don't claim that acting is a categorical example of that, but it seems heavily correlated/associated with lots of things which unambiguously are (e.g. sexual exploitation by adults working in the industry).
You could also apply this argument to other kinds of child labour. I have it on good authority that the children yearn for the mines, but we don't make an exemption for child labour laws just because a given child claims that he really does want to work in a coalmine.
Yes there are many things that we do not let children do despite their desire to do so- but acting in contexts where they aren't getting paid is largely uncontroversial. I don't see why paying them to do so is categorically worse, even if stronger limits are necessary.
But again, I think this argument proves too much. Having sex with someone where no money changes hands is uncontroversial, therefore there should be no controversy about having sex with someone when money does change hands?
The fact that money changes hands fundamentally alters the nature of the arrangement, creating opportunities for abuse and exploitation that wouldn't otherwise exist. It's true that no child could stand to have his earnings appropriated from him by his greedy parents because he landed the lead role in his school's Christmas play. That's (one reason) why I don't have a problem with children acting in school Christmas plays.
I mean, de-stigmatizing sex work is a pretty mainstream online-left opinion.
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what about kids making content on social media, ie youtube?
I'm against it. God knows people like Rebecca Black were bullied horrifically by people she'd never met on the other side of the globe because of a silly music video that should never have been shared publicly. See also parents who've faced legal repercussions for playing "pranks" on their children in order to create YouTube content, and these "pranks" functionally amounted to physical and emotional abuse.
Whenever I walk past a pair of preteen girls filming themselves doing a TikTok dance to post on the social network in question (happens about once a week), I have the same thought: do they know that pederasts are watching these videos and masturbating to them? And then they notice that some videos are performing better than others, so they try to optimise their videos by showing more skin. A generation of prepubescent girls is falling victim to audience capture, in which the audience is made up of nonces and the content they're creating amounts to unwitting softcore CP. I don't even know if we have a term for this – algorithmic grooming? I can't fathom why any sensible parent would want their preteen child to own a smartphone.
If you are concerned about young people unwittingly being lured into (willingly) making increasingly sexual videos for likes, that seems a reasonable concern that can be addressed by hiding the likes on social media for kids. This has the handy benefit of removing lots of other incentives to present a false face to the world.
If you are concerned about the existence of people who might watch these videos and think unsavoury thoughts, thus defiling innocents with their nasty brain-waves, then that sounds like a classic moral panic. The haunting fear that somewhere a nonce is happy. If there is a depiction of a pretty girl in the world, someone has masturbated to it, that’s simply a fact of life, and getting upset about it is the kind of impulse that ends up leading to the removal of all images of the female form and hiding girls in burkas. Look at the vast online collections of images that happen to show women’s feet. There is no point troubling yourself (or everyone else) over such things, it’s almost certainly healthier overall than the alternative.
Yes, masturbating to online photos of underage kids is a harmless thing and doesn't lead to activities like raping babies! Why shouldn't nonces be happy (instead of, for example, inserted head-downwards into a barrel of treacle)?
Yes
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I believe that heavy social media use is extremely damaging for everyone, but particularly for young children and adolescents. Some of the reasons social media is bad for teenagers and pre-teens include the fact that it facilitates child grooming, how it tacitly encourages members of this demographic to dress and behave in sexually provocative ways and how it encourages members of this generation to obsess over their appearances in unhealthy ways. Before TikTok, did you ever hear of an eight-year-old being asked what she wanted for Christmas and her replying "skincare"? No eight-year-old should want skincare products for Christmas, and it's obscene that social media has made her think she needs them.
This is an extremely obnoxious misrepresentation of what I said. Children are not being magically defiled by the nasty brain-waves of pederasts thinking impure thoughts about them. I explained quite clearly that a major component of the audience for tweens dancing on TikTok is nonces; that tween girls (like everyone else) respond to social media incentives and engagement metrics; and that in attempting to attract as many nonces' eyeballs as possible, these tween girls end up dressing and behaving in more sexually provocative fashions than they otherwise would have. Sexualisation of children is bad, and to the extent that social media incentivises (or algorithmically encourages, or whatever term you prefer) children to dress and behave in sexually provocative fashions prematurely, social media is bad.
