Since the film review of Catherine Hardwicke’s “Thirteen” ran in last Friday’s editions of The Courant, I have been approached by mothers and aunts — some friends of mine, some total strangers — who all want an answer to the same question: “Should I take my daughter or niece to see ‘Thirteen’ and talk about it afterward?”
The answer is as complicated as parenting in the age of piercings, tattoos and thongs.
“Thirteen” is a cautionary tale, one that ultimately shows the perils of going “bad,” but the film is rated R for a reason. “Thirteen” contains profanity, shoplifting, drug and alcohol use, sexual situations, masoch*stic scenes of a young girl cutting herself and some nudity.
At www.screenit.com, which offers detailed information about the content of current releases and rentals, the “Our Word to Parents” paragraph includes the following: “Profanity consists of at least 45 ‘f’ words, while other expletives and colorful phrases are present (including in songs). Sexually explicit dialogue occurs, as do several instances of fooling around (making out, caressing of clothed breasts, straddling of guys’ laps, some disrobing etc.) that lead to some off-screen sexual behavior (oral sex). Some lesbian-related material is present, as is the sight of a fully nude middle-aged woman (in a nonsexual context). All sorts of teen-based imitative behavior occurs (rebelliousness, drugs, piercings, self-mutilation with bloody results, etc.) — resulting in plenty of thematic issues and discussion points — while various related and unrelated bad attitudes are present, as is a great deal of tense family material. Different characters (including teens) drink, smoke and use (and sell) drugs. While high, two girls repeatedly hit and punch each other.”
Director Hardwicke and actress Nikki Reed, who co-wrote the script based on Reed’s experiences, do not flinch from the psychologically and physically painful details of the transformation of Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood), a “good girl” who goes bad by degrees. We watch as Tracy begins to model herself after Evie (Reed), the high school boy magnet and bad girl. Evie responds by taking Tracy to the seventh circle of adolescent hell. The girls steal clothing at shops along Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, drop acid in the park, display thong underwear out the tops of their low-rider jeans. Tracy secretly cuts her forearm with bathroom scissors and a razor blade. She gets her tongue pierced. Evie pierces a hole in Tracy’s belly button as Tracy bites a stuffed animal to smother her screams. The girls have sexual encounters with various guys — white ones and black ones, schoolmates and the older boy next door (who, it turns out, is the only one who sets limits).
Evie’s wild-child ways are made possible by the fact that she has no parental supervision. Her guardian, a drunken former model called Brooke (Deborah Kara Unger), spends most days on the couch basting her insides in alcohol and staring at her perceived flaws in the mirror. She barely registers Evie’s presence unless she needs her to fetch another beer.
Tracy’s descent comes at a time when her mother, Holly Hunter’s Melanie, is stretched thin. A divorced mother of two, Melanie runs a hairdressing business out of the family house and an unofficial boarding house for friends, clients and an ex-boyfriend (Jeremy Sisto’s Brady). Brady is a recovering cocaine addict and no hero to Tracy, who has seen him in the midst of a co*ke binge, or her younger brother Mason. Tracy, who is bright and perceptive, feels sidelined by her busy mother and abandoned by her father, who has a new job and a new family and occupies almost no place in his growing daughter’s life. Tracy’s solution is a masoch*stic call for help that goes unnoticed for almost the duration of the film. Following Evie’s lead, Tracy begins to self-destruct, to look for attention in all the wrong ways, possibly in an attempt to provoke a response from her parents.
“Thirteen” has generated a great deal of media attention at a time when parents are overwhelmed. A lot of parents I know are frantic to preserve a sense of childhood and innocence in their kids. Several have spoken of the need to quit work when their children reach adolescence because those difficult years are when kids need monitoring. Parents are up against a culture in which kids are routinely exposed to things they may or may not be prepared to see or sort out.
The point that Hardwicke’s film makes forcefully is that kids like Evie and Tracy need a loving parent, someone to be a grown-up, to set limits and enforce them. It is with envy that Evie watches Melanie’s belated efforts to rescue her daughter. Evie recognizes — with some pain — that she has no one who would care enough to stop her from spiraling all the way down.
Should you take your daughter or niece to see “Thirteen”?
If my mother had taken me at that age, I probably would have responded with a “Mommmmm!” in that exasperated tone that mothers of teenage daughters know too well. It would have amused me to think Mom would choose to caution me with a movie when I was in little danger of becoming a Tracy or an Evie.
One of the women who asked about taking her niece to “Thirteen” confessed that the 13-year-old recently asked her mother for birth-control pills. Perhaps Hardwicke’s film is the right choice for that girl, but the mother and aunt will know best.
For my nieces, I lean toward films that offer girls better, more healthful options. It is a decision based on the hopeful notion that kids who are shown how to be, rather than how not to be, have a better chance at finding solid footing in the slippery mess of adolescence. Sure, the protagonists of “Thirteen” are revealed by film’s end to be deeply troubled girls who are nowhere near as cool as they look, but you cannot ignore the photogenic allure of being a bad girl or the fact that Nikki Reed went on to make a movie about the experiences, effectively transforming her personal nightmare into a winning situation. Most wayward 13-year-olds will not arrive at a happy ending.
“Thirteen” is never campy, but in its message, it mirrors ’50s films that warned against the dangers of pot smoking. It warns kids against the dangers of the fast life and parents against the perils of losing touch with their children. It may undoubtedly be good medicine for some teens, but parents should know it is very strong stuff.
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