Netflix Cuties is Worse than We Feared
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Cuties, Netflix
Last month when Netflix released a poster, trailer, and description of Cuties, there was a firestorm of outrage. A movie about an 11-year-old rebelling against her family to join a twerking dance crew is obviously inappropriate. But critics and celebrities rushed to defend the film, like Disney star Tessa Thompson.
Netflix apologized for the artwork and changed the description, but they still planned to release the film. They even touted its win at the Sundance Film Festival.
Ironically, one of the co-founders of the Sundance Film Festival was convicted for sexual child abuse.
Now that clips of the film are going around, it’s clearly worse than we expected. I won’t share any of the clips I have seen, but it’s shocking and disturbing—near vomit-inducing. Any parent involved in sharing this film should be ashamed. Over 650 children audition for these roles. How many adults watched children twerk for hours until the casting was just right?
Twerking was only the beginning. There’s pelvic thrusting into the floor, crotch-grabbing, and the camera zooms in. In one scene, the girls are watching a video of other minors dancing, and a young girl exposes her breast. The main character even takes off her panties and posts a picture of her vagina online.
There is more, and the filmmakers should be ashamed. Netflix should be investigated. If the FBI found pictures and videos of this content on a man’s computer, they’d be put on a list, investigated, or arrested. Why is Netflix distributing this?
What do the Obamas and Ambassador Susan Rice think of this atrocity? Rice is on the Netflix board. I doubt they haven’t heard of this controversy.
Most shockingly, is the number of people willing to defend it. There’s a huge disconnect between the Rotten Tomatoes critic and audience score. Some critics are simply happy that “right-wingers” are triggered by child pornography, but why is protecting children and scolding pedophilia a one-sided issue?
Here’s a comment from a Vox reviewer.
Writer for The Telegraph.
Film Critic for The Washington Post
Defenders make the argument that Cuties is meant to shine a light on the sexual exploitation of children, but why would you do that by especially sexually exploiting children in such a monumental way? It’s not as though important and challenging content has been explored in movies before, but why go to such an extreme degree? Why did the director have to show a child’s breast and zoom in on their privates?
And are the defenders seriously concerned about the sexual exploitation of our society? When Cardi B’s “WAP” came out a few weeks ago, many rushed to defend it. It came under fire when Ben Shapiro read some of the lyrics on his podcast (prompting popular remixes with his narration). The egregious comments written to him and his staff were atrocious.
And while Cardi B may be a grown woman, a former Rap video director revealed a dirty secret: this music is geared toward kids. They know children listen to it and see it. They’re aware of the analytics. Is Cardi B responsible for bad parenting? No, but she’s responsible for what she adds to the culture. And not even the best parenting in the world can protect your child from everything.
But let’s take it back further to Jennifer Lopez’s Superbowl performance. This is supposed to be a family event, and she had crotch-shot dancing and a stripper pole. And, yes, it was a stripper pole. She had a movie, Hustlers, that she was promoting.
If the girls in Cuties were emulating over-sexualized culture, when are we going to outrage about the culture that creates and inspires this deviant nature? Probably never.
The truth is many of Cuties defenders find explicative sexual behavior for women to be empowering. And some of them believe the girls in Cuties are discovering such a power.
But they aren’t. This is harmful and perverse. Sex-trafficking is a problem around the world, and it’s surprisingly a large problem in the US. Over the past few weeks, story after story has been released of law enforcement finding victims across the country. The FBI recently caught 14 adults soliciting sex for minors during an online sting operation.
I wonder how many predators they could catch with Cuties.
To quote one of my favorite movies, “Take care of yourself. You and your body are going to be together a long time, be good to it.”