New Kind of Hollywood Girl Power

It’s no surprise that teenage girls would swarm into movie theaters to see Posh, Baby, Sporty and Scary Spice attain “girl power” by, among other things, dressing down.

And it’s hardly surprising that teenage girls are flocking to see “Titanic” not once but over and over--all those hours to swoon and then weep over Leonardo. And likewise, it’s small wonder teenage girls love “Scream 2,” what with all those body-sculpted young men and women to admire amid the gore.

What is surprising and sometimes troubling is the growing audience of preteen girls adding to the box office of those films.

“This new group, which I call subteens, has emerged,” says Barnaby Thompson, producer of the PG-rated “Spice World,” which has grossed more than $24 million and whose core audience, it turns out, is girls 7 to 12. “It’s a powerful force, much the same way teenagers were in the late ‘50s and ‘60s.”

Parents of young girls recognize the dilemma: Their daughters have just moved past Barbie and the Disney movies and probably anything animated at all. Even quality films like “The Little Princess” or “Fairy Tale: A True Story” (a little-seen British film that came and went a few months ago) frankly seem too little-girl.

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Intense peer pressure, lack of alternative material, lazy parenting and media bombardment are some of the reasons given for the blurring of lines between preteens and teens. And for many parents, that’s a worrisome trend.

“It seems that for their age, the movies go from the few that deal with strong adolescents, like ‘Harriet the Spy,’ straight to the next group where the female characters are imbeciles,” says Nell Minnow, whose book “The Movie Mom’s Guide to the Movies” comes out later this year.

“Parents are totally baffled,” she says.

She hears from young moviegoers too, especially when they disagree with her.

“I was conflicted on ‘Clueless,’ as were a lot of mothers of young girls,” Minnow says. “The lead character was strong and independent, but at the same time she had a cavalier attitude about drugs, sex and driving after drinking. Well, I got lots of youthful responses basically telling me, ‘You suck!’ ”

The issues that most concern those dealing with young girls are the loose treatment of sex and how it relates to love; a numbing factor that comes with seeing too much violence; and disturbing subject matter that may not register immediately but quietly enters the subconscious (notice any sleeping problems lately?).

The sex issues are probably paramount with parents, who are still deciding themselves how much to tell their daughters about the subject. They may choose to adorn their tales with the gradual blossoming of romance, but fuhgettaboutit.

“Movies these days have taken away the range of choices for how young women respond to men’s sexual advances,” Minnow says. “Any warm moment on screen is followed by the couple jumping into bed together. So girls believe most sexual encounters are also first-time encounters.”

Psychologists and other experts say filmmakers need to think twice about who’s watching. Mary Pipher, the psychoanalyst who wrote the best-selling “Reviving Ophelia,” notes: “I think even the makers of ‘Titanic’ should have asked, ‘Are these very desirable teens in the movie behaving in a responsible way?’ . . . basically having sex within days of meeting each other?”

Pipher, who specializes in treating adolescent girls, is equally concerned about the combustible combination of sex and violence in movies: “I think it’s really pernicious. For girls, it’s just very hard to know the consequences or to see the subtleties. ‘Scream 2’ is basically watching one beautiful girl after another get killed.”

What makes the R-rated “Scream” films work is that they are self-parodies, mocking a genre, something young viewers might not understand. But the films’ director, Wes Craven, claims they work on enough levels for everyone to get something.

“I see my audience as one smart and mature enough to get the joke, but not too young to be traumatized,” Craven says. “Even the younger kids understand simple issues like what or who do you trust, and do you really understand your boyfriend? They may not have adult perspective, but like it or not, they are being pushed into the issue and information blizzard of adulthood. At least here they can have a laugh about it.”

So what does that nervous laughter coming out of the mouths of young babes mean? Craven says his movies show that “bleeding hurts and you may lose your life if you act like this”--but the subteen set may not get the nuances. So they end up feeling the right emotions at the wrong times. The same is true with the PG-13-rated “Titanic.”

“I’ve had girls tell me how embarrassed they were by the sex scene or the [nude] painting scene in ‘Titanic,’ ” Minnow says. “But I’m not sure they’re bothered by the 300 dead bodies in the water.”

Too much too soon can also lead to premature cynicism.

“I felt really sad about all the dying in ‘Titanic,’ ” says 10-year-old Erica Lubetkin of New York. “But I also knew a lot of the bodies were computerized.”

Then there is the question of role models: Young female viewers like Kate Winslet’s Rose best when she parties it up with the boys and tells her mother to “shut up.” Craven says his fan mail reveals that young girls especially like the character played by Neve Campbell in both “Scream” movies.

“They get to see how a solid citizen copes with all the insanity around her,” he says. “Even their parents say they like that the main character is a decent kid, very motivated, not into drugs.”

And what of the Spice Girls?

“The girls are basically sweet and charming and what they preach isn’t particularly anarchic,” says “Spice World” producer Thompson. “They talk about being proud of yourself and going for it. Obviously, they dress in a rather provocative fashion and if I was the parent of an 8-year-old girl, I’m not sure I’d want her looking like that.”

“I took my 8-year-old daughter to see ‘Spice World’ and I still am regretting it,” says Daphne Merkin, film critic for the New Yorker. “The way it embraces celebrity is damaging to young girls who have this very early fascination with fame. They see the world as divided into the famous and the not famous.”

Merkin says it’s not the job of movie critics to warn parents what movies are suitable for whom, but parents should know their own kids and draw some boundaries.

“A lot of this is about caving in to the culture, not wanting your kids to be the only ones who haven’t seen something,” she says. “But it’s also about laziness. Parents drag kids along when they want to see something or they take the younger ones along with an older sibling.”

Parents need to make the effort to help their kids through what they’ve seen, Pipher says. “I strongly urge parents to see the movies their kids are seeing if for no other reason than to understand what kind of world kids today are living in.”

Not that parents can’t just say no--and gain respect in the end.

“The issue for us isn’t language but the values,” says Anne Lang, a Brooklyn mother of a 9-year-old daughter. “I let Samantha see [R-rated] ‘The Birdcage’ because a lot of the sexual ambiguity rolls over her, and at heart it’s about the way people help themselves out of tough situations.

“But I won’t let her see [PG-13-rated] ‘As Good as It Gets’ because I think the images of obsessive-compulsive disorder are disturbing. But we’ve always been straight with her, and she has learned to trust us when we say, ‘You’re just not ready for something yet.’ ”