Adoption Community Protest Movie “Orphan”

Update: Debbie, one of our adoption forum members shared a sample letter. I posted it at the bottom.

Update #2: A list of email addresses has been added at the bottom of this post.

One of our adoption forum members brought this to our attention (thanks Debbie!) and I am passing it along to anyone who may be interested. I’m also adding my personal thoughts, which I shared on our adoption forum, at the end of this post.

There is a horror slasher film being released July 24 (Orphan) about a family who adopts an older girl who “is not what she appears to be. Warnings about her go unheeded until it is too late…for everyone”. The film is being promoted now (http://orphan-movie.warnerbros.com) and the adoption message being sent is extremely negative. There is actually a line in the trailer that says “it must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own”.
Without having seen the movie or read the script, it is hard to know if the entire movie is sending a ghastly adoption message, but the trailer certainly leads us to believe it is. This feeds the notion that older adoptees are very troubled and you should beware…. that’s not an image any of us want the general public to have of our kids. It plays into people’s deepest fears.

There is a growing group pursuing a boycott of the film, sending out emails and posting on online bulletin boards. I urge you to forward this email to others personally involved in adoption, help disseminate the boycott message and write to the producers and distributors expressing your displeasure with the message being sent.
The backers of this movie have deep pockets. It is being released by Dark Castle Entertainment with Warner Bros. set to distribute. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way, which developed the material, is also producing.

Here are my personal thoughts;

I just watched the trailer. Looks like the type of movie I would love…..dark and creepy. That line about it being hard to love an adopted child as much as your own is actually said by the adopted girl herself, who is obviously psychotic.

I have two thoughts about this movie……

If people take this movie as a serious portrayal of what older child adoption could be, it might actually be a good thing. There are seriously damaged older kids being adopted into families that have no idea what their in for and once the papers are signed, these families are on their own. I adopted three older kids and luckily, my two younger ones are fine, but my son is one fucked up kid. I hide my butcher knives and scissors in my bedroom because I don’t trust him. I am seeing a lot of sociopathic behaviors in him as he gets older. Maybe after this movie comes out, the concerns of those of us who have adopted troubled kids will be taken more seriously. I actually had a counselor at the facility my son is at, tell me to examine my parenting as a cause of my son’s behavior. After all this time of going through the system’s red tape trying to get help for him and telling anyone who will listen that something is wrong with him (much like the line from the movie; ‘There’s something wrong with Ester’), this man who never met me wants me to carry some of the blame. Needless to say, I hung up on him, (which I’m sure they’ll write up as me being a ‘hostile parent who has anger issues’) but there’s many more who think like him. If there’s one thing that comes out of this movie, I hope it’s that we (those of us who adopt older troubled kids) adopt these kids with all good intentions and then we get very little support and back up from teachers/therapists/cops/judges, etc.

That girl reminded me a lot of my son Very charming and polite in the beginning, able to keep that facade up when needed. Then something happens that she doesn’t like and rage kicks in. That rage in the toilet stall scene is what we live with when he doesn’t get his way.

Is all older child adoption like this?…of course not. I have two kids that prove it doesn’t. My daughters were adopted at the ages of 5 and 8 and are nothing like this movie.

My other thought is….it’s a horror movie made for entertainment and should be treated as such. If I got all bent out of shape every time someone portrayed “me” in a movie, I would be boycotting Goodfellas and The Soprano’s for how they show Italian-Americans.

I want to also add that the people boycotting have every right to do that and I back them 100%. I’m all for people speaking out when there is something they don’t agree with. Unlike channels like CNN and MSNBC who belittled people like myself who attended the recent tax day tea parties, I believe in the right to protest….even if I do not agree with their message.

My last thought is that this movie is nothing compared to the type of movie I would make about older child adoption. I plan on writing a book about my experience and if this movie is causing controversy and it’s not even real, they can’t handle my truth.

Update: Here is a sample letter to send to Warner Bros.

May {XX}, 2009

Barry M. Meyer
Warner Bros. Movies
4000 Warner Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91522

Dear Mr. Meyer and Producers of the movie Orphan:

“It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own.”

Writing as a parent of an adopted child, I strongly urge you to remove this line from your film, “Orphan” and, especially, from all of your trailers. This line implies that an adopted child is not the parents’ child and, for anyone in an adoptive family, is very hurtful. Additionally, anyone seeing the film- or the trailer containing this line of dialogue- could promulgate such a hurtful expression and spread it like a virus, creating emotional distress for adoptive families everywhere.

In this day and age, when movie trailers are “sanitized” so that they can be shown before any movie, regardless of the MPAA rating, your trailer is likely to be seen and heard by young children and their families. For adoptive families, and especially for young children who joined their families through adoption, this line has the potential to cause serious trauma.

So, I will also ask you to look inside your heart and then look, again, at your film and see if there are other scenes that can create a negative stigma for adoptive families and please make changes to eliminate or, at the very least, reduce the damage. If you have any question about what might be considered hurtful, please contact Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute as I know they would be happy to help you.

I understand your film has already been completed and asking you to make wholesale changes at this point, just a couple of months before it is released, is probably unrealistic. That is why I am pleading with you to simply show some sensitivity and limit the damage your film will do to anyone who has an adopted child in their family and at least make these changes to the trailer.

I believe you would prefer not having adoptive families around the world virally warning each other of the damaging depictions contained in your movie and encouraging all their friends and family members not to patronize “Orphan.” No filmmaker would like the headline “Movie Called Harmful to Adoptive Families” associated with their film- least of all Mr. DiCaprio who, until now, has maintained a very positive public image.

Please reply and let me know what you have decided to do with your “Orphan.”

Along with adoptive families around the world, I look forward to hearing of your decision. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
{Name}

email addresses:
Alan Horn, President and Chief Operating Officer
alan.horn@warnerbros.com
Barry Meyer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
barry.meyer@warnerbros.com
Susan Fleishman, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Corporate Communications and Public Affairs
susan.fleishman@warnerbros.com
Jeff Robonov, President, Warner Bros. Pictures Group
jeff.robonov@warnerbros.com
Dan Fellman, President, Domestic Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures
dan.fellman@warnerbros.com

Tags: adoptee, adoptees, Adoption, adoption forum, adoption message, Older Child Adoption, orphan, Parenting

Related posts

• Watch The Adoption Angles Webcast Tonight (0)
• International Adoption Resources (0)
• How To Join Our Adoption Forums (0)
• Families Change: A Book for Children Experiencing Termination of Parental Rights (0)
• Things To Think About Before Adopting A Sibling Group (2)