Teen star Ariane Grande massages a potato to get juice out of it. In another scene, she lies on the bed and sprays herself with water, squealing with pleasure. Other girls suggestively lick ice cream and phallic food, show off their bare feet, or get a load of goo in the face. Looking back, a former teenage actress says: “It was a cum shot, but I didn't know what that was yet.”
Review Docuseries
Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV Director: Mary Robertson, Emma Schwartz. HBO Max, 4 episodes of 44 minutes.
These kinds of uncomfortable fragments from Nickelodeon teen programs have been widely shared on social media for a few years. Always in context: look at it now, the TV shows we watched in our youth were secretly full of scandalous innuendos without us realizing it.
The brains behind this: producer Dan Schneider. At the beginning of this century, he made the American children's channel famous because he perfectly sensed what teenagers find hilarious and attractive in sitcoms such as Sam & Cat, Victorious and iCarly. But during #MeToo he had to give way, partly because he dressed his underage actresses as attractive lolitas and saddled them with his ambiguous humor.
The four-part documentary series Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV provides a devastating picture of the children's channel Nickelodeon. To that end, directors Mary Robertson and Emma Schwarz made a stew of all kinds of abuses that are more or less connected. They let many former teen stars speak, a few parents and former screenwriters who were all damaged by Schneider and other Nickelodeon people. The interviews are interspersed with the above inappropriate Nickeodeon fragments.
Apart from a formal, written statement at the end, supervillain Dan Schneider himself does not speak. However, unfavorable photos of him are continuously shown. The biggest problem, by the way, is not his love for sex jokes and veiled teenage erotica. Above all, he was a supreme bully who created a culture of fear in which children and other employees felt far from safe and therefore overstepped their boundaries. “He knew how to make people feel worthless.”
Schneider had preferences for certain star actresses and the rest of the kids could be kicked. Two female screenwriters had to share one salary and were humiliated by him. One had to read a new skit in his office while simulating an anal penetration. Other female employees had to give Schneiders massages during the filming.
As far as is known, he kept his hands to himself. Schneider had nothing to do with the three convicted pedophiles who chose Nickelodeon as their hunting ground – and that is suggested.
In the trap
The focus of the series is the interview with former teen star Drake Bell from the sitcom Drake & Josh. He was repeatedly raped by actor and dialogue coach Brian Peck. Peck's conviction was well known, but his previously unknown victim appears here for the first time. Bell explains very precisely how Peck lured him into a trap by getting rid of his suspicious father and capturing his mother. This part of the series is similar to Leaving Neverland, the documentary in which two alleged victims of Michael Jackson give long, sickening testimonies.
Drake Bell in Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV. Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO Max
The aftermath is shocking: during the trial, Brian Peck received a lot of support from Hollywood and after his prison sentence he was able to return to work, starting with a children's show from competitor Disney. The documentary does not mention it, but according to film platform IMDB, the convicted pedophile worked in ten more productions until 2018, including a Nickelodeon series. Interesting detail: Peck was a pen pal of serial killer John Wayne Gacy. He had Gacy's self-portrait as a clown hanging on the wall at home, a gift from the man who raped and murdered at least 33 boys. At a barbecue, Peck proudly showed the self-portrait to the assembled teenage actors.
In the final episode, the makers broaden the problem: Hollywood is a cold money machine in which child stars are ground up and spit out. After their short careers, the children regularly become unhinged, mentally damaged and addicted to narcotics. Because they are not given the space to be a child, but also because financial interests in Hollywood take precedence over the well-being of the child. This applies not only to Nickelodeon but also to parents, who are often dependent on their child's salary. As one dismissed boy says: “I wanted to get my family out of the slum.” That's why he allowed himself to be smeared with peanut butter and licked by dogs in front of the TV camera.
The sex case against Brian Peck is shocking enough in itself, but too serious for a general indictment against Nickelodeon. It distorts the series and should have been better incorporated into an argument in which the various abuses were more clearly separated, and then the differences and connections made clear. Because how does all this hang together? After all, a bully with a foot fetish does not automatically lead to rape. “The person at the top sets the tone,” says one former employee. When the workplace is unsafe, sexual predators and misogynistic bullies are given more space. This is extra dangerous if there are many vulnerable children around, who want to become actors so badly that they are prepared to put up with a lot: “Nickelodeon was a childhood dream!”
If you ignore the age difference for a moment, Quiet on the Set is reminiscent of the endemic transgressive behavior in public broadcasting as exposed in the Van Rijn report. The series is also reminiscent of the abuse scandal at The Voice. Nickelodeon responded with short, formal written responses: the importance of the safety of children is the channel's top priority. The channel has not yet published an action plan. Dan Schneider argued in an earlier response that they simply worked at top level and that he therefore had to be demanding. Sounds like Van Nieuwkerk's “Champions Leaugue”. In a new interview, Schneider has apologized profusely for being “such an asshole.”
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