From Straight-A Student to Prostitute in 3 Weeks?

By T. Eve Greenaway, WireTap. Posted January 30, 2001.

Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic" has not been advertised as a movie made for youth. Maybe that's why, although the high school students in the film are at the center of the story line, most critics have had very little to say about the often confusing, simplifying statements the film makes about young people and substance use.

Soderbergh seems to have some lofty goals, such as undermining the mainstream media's portrayal of the drug war as a battle of good and evil and illustrating how often the reality of substance use and abuse touches our personal lives. But the light his film sheds on the main character's teenage daughter as the "victim" of the "harsh world of drug addiction" creates an image that is at best simplifying and at worst dangerously two-dimensional.

	"Early scenes of her stoned friends sprawled around a fancy living room, drinking, sniffing cocaine and mumbling fuzzily about their discontents offer a devastating vision of youthful suburban ennui."

Many recent articles about the film have commented on the acting ability of Erika Christensen, who plays the role. Sources such as TeenHollywood.com, a website about rising teen stars, described her role as a breakthrough. In an interview on their site, the writer says that her character has a nice arc -- from hanging with her friends and partying to the desperation of selling her body for drugs. While even the "adult" critics are talking about a possible academy award nomination for the actress, very few people seem willing to comment on the believability and the implications of the actions her character takes.

One New York Times article reads:

"While [Michael Douglas' drug czar character] is exploring [the Mexican American border], Caroline is rapidly succumbing to crack addiction under the tutelage of her cynical boyfriend, Seth (Topher Grace), her classmate at the exclusive Cincinnati Country Day School and as a scary a contemporary teenager as you're likely find in a recent movie. A high achiever who is sullen and angry beneath her preppy glass, Caroline quickly plummets to the bottom. Early scenes of her stoned friends sprawled around a fancy living room, drinking, sniffing cocaine and mumbling fuzzily about their discontents offer a devastating vision of youthful suburban ennui."

On Salon.com, film critic Charles Taylor writes:

"The movie does not shy away from portraying the pleasure of drugs, and Caroline's initiation into free-base cocaine by [her boyfriend] Seth is a voluptuous rush. Her head rolls back, and tears of joy trickle from her eyes as Seth repeats in a soothing voice, "You see? You see?" before making love to her. From that moment, Caroline is hooked, and she becomes a glazed-eyed baby-faced demon whose precipitous fall lands her in a seedy hotel under the thumb of the drug-dealing pimp who introduced her to heroin."

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