I do not believe that our world, in which most teenagers in the West own smartphones and use social media, is healthier overall than the counterfactual world in which most teenagers do not own smartphones and use social media. As I recently pointed out, the year 2014 (the year the iPhone achieved market penetration with a critical mass of American users) was the beginning of an enormous spike in teen suicide, self-poisoning, diagnoses of depression (and, less politically correctly, corresponding spikes in gender dysphoria and trans identification, and probably various things that are harder to quantify like loneliness, friendlessness and the ability to concentrate in class). We don't have to go way back into the mists of time to imagine a world where most Western teenagers don't own smartphones: I don't think it's remotely controversial to suggest that the average teenager was happier in 2013 than they are now. And what, exactly, are the benefits of widespread smartphone adoption among young people? This really does seem like a case of extreme costs and marginal (if any) benefits.
FWIW that was a genuine 'if'. I didn't know where you were coming from, and there are certainly many people who do think like that. That's why I put two 'if's: if you are concerned about A which I think is sensible, here is my proposal, if you are concerned primarily about A as it pertains to B which I think is less sensible, I think you should let it go. I apologise if you found my reply obnoxious.
Honestly, it's my strong impression that young girls have always been obsessed over the things that women do, including cosmetics. My mother went to an all-girl's school and they discussed this kind of thing constantly. The difference was that it was hidden from adults to protect their idea of childhood (and feminine) innocence.
That wasn't my counterfactual. My counterfactual was (in response to a potential position you don't in fact possess) that I don't think it's healthy for society to obsess over protecting the purity of women or the spread of images of women.
To go to your point, though, I am very skeptical of movements that take away something people like and do because they ought not to like and do it*. I'm all for giving people tools to control smartphone usage, and for attempting to cut down on network effects that drive people to smartphones whether they wish so or nay. But the fact is that text can be a lighter, easier way of communicating with people more like oneself (viz, this forum) and I'm reluctant to say "no! only in-person communications!". The real world can be harsh in many ways, and some of those ways are needful, but 'go and suffer' isn't necessarily always the right response. I can't say I remember my pre-smartphone childhood to be much happier or less anxious making - playground cliques are just as isolating as social media ones, and playground bullying is worse than cyberbullying. People treat smartphones as a refuge for a reason.
* Yes, I know there are surveys showing that lots of teens don’t like social media and smartphones. I look forward to more work on this being done, and would prefer to address those teens and their needs specifically rather than reach first for the ban hammer.
With regards to anxiety and depression, I don't think it's the phones, although the phones don't help. I think it's the pressure and the constantly raised standards, which is mostly downstream of globalisation.
At the age of eight?
I'm not obsessing over protecting the purity of women. Women are adults, and can do as they please. (I in fact get very annoyed at the infantilisation of adults, such as women who accuse men of having "groomed" them when the women in question were already old enough to drink.) I am, however, very invested in protecting the purity of girls, especially young girls. That's kind of the whole point of this discussion.
Some and some. Past generations of teenagers did not have to contend with embarrassing footage of them being uploaded to YouTube etc. for the entire world to see without their knowledge or consent, or having their nudes leaked. Playground bullying by definition ends outside the playground: the current generation of bullies can torment their victims morning, noon and night, even after they've changed schools if it pleases them.
Well, I don't agree with you. Indeed, I'm not even persuaded that teenagers face higher pressure to succeed than they used to, if the proportion of obese teenagers and Harvard undergraduates taking remedial maths classes is anything to go by.
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Nobody on the other side of the globe that Rebecca Black did not know bullied her "horrifically". They may have said bad things about her, but that's not the same thing.
Also, Rebecca Black seems to be doing just fine. Getting bullied as a teenager isn't the end of the world. And now she's an adult minor celebrity who gets to make music and play celebrity jeopardy and get invited to cool parties. She's actively touring. I don't think anybody needs to feel sorry for Rebecca Black, and I expect she'd agree.
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What do you call complete strangers sending death threats to a thirteen-year-old?
Were there actual death threats, and how much more than the background default amount? I didn't see any actual examples of any of the "hate" directed her way in that Teen Vogue article, and my past experience with checking what are claimed as "death threats" tells me that I should presume that they're almost all death wishes rather than death threats.
At least two of them were considered serious enough to warrant investigation by the Anaheim police department. @The_Nybbler
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A slow Tuesday on Xbox Live?
