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/

@TheRealMcKennaDonsTinfoilHat

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.

That's a great point. Janice Turner discusses the film in an article linked in another thread.

This is a very interesting review thread:

twitter.com/psa_sitch/status/1304596829712121858?s=21

TL;DR

As a critique of society’s sexualisation of young girls it is a failure:

1. None of the adults in the movie approve of or encourage this dance style, so no one is ‘sexualising’ the girls.

2. The protagonist is exposed to the dance style by accessing videos on a stolen phone. It’s not as if the imagery was ‘all around’ or that parents had inadvertently encouraged use of social media.

3. This is more a story about adolescent rebellion and poor understanding of adult themes by children. This could have been explored in any manner of ways not involving overt sexuality.

4. None of the motivations of the protagonist are explored in sufficient detail, in particular her ‘change of heart’ at the end.

From the trailer, it looked like Amy escaped her oppressive home life by learning to dance but that is not the message of the film at all. It doesn't show the dancing as something that sets her free but tells the story of a girl desperate to fit in and about the pressures girls face from social media.

It's about extremes, a strict Muslim upbringing where she sees her mum cry because her dad has taken on a second wife and where Amy undergoes some sort of exorcism like ritual to remove the evil spirits and the extreme of an 11-year-old twerking to win a dance competition.

The dance is actually a small part of the film but it is disturbing to watch. I saw a twitter video where some man was talking about finding the girls hot and that turned my stomach.

I've got mixed feelings about the film.

{{https://zora.medium.com/the-director-in-the-middle-of-the-cancelnetflix-backlash-speaks-out-90b58f5afc64 Here]] is an interview with the director which explains more.

I've just watched the Blaire White clip posted upthread. Did I misunderstand what she said about senate bill 145 in California stating that if you have 'consensual sex' with a minor, you won't go on the sex offenders register if the minor's age is within 10 YEARS of the older party?

10 years? So an 11 year old child being raped by a 20 year old is not considered worthy of entry onto the register? As Blaire says - who the hell are the people who are pushing for this to go through?

Bloody hell, it's worse than I thought out there and my view is that it is already bleak

I believe the latter applies only to 16/17 year olds who are not legal in California, but are in the UK

18 yo with 17 yo would be sex offenders register in California.

Sorry not correct it's 14+ and up to 10 years older.

Existing law said that for vaginal sex (MF) there was optional sex offending registration for age 14-17 at judges discretion

But for anal and oral sex the registration was mandatory

That has now been equalized

I thought Blaire White made an interesting point about this not being an issue of right wing and left wing politics and can we all agree, even if we don't agree on anything else, that the sexual exploitation of children is wrong?

Depressingly there are comments on a Times article about this film trying to make out that anyone criticising it is right wing/ fundamentalist/ illiberal/supporter of Mary Whitehouse etc, etc.

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.

I think TBF this happens sometimes. We see a criticism of some creative endeavour as being racist or sexist etc, but the people making the criticism seem unaware that the piece is itself critical. You see it in comedy quite a lot. A certain type of person takes what is shown totally at face value. Any depiction of a particular view the person thinks is bad is seen as a promotion, unless it is clearly and unambiguously signposted as BAD.

Then there are these other people who imagine that is what is going on in a situation like this. People are failing to see the writer/director is actually critical of child sexualisation. They don't understand that you can see that was the intent but argue the film still actually sexualises, at the ver least, the young actresses.

Then there are these other people who imagine that is what is going on in a situation like this. People are failing to see the writer/director is actually critical of child sexualisation. They don't understand that you can see that was the intent but argue the film still actually sexualises, at the ver least, the young actresses.

Yes, I think you’re right. The oh-so-sophisticated critics who are fawning all over this film think that anyone who dislikes it is incapable of seeing it as a critique. What they are failing to see is that the film itself, whatever its message, is exploitative of the young girls in a way that they are totally incapable of understanding or giving consent to.

This film could not legally have been filmed in the UK.That should tell you something.

I see Tulsi Gabbard has come out in criticism of the film and Netflix. I guess she is right-wing now.

The problem is that however well or badly the film maker was in attempting to illustrate the different pressures a young girl growing up in this hypersexualised world, is that if you have an awareness of how men will consume it, it becomes uncomfortable.

As someone said on a facebook thread I was reading youngy women who are say gymnasts or swimmers are often sexualised by men when from their perspective and those they are competing with, this is the last thing on their minds.

And Netflix has set the tone for how this film is now seen by their inappropriate poster.

Do we allow the male gaze to mean we censor ourselves? Isn't this going down the road of saying women are to blame for rape because of what they wear.

This is an interview with the woman who made the film

Expecting an adult to not exploit children, and create images of them carrying out extended eroticized dance scenes (rather than relying on brief flashes of the dance and a lot of implication, or, better yet, making an animated film in the first place) sounds like a pretty fair sort of "self-censorship" I think. There are a lot of ways for an artist to make a statement that don't rely on film clips of children performing a dance routine culminating in simulated masturbation gestures....which are now on the internet forever.

Making a feature length film is hugely expensive. I'd be interested to know how this was funded and if the director was the only one with creative input.

Rotten Tomatoes scores
Pro Critics score 90%
Audience score 3%

IMDB score 1/10

I agree with you CousinKrispy, there are ways of making the point using more sophisticated techniques of direction without being so explicit and graphic. Someone earlier in this thread mentioned the scenes being “shock value” and “click bait” and yes I do wonder about funding and creative input.

