TW; mentions of rape and child pornography.
My public image was what was actually on trial.
In 2023, the name Brooke Shields is one that conjures up vague feelings of discomfort and sadness. Once one of the most famous women (or rather, girls) in the world, the star might be better known today for her comedic timing, showing up on network essentials like ‘The Middle’ in reruns. Maybe you might have grown up watching her guest appearance on ‘Friends’. But more likely, you know the mythology of Shields. The world’s youngest sex symbol, and all the discomfort that encapsulates.
This is a woman whose cultural imprint has remained, even as the responses to it have changed. You might never watch a Brooke Shields vehicle, but you do know that face. The perfectly coifed child, who’s beauty reminds you of a young Elizabeth Taylor or Judy Garland. But that kid, that baby, wasn’t running around with Lassie or following the yellow brick road. She was starring in films like the inspiration for this documentary’s title, ‘Pretty Baby’ (1978).
This is a documentary set up in two parts, the first half being that infamous youth, and the second being her more adult experience as a woman working through the world, in the aftermath. It’s a fairly standard interview and clip show, upheld by a poised and introspective Shields, who stoically recounts her life’s story with a sense of nuance and kindness. Sometimes overly so, considering what has been done to her.
We’ve been in a cultural reckoning with the exploitation of girlhood (and, to an extent, boyhood) for a while now. Maybe since the dawn of teenagers as a demographic, there’s been an increasing awkwardness with how they’re depicted. Youth culture demands rebellion, good taste demands the opposite, and so we look for balance. But at a certain point, there was a switch. Realism came into vogue, and in the quest for that, we suddenly started seeing a more sexualised teen. An archetypal teen that’s made for consumption by more than just their age mates.
One of the responses of the dominant culture, to the rise of feminism, was the sexualisation of little girls.
That is the theory proposed at one point within the documentary. Of course, this is partially an exaggeration of the effects of feminism, or at least an incomplete answer. Children being sexualised is one of the foundations of Hollywood. Look at Mary Miles Minter, who’s stardom in the 1910s was at the very least, one of an adult, rivalling Mary Pickford, a star who was a decade older than her.
Minter is probably the archetypal, if oft-forgotten, child star that can be compared to Shields. At least, of those that came before her. Unlike many of the young woman in the decades hence who rose to fame in their teens, she was undoubtably a child – faking her age with a dead relative’s birth certificate. She made her first film at 10, and soon after began playing romantic leads at the age of 13.
There was nothing so scandalous in her scenes as would occur with Shields, but almost everything else about the situation reads like a mirror image. The beautiful child, the dominating force of the mother, the increasing friction into adulthood, and subsequent loss of control. Minter’s struggles against her mother ended following the murder of William Desmond Taylor, which some suggest was at the older woman’s hands.
But what matters here is the story of a young girl, a pre-teen in both cases, being allowed to play romantic leads. But whereas Minter was at least aged up for her roles (regularly playing 5 years her senior), Shields was not. Her sexuality was explicitly that of a child. From the moment French director Louis Malle cast her as a child prostitute in 1978, that was her selling point. It wouldn’t be until her 20s that she regained her cultural innocence.
“If you’re perceived a certain way and branded a certain way, then you become a product.” – Laura Linney
Obviously, this is a linear story, but I think what that most stands out to me in the first episode is how saleable the younger Shields was. I don’t say this in reference to the exploitation of her supposedly budding sexuality, but just how commercial her image was. Every few minutes, you’re reminded just how prevalent her image was across all mediums. A new movie, a new commercial, a new print ad. That’s gone once we hit the 1990s.
The documentary wants to make it clear just how omnipresent her fame was by connecting her to the celebrities who’s inescapable presence and legacies still exist today. She’s linked to Madonna, Lionel Richie, and especially Michael Jackson. But what sold me most was her doll.
We’ve all seen dolls like this. The head and shoulders, built to be drawn on and arranged into whatever the child thinks is beautiful. It’s the type of toy a young Brooke Shields should have been left to play with. But instead, as an adolescent, the girl was selling it on television. She speaks of not even registering this as an approximation of her face. They’re just dolls to her at this point. It’s chilling to hear from the mouth of a child, but not surprising.
She speaks often of disassociating, not just with the dolls, but while on set. Escaping her body to allow the scenes awkwardness to dissipate and finish the day. Working is described as her escape from the pressures of being at home with her mother. It’s heartbreaking, but unsurprising in context of her story. She had been groomed from childhood to accept actions being done to her.
The ways through which her exploitation is encouraged through the language of moviemaking is so uncomfortable. “She’s quite a capable little actress” says Zeffirelli, not in subject of her acting, but her ability to portray sex. Her fear of looking “stupid or untalented” is at the heart of her exploitation. Her co-star in ‘Pretty Baby’ assured her their onscreen kiss didn’t count. Nobody seems to have been looking out for her in the ways that mattered.
When you’ve been treated like an adult since infancy, there is no room to say that you don’t understand. Even within the interviews, an adult Shields is deeply uncomfortable expressing her distress at those who allowed her in these situations – namely her mother. In fact, the only time she calls out the negligence of her upbringing is in regard to her photos being printed in Playboy.
“…cut to – I was sixteen – and Garry Gross, he was going to make a mint by selling these photos as famous Brooke Shields, now, nude...” – Brooke Shields
Without repeating everything spoken about in the documentary itself, this the lowest point in episode one, and an explicit condemnation of her mother. Like every rebuke towards Teri Shields, it’s couched in an acknowledgement that she herself isn’t doing the harm here. But as her daughter very clearly points out, the choice to have a nine-year-old Brooke Shields pose for these photos at all was one given without appropriate consideration.
