TW "Cuties" - Netflix film about an 11-year old twerking dance crew

[TBHno]

I haven't seen the film, but the poster and blurb makes me want to vomit

www.thehollywoodnews.com/2020/08/18/trailer-for-netflixs-cuties-a-film-about-an-11-year-old-who-joins-a-free-spirited-dance-clique/

I haven't watched the film but this is a film written and directed by a black female director starring a young black girl. That surely is a rarity on Netflix. If people have seen it and don't believe it achieves its aims of critiquing this sexualisation of children, I will gladly listen but I think the outrage is largely from people who know nothing about the film and want to jump on the bandwagon.

Also, I think all this publicity will do is to ensure the paedophiles do flock to Netflix.

I saw a clip of this in twitter - Christ on a bike, I assumed it would be Little Miss Sunshine - not Soho XXX Revu. The reviews in ISBN say one girl flashes her boobs, a flash of bare bum...

The dance is very sexualised - it’s not a coming of age film about a little black girl breaking cultural expectations and becoming a modern French girl. It will definitely attract a ‘type’. The girls parents - what were /are they thinking? And for those comparing it with patents in the US - no, this is worse.

I'm actually glad so many people are outraged and want to cancel netflix. I'm glad that pedo porn culture hasn't managed to make people completely uncaring about sexual objectification of young girls.

this is a film written and directed by a black female director starring a young black girl. That surely is a rarity on Netflix.

How is that relevant? A film should be praised on its merits, not the minority status of the writer. Likewise, criticism should not be withheld on the same basis.

Netflix, along with HBO, has no shortage of black, female leads in recent series.

It's going crazy on Twitter, shame on Netflix.

It is dismal

There are no ‘teflon’ groups here. I don’t care who writes it - it’s inappropriate.

I've complained to Ofcom tonight. This is genuinely the first time I have ever felt compelled to complain about a film or TV show.

It doesn't matter one bit what the context of the rest of the film is, the movement in the "dances" is porn performed by little girls. It's all anyone will take away from the film and it's what will be replayed and jerked off to by anyone with a Netflix sub and a predilection for sex with children.

It’s the bit at the end of the dance where the girls pretend to masturbate with their fingers in their mouths and their hands on their genitals.

Ffs.

All done to get as much publicity as possible in this age of dwindling film sales, network dispersion, piracy, now Covid-closed cinemas. They have to resort to increasingly shocking tactics to generate pr, draw viewers and make money.

One does wonder how much lower they can go..

I've seen some of the clips.

I've desperately been trying to work out if I'm missing some hidden message , but I just keep coming back to the fact that whatever was intended, at the end of the day young girls are being made to dance like adult strippers on stage wearing very little and that would have been repeated over and over and over again while they "perfected" the shots

Camera people and make up people choreograpers demonstrating and instructing etc and I just cannot see how it doesn't make you feel sick.

We have discussed somewhere on here before I think about child actors in 18 movies and how they shoot without upsetting them or showing them things that are not suitable.

But I cant see how "tricks" can be used here. Child actors really had to do this.

How long did it take to film. How many adults had to tell them what to do and where to put their hands etc

I just can't...

I don’t know how the parents could watch their children on the screen and think ‘that’s okay’.

Surely the whole filming process. The re takes over and over and over probably massively desensitised them.

Same with the kids involved I mean what boundries do they have left now? Its essentially < you know the word we cant say> them hasn't it?

And then theres the long history of the issues with child stars and whats happened. Look at Britney spears she had a break down. Macauly culkin is another. Wasn't there an issue with the girl from the exorcist toi?

It never ends well

I really tried to give this film the benefit of the doubt when the promotional pictures came out a couple of weeks ago. I read the interview with the director and understood that she was trying to create something that challenged the ways girls are sexualised. I believed the problem was the way Netflix had chosen to market the film.

But now I've seen that clip, I feel that whatever the director's intentions, it's unethical to direct such young girls to simulate porny sex. I was watching it agog, wondering how on earth those girls' parents agreed for them to do it. Wondering, like others have said, how the actresses will now be treated by the boys and men they know at school and in their neighbourhoods. I wondered how much the girls even understood of what those moves were referencing and what they were simulating. It's really uncomfortable to watch.

I noticed the audience was booing in the clip. Lots of women shaking their heads and looking uneasy/disapproving. So I guess there's more to the context of this. But still, it made me really uneasy.

@TheRealMcKennaDonsTinfoilHat

Every review I’ve read suggests that this movie is as bad as the outrage over the preview feared it would be.

I really don’t get the ‘justification’ from the progressive media about this movie at all. They argue that the intent of the black, female (we must emphasise the oopression) writer was to critique the sexualisation of young girls, so we must bear this in mind when watching it and not judge harshly.