If there is genuine motivation to explore the issue then using such shocking, even abusive, scenes can end up derailing the entire project and distracting from the point. In fact that appears to be what has happened in this case.

There is a trend towards the explicit instead of the implied in film which frankly makes the work unwatchable in some cases and just seems so unnecessary in others. Perhaps it could even be argued that more art and skill is demonstrated in those films which show less “adult content” and leave more to the imagination and intelligence of the audience.

Rotten Tomatoes scores
Pro Critics score 90%
Audience score 3%

There is a massive disconnect between the average person, average YouTuber/Pop Culture commentator and the ‘professional’ critics. Very few YouTubers are anything other than extremely negative about this movie and that includes male and female, liberal, conservative and libertarian. The few videos praising the film have extremely negative like/dislike ratios. Again, this is not a political divide - I’m not seeing anyone other than professional critics liking the movie.

What is it that means they are unable to see what everyone else can?

[quote stumbledin]The problem is that however well or badly the film maker was in attempting to illustrate the different pressures a young girl growing up in this hypersexualised world, is that if you have an awareness of how men will consume it, it becomes uncomfortable.

As someone said on a facebook thread I was reading youngy women who are say gymnasts or swimmers are often sexualised by men when from their perspective and those they are competing with, this is the last thing on their minds.

And Netflix has set the tone for how this film is now seen by their inappropriate poster.

Do we allow the male gaze to mean we censor ourselves? Isn't this going down the road of saying women are to blame for rape because of what they wear.

This is an interview with the woman who made the film [/quote]
I do think to some extent we have to accept that what goes on in other people's minds is something we can't control. I've met people who didn't like taking their kids to the beach because they worry a pervert might think about them in an unsavoury way. Which might happen, but you and your child will never know. That kind of thinking ends up with women not showing their bodies at all where strange men can see them.

At the same time, we have a social taboo around sexualising children and minors for a good reason. But we aren't consistent about it, we do it in a variety of contexts while resolutely pretending we aren't, and that's a problem. In a way it's almost worse, because you are adding that sexualisation of the child to the taboo, and taboo is really heady stuff in terms of sexual provocation. It's like you've just created the most tempting cocktail possible and sat it in front of someone while saying drinking is immoral.

Not all forms of expression are necessarily right for all topics, even though it may be ok to explore the ideas. Text may be a better way to deal with a story that has disturbing material - I often find something that is compelling and thought provoking in writing is unwatchable or too disturbing to really think about carefully on film.

But it's also possible to address these topics on film without showing them directly, and I think there is something rather disingenuous going on when people imply that it isn't.

Isn't this going down the road of saying women are to blame for rape because of what they wear.

Just to address this more specifically, as an argument it's not the be all and end all people think. It is unequivically wrong to say if someone is wearing x, it means they agree to sex no matter what else they say.

But it is wrong to say that what someone wears, or says, or the larger environment where women are sexualised in the media or the music industry etc, doesn't create an environment where people (men, but also women themselves) think of and treat women as sex objects, with all the implications of that. That's not "blaming women for rape" it's saying that if you are part of creating a world where women are seen as sex objects, you will see the consequences of a world where women are sex objects. Even if it's done from a place of naiveté, or for your own pleasure, or whatever.

Interesting thread here, by someone who's watched it. twitter.com/ebruenig/status/1304451502472298498?s=19 She also doesn't want the discussion to be right-left, and ringingly calls that framing a "bullshit partisan slapfight".

Glosswitch is insightful as always

medium.com/@glosswatch/young-girl-goes-for-it-23fd107ff63b

And Netflix has set the tone for how this film is now seen by their inappropriate poster

Actually Netflix seem to have exactly caught the tone in that poster, given the comments made by Elizabeth Bruenig (twitter thread posted a couple of posts above) and Blaire White, both of whom have watched the film.

I am not a huge fan of Glosswitch's but she is spot on here.

What really pisses me off about those defending the pornified scenes in Cuties is the intellectual snobbery, the way in which it’s suggested that those who raise concerns about child safeguarding are just incapable of grappling with the complex socio-cultural themes of the oeuvre

This thread now has reports from 3 very different people who have actually seen the film, all coming to the same conclusion. I don't know who Elizabeth Bruenig is but White and Glosswitch are both intelligent and media savvy and are not shrinking Mary Whitehouse supporters. I'm happy to take their word on this.

I saw it with a friend last night, I would say Glosswitch's review is almost exactly my response as well.

One thing that made me feel really concerned was how little I was truly shocked by the film. I can't stand the constant objectification of teenage and adult women throughout media, pop videos are largely unwatchable because of this content. So seeing girls do the same thing was a bit "so what", because if they were just a few years older I become a prudish-Mary-whitehouse if I still don't approve.

Thank you for the link KindergardenCentre, an excellent and sobering article by Glosswitch.

I have watched the film and totally agree with everything Glosswitch wrote in that article. Expressed exactly how I felt about the film.

Mary Whitehouse was the primary campaigned against PIE when they were being accepted by many others.

It is because of her campaigning that the Protection of Children Act exists.

Despite her having also taken some controversial stances, she accomplished a huge amount in fighting against paedophilia.