The documentary as a whole is surprisingly kind to Teri Shields, considering how much harm she causes. Even the non-Brooke talking heads seem hesitant to overtly place blame at her feet, and none of it goes towards the father. It’s simply acknowledged that she signed off on every film, that she was her manager up until the mid-90s, and that she had a drinking problem.
“I knew what to expect from my work…you never really knew what to expect from an alcoholic…” is how she describes their relationship, with some quick acknowledgements that Teri was never on set with her daughter. There’s an attempt to frame it as freeing, and have the set becoming a safe haven for the young Shields. But this documentary wouldn’t exist if these sets had been a safe and protective environment.
Returning to the Gross (and gross) photoshoot, you’re left with a basic and sad truth. Teri Shields was not there for her daughter. It was too late to stop the shoot from being published half a decade after it had been shot. The teenaged star spent two days on the stand, being grilled over her intentions as an actress, as if wanting to be a celebrity as a teenager gives someone the rights to sell child pornography of you.
And then the prick won.
The first significant chunk of episode two is devoted to one of the many books Shields released through her lifetime, and the subject of her virginity. The reveal that this child sex symbol is a virgin becomes a cultural battleground, and in context of the documentaries, it’s terrifying. There is a contrast between the sexualisation of her adolescence and the virginal spectre of her early adulthood, but both have her as a symbol.
Past that, episode two covers such a significant stretch of time that the career feels like an afterthought. Part of it is that her career never really recovered from her time at Princeton. Despite attempts to frame these career choices as a series of interesting and fulfilling creative choices (and maybe they are), you definitely get the sense that she was taking anything she could get. Given how her mother’s management seemed to have the same mentality of pay checks over brand integrity, it makes sense.
Most of this is an afterthought. She gives up on movie stardom, does some sitcoms, and attempts to build an adult life for herself. It’s the personal rather than the professional that matters here. Unfortunately, without Teri Shields to explain how she felt in this time, it’s pretty incomplete. It’s also not particularly insightful as an ending to that arc. They simply gut the office and go. The tension should be at its height, but this is really where the story ends.
She never intended on life without me.
There are three focal points in episode two that really matter, and that is the rape, her abusive relationship with Andre Agassi, and her struggles with post-partum depression. Interspersed between a fairly light-handed recount of her professional life during this period, these mostly exist as interview-based recounts. The more recent the episode gets, the more it seems to hurry itself along to the conclusion. The Agassi relationship in particular is left fairly vague. If you’re someone watching who doesn’t know the details (and I certainly don’t) then it feels incomplete. Granted, the documentaries as a whole suffers from a non-committal attitude to detail, but this is where the seams feel like they’re showing.
The purpose of a celebrity documentary like this is either to be an exploration of a specific theme, or a career recap to cement their legacy status. They’re clearly going for the former here, but something is missing. It’s not just that Teri Shields is too often given a pass for her choices as a manager and mother. Nor is it the weird semi-defence of ‘Pretty Baby’ (1978) as some sort of artist achievement. The conversations being had here are just too ambiguous.
In contrast to the clear storytelling of the eerily similar ‘Pamela’ (2023), ‘Pretty Baby’ suffers from too many cooks in the kitchen. We have endless voices repeating each other, and some adding nothing to the conversation. Drew Barrymore in particular feels oddly placed, given that we don’t see them interact once. Part of it is inevitable, considering how Shields discusses her life. Her insight is invaluable, but the documentary as a whole is probably too respectful to her version of events. A lot of people are not being scrutinized in favour of blaming the system.
In many ways, the more interesting first episode suffers from the opposite problem of the second episode. Pre-1990, we have a general refusal to place blame on any one person’s feet. Not her manager mother – or her father, who quietly accepted it all. No director is taken to task in any serious way – except Zeffirelli, who’s directing is criticized in one instance as unnecessary and mildly cruel. It is forever and always everyone who was involved. But the second episode fails to provide scope. We zip through almost three decades of Shields’ life. The moments we hit are thematically important, but narratively disconnected. But even so, so you do walk away sympathetic.
“I learned I could think for myself.” – Brooke Shields
We’re never going to stop retelling stories of children being abused by the film, television, and music industries. There’s just too many, all of which are immediately swallowed up by the tabloid industrial complex. After Shields came Britney. And Rihanna. And Lindsay. And Miley. And Justin. And too many more to name.
‘Pretty Baby’ (2023) is a hopeful film that ends with a tacit acknowledgement that Brooke Shields’ legacy is uncomfortable for everyone. Her most famous work is near impossible to watch through modern eyes, and so what we’re left with is her late career films and her story. This documentary is an attempt to take control of what she can, and explain away some of the awkwardness.
It ends with a conversation between herself and her daughters, the husband quietly disengaging so he can listen. It’s not a defensive back and forth, but it’s clear that her daughters do not have any reverence for her career. They don’t mince words; these films are just not something they would watch. It’s her sitcom work they can reference (to her shock). She and the documentary as a whole attempt to find some common ground with the world of social media and her own exploitation, but her daughters easily find the distinction. Not only are they consenting, but most users of Instagram and TikTok are older than she was.
It's telling that, even with this vague reach towards a modern equivalent, nothing is quite as discomforting as her own experience. When asked if she’d ever allow her daughters to enter into a similar position, she says no. Her teen child entering the world of modelling is its own struggle for her. But this is not a pattern worth repeting.
Because, as these episodes make clear, what happened to Brooke Shields was wrong. Everybody was to blame. They let her get consumed by a public that only ever cares in retrospect.
This industry – it’s predicated on eating it’s young. It wants to devour them.