On the other hand, this is the same mob which preaches that micro-aggressions should always be judged on their impact on the victim rather than on the intent of the ‘aggressor’.

I don’t care who wrote this movie - they could sit at the very bottom of the bottomless pit of intersectional oppression as far as I’m concerned. The movie looks shite from all the clips I’ve seen of it and ‘problematic’ doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s wrong with it.

I want to quote this forever, "the bottom of the bottomless pit of intersectional oppression"

“challenged the ways girls are sexualised.” I assume the girls win the dance competition, family harmony is achieved, and a cure for Covid is discovered...

So that’s ok then...

I noticed the audience was booing in the clip. Lots of women shaking their heads and looking uneasy/disapproving. So I guess there's more to the context of this. But still, it made me really uneasy.

I noticed that along with the reaction of one security guard to the other security guard- the clip ends with him saying "are you serious?" in a tone that suggests his next words are going to be "they're little girls."

For those you who have watched it how are the reactions of disapproving adults treated. Eg are they portrayed as "unreasonable/mean" which the girls overcome and everyone comes round.

Also the thread with the clips linked further up describes other scenes and there is also parental guidance with disturbing descriptions. Are these accurate?

I watched a lot of french films with DS when he was studying french - so all 12s.

Yes, they were definitely more ‘sexy’ than our 12s - so La Famile Belier opens with a child hearing the loud sex of their parents, and later on a teen gets a horrible allergic reaction from a condom (so themes rather than actual onscreen actions). A really nice film by the way (was in tears at the end).

We spent a lot of time in France as kids and yes the culture is more ‘open’ with regards to sex.

But this is something else, it really is. I’ve never seen children so... exploited, sexualised...? This is supposedly mainstream not... ‘under the counter’ and we are supposed to give it a pass because if the background of the person who made it?

Those poor actors - can you imagine being the child getting a gig acting in a dance film (I assume they are dance and drama school kids).

You don’t see the end results and maybe those kids danced for 100s of hours filming it. Then you see yourself in the big screen gyrating and copying moves from ‘adult entertainment’ - especially as they grow up a bit - pretty much exploited. I imaging they are all pretty young (under 16)? Would they take their grannies to see the film? Mine would have had a fit and my grandpa would be looking to find the director...

I don't like identity politics, but if the director had been a straight white British man, the film wouldn't have made it passed the initial controversy

Quite right too.

oh I dont know...

Oh dear! This really does sound as awful as others suspected.

I was going to watch it and judge for myself but it seems that there is a consensus amongst feminists and concerned mothers that this film is seriously missing the mark. I am now thinking it might be more than I can stomach.

The impact of social media on ever younger children is imo a serious matter on which I would love to see some research and action to promote child wellbeing. I sometimes wish we had started with an age limit of 18 on all social media platforms to protect child mental health and healthy child development, physical as well as emotional and psychological.

From what others are saying it sounds like this film is liberal feminism applied to children now, being a sex object is empowering, you’re never to young to begin learning the moves and wearing the clothes that appeal to men.

Basically, being sexually attractive to men should be your aim in life and if you can please men and gain their attention then you have succeeded.

It makes me think of the girls in Jane Austen novels who had to put all their efforts into attracting a husband, getting the right man was their goal from girlhood. Now with liberal feminism it isn’t just one man you have to please but as many men as possible. Why? Why is there so much value on male attention and approval? In the modern world, unlike the days of Jane Austen we can earn our own living and own our own property. We don’t actually need to impress men at all.

The answer I suppose is that girls don’t even know that what they are doing is sexually appealing to adult men. They just copy older girls and pop stars and as culture generally becomes more pornified and porn is no longer kept private and for adults only copying their elders means copying that porn culture. It is so pervasive now.

Then when girls begin to get likes and positive comments from men and boys online they learn that being sexualised is what is valued by society and worse still is what they are valued for. It is heartbreaking.

I subscribe to Blaire White's YouTube channel. Here is her take on it. I agree with every word.

From what others are saying it sounds like this film is liberal feminism applied to children now, being a sex object is empowering, you’re never to young to begin learning the moves and wearing the clothes that appeal to men

It started, according to the director, as supposedly being some sort of critique of the sexualisation of children. Blaire White commented that that makes as much sense as making a film against animal abuse and then abusing animals.

Blaire White commented that that makes as much sense as making a film against animal abuse and then abusing animals.

I haven’t seen the video, but weirdly enough that was the analogy that sprung to mind with me. It’s a bit like making a film critiquing dog-fighting while staging and filming actual dog-fights.

It sometimes seems to me that this sort of ‘own goal’ is a very common error with ‘critique’ storylines.