What is the big deal? They think you're a sucker, that is the big deal.

Parental groups are apparently upset about 13-year old Dakota Fanning getting raped in a new movie premiering at Sundance.

To which I respond, “A film about something sexually explicit and taboo? At Sundance? I am shocked - SHOCKED! – to see a film using an unsettling subject for free publicity.”

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but what parental group knows intimate details about a film before it premieres at Sundance? Do the hip, yet ultra-conservative, indie parents troll the internet for scripts from unsigned films? And how many children are there in the Cult of Dakota Fanning? Charlotte’s Web aside, this actress has not made a name for herself in children’s movies, but instead in movies filled with violent and disturbing imagery.

The real story is that this is a non-story. Everything I have heard from people who have actually seen the film is that it is not very good. So how do you sell a stinker of a movie to the public? Invent a controversy about it – get some vague “parental group” to get upset about it, get every media outlet to talk about it and fret about what new low our society has sunk to (despite the fact that it has been done before, several times in fact), and then get enough people to watch it, not to see a cute little prepubescent blonde girl get raped, but to see what the big deal about this movie.

The big deal is that they think they can trick you out of your money. Do the world a favor and prove them all wrong.