Teenage nudity suit isn’t relitigating the past
Tiana Lowe
More than half a century after the release of Franco Zeffirelli’s blockbuster rendition of Romeo and Juliet, the now-septuagenarian stars, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, are suing the film’s distributor, Paramount Pictures, for sexually exploiting them and distributing nude images of adolescent children.
In accordance with California law extending the statute of limitations for child sex abuse, Whiting and Hussey, who were 16 and 15 years old respectively when filming the Shakespearean tragedy, allege that the late Zeffirelli reneged on his promise that the pair would wear flesh-colored undergarments when filming intimate scenes, threatening on set that “the Picture would fail” without nudity.
Zeffirelli’s exploitation of the underage actors was nothing new in Hollywood, and sadly, it’s also hardly a relic of the past. Recall that when Brooke Shields shot to fame at 12 years old with the release of Pretty Baby, that wasn’t the first time she was forced to pose nude for profit. By then, Playboy had already published nude pictures of the actress at the age of 10.
The problem continued into the 21st century, with alumni from the British dramedy Skins recently lambasting the showrunners for making the actors, who were all teenagers at the time of filming the high school series, film graphic sex scenes and strip on camera. Contemporary showrunners have tried to rectify the problem not by dialing back sexual performances on camera, but by aging up the actors.
But has that really solved the problem? The latest blockbuster of the teenage soap oeuvre, HBO’s Euphoria, has faced fire from Generation Z fans for gratuitous nudity amid rumors that the actors (all well into their 20s, just portraying adolescents) were uncomfortable with stripping on set. Sydney Sweeney, an Emmy-nominated actress who has gone topless multiple times on the show, told reporters: “I’ve had experiences where I want to go home and scrub myself completely raw because I feel disgusting.”
“It’s completely unfair. You have a character that goes through the scrutiny of being a sexualized person at school and then an audience that does the same thing,” the actress said.
At least, unlike Hussey and Whiting, Sweeney is only playing a minor on TV. Yes, 55 years may have passed since Romeo and Juliet’s debut, but those were 55 years of millions of people watching what the law would effectively consider child pornography. California may grant the victims the chance to hold an injustice to account, but it cannot undo 55 years of Hollywood’s preference of simulating teenage sex on screen. Perhaps the industry would be wise not to wait for another half-century to learn the real lesson of Hussey and Whiting’s pain.