I put trash-talking in a different mental category.
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This is an oft-repeated but probably untrue way of describing the motivation of most ambitious parents of child stars. Sure, a lot of them - the Jacksons, the Biebers, whatever - live large off their kids. But that doesn’t mean that drove their ambitions in the first place. If you’ve ever watched the kind of lowbrow reality shows that capture a much earlier stage of the process, stuff like Dance Moms, or shows about boy basketball and football players with ambitious fathers, they often spend huge amounts of money with very little return on their kids, push them beyond reason. In many sports and activities (think a lot of niche sports, or spelling bees, ballet, equestrian stuff, various other competitions) these parents know they’re almost guaranteed never to make a financial return.
“They’re using their kids to get rich” is a bad framework for this. Even if some are gamblers, Vegas odds are better, and most are smart enough to know it. I think the actual motivation is often either living through their children, a chance at another life, with better choices, and a strong whip hand ‘directing’ the child to strive for greatness, or it’s a form of competition with other parents. Adulthood offers fewer avenues for the kind of simple victory that a competition in youth does. You can play in an over-40s league in tennis or whatever, but that’s going to be full of ex-semi-pros who’ve been playing since they were 4. You can try to get rich - the primary marker of status in adult American life - but that’s both difficult and, for almost everyone, an interminably slow process. You can can try to get hot, but that’s hard and gets harder as time goes on. Or you can make something of your kid, and reap the rewards in smugness.
I think if you ask the average parent of a child actor “if you could live your whole life over again, would you do it?”, every single one would say yes (even caveated so you can’t become a bitcoin nvidia trillionaire president astronaut). Whereas in the general population many people would still say yes, but not 100%.
This status-and-love-seeking behavior from full grown adults seems increasingly cringe to me the older I get. I can't help but imagine it's downstream of feeling unloved by the parent as a child and they are desperate to seek love from the world instead. This hit me so hard a few years ago when I met up with a few friends while I was in another country and they insisted that everywhere we eat was statusmaxxing or whatever, the type of place you could brag about going, even to the extent that they wanted to walk out of a place run by a sweet old man when they deemed the food subpar. This stems from insecurity and once you grow out of it it's horrible to see in other people. The full grown adult who wants a golden child actor or a star is doing something so horrible and so tacky and I really doubt most of them are happy at the end of it. Britney's parents raised a global superstar and they probably spend every night wishing she was bringing in more money instead of dancing half naked on instagram. I don't sympathize with the parents.
I think that comes from the quantification and gamification of a particular kind of status (having the time and money to afford Instagrammable experiences) on social media and the resulting intensification of competition.
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Yeah, the stage mother has long been a stock figure. If you look at the career of Gypsy Rose Lee, for example, who wants to put their daughter on stage as a stripper? Even a high-class one? Well, a mom who had stars in her eyes about a theatre career, couldn't make it on her own, and is living vicariously through her kids, for one, as well as using them to support the family financially:
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I'm not necessarily saying that parents push their children into acting with the expectation that the child will make it big, and they (the parents) will personally profit. The odds of a given child actor making it big are only somewhat better than those for a given adult actor. But there do seem to be a number of cases in which a child actor's career unexpectedly took off and their parents immediately began spending money which rightfully belonged to the child, not the parents, sometimes to the point that the child was left without a penny when they came of age (e.g. Gary Coleman successfully sued his parents for misappropriating his assets). This strikes me as obviously unfair, and should not be allowed to happen.
I understand that California passed the Jackie Coogan Act because the parents of the aforementioned child star spent all the money he earned on hookers and blow.
Yes, I learned that after making the original post and edited it to mention it at the very end.
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I think it’s usually the reverse. The kids starts it, then they start making money and the parents push the kid to continue even if they don’t want to.
Yeah, I think that's a fairly typical route by which children end up being financially exploited.
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On one hand, I disagree with nothing you've written: child actors have it uniquely rough in some ways, and we really should do better by them.
On the other, I feel like the (legal/ethical/practical) difficulty in working with them makes it difficult to tell stories that include children, which I feel are a bit lacking these days. The modern Western canon just isn't very kid friendly, nor are characters even shown playing good parent role models: how many of The Avengers have kids? Even those that do seem to play parents as an afterthought.
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