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Netflix releasing Cuties, based on the story of a refugee who is torn between traditional values and internet culture; has very questionable marketing
- Thread starter Homura
- Start date
Well, yeah generalizations are bad. When I saw the TV-MA hashtag trending and people flipping out I was picturing something like...
Blame it on Rio is about Michael Cain having sex with his best friend's daughter. Think the actress was 16 or 17 and she goes fully nude. I forget how old they say she is, but there are some really... uncomfortable lines involving teething rings and falling in love with her at her Christening. I don't know if the French film is exactly the same or not. Imagine a film having this line today...
"My Father the Hero" is about an underage Katherine Heigle telling people her dad is her pimp and features her topless at 15.
The main theme of the movie is also bound to be controversial. I've already seen a take that called it Islamophobic and, ironically, another take that complained that it's pro-islam.
Most of the reactions are entirely based on that initial poster/synopsis though.
It wouldn't have even been on people's radars if that wasn't there. This would've been another arthouse tier film that got ignored by 99% of the Netflix userbase and probably wouldn't have picked up the critical mass it has.
Honestly, the trope of a girl's "coming of age" being intrinsically tied with sexuality and "loss of innocence" - usually at an UNCOMFORTABLY young age is one of the things i hate the most.
And yes, it's a SUPER present theme in French cinema since...as long as I can remember.
This one has the lovely addition of the "I must emancipate myself from my oppressive roots!" trope that I've seen in the few French films that feature minorities too. Ugh. Why can't we have movies/shows/novels about young girls being goofy kids and doing goofy kid shit? Why does there always have to be this awful "lolita" angle to it?? Why can't a French film feature a BIPOC as a regular person and not this tragic conflicted figure??
I'm so sick of all of this, man.
And yes, it's a SUPER present theme in French cinema since...as long as I can remember.
This one has the lovely addition of the "I must emancipate myself from my oppressive roots!" trope that I've seen in the few French films that feature minorities too. Ugh. Why can't we have movies/shows/novels about young girls being goofy kids and doing goofy kid shit? Why does there always have to be this awful "lolita" angle to it?? Why can't a French film feature a BIPOC as a regular person and not this tragic conflicted figure??
I'm so sick of all of this, man.
But I don't think the protagonist of this film is a super tragic figure based on what I read...it seems like she's a normal deal dealing with normal girl issues, which in this case is the increased maturation expected of young girls.
Besides how many films just feature people "hanging around"? That's a weird complaint.
Besides how many films just feature people "hanging around"? That's a weird complaint.
Yeeep, they could have marketed as an arthouse film made by a female black inmigrant calling it subservise and netflix increasing their effort to elevate certain voices, but they are all about that algorithm and the algorithm went "Market this to Amir0x"
It was already bad enough that I watcedh a kids movie with my daughter last week and a plot point involved a rival dancing team losing because one of thecompetitors had a giant raging boner, it was a full minute of a guy dancing with a boner and that was the joke.
Yeah, you really have to wonder about the thought process behind the team who thought that the proper marketing pitch for this movie would be to sex it up.
I can see why you feel that way because this is definitely something that happens and if it was another white director doing this then I'd be fully onboard but I feel it deserves much less criticism when the writer and director is the exact same heritage as the main character herself.
To be honest, I don't know enough about the film or the director to have a very valid opinion - though I really don't want to engage with the film more than I have to. But I do think that the director being Senegalese Muslim origin doesn't absolve her of potential criticism.
Idk - French twitter wants to defend the film and the director and claims Netflix did the film dirty. I still have reservations, but I concede that unless I watch the film and read interviews with the Director (which I don't really wanna do), I could stand corrected.
Either way - I just...don't really feel it's a message we NEED.
Considering the backlash to even the idea of young girls being influenced by the messages we're spammed with everyday, I feel like we do need stories like this to be told by women who feel comfortable doing so. It's saying something that a "coming of age" boy story wouldn't garner even 1% outrage
Im confused, are you saying pedophiles love this movie in particular or that the netflix poster attracts pedophiles?
You're right in that no-one should be immune to critique, I just felt that the criticism about being tired of BIPOC characters being represented in such a way when the creative behind it is a black French-Senegalese woman herself was a bit off base. It's the one kind of person I'd trust to write about a young French-Senagalese girl.
I haven't seen the film either but I've read a lot of interviews and some reviews from Sundance and I think there's definitely more to it than Netflix seemed to want to market. I think it's certainly worth seeing what outlets/people you trust have to say about the film when it does release wider, it might surprise you.
I don't think this is what film is meant for. That said, the biggest travesty to me is that looking into the origins of the film you learn its the creator making a film of their lived experience, and seeing so many suggest it shouldn't exist, isn't appropriate to be on film, or is unhelpful in some larger context is a big shame.
Fuck humanity in general...
It took me 3(!) fucking minutes of research to understand the context of the film, these people could not fucking spend that and instead threatened the life of a person trying to enlight people of the very issue they were speaking out against.
Yeah, that's where I'm at, and I'm really uncomfortable she's been essentially told to shut the fuck up as a combination of very questionable marketing and people jumping on it as a result.
I saw the French trailer a couple of weeks back and thought this wasn't my cup tea as I have no great love for coming of age stories, but good for her that she got to share her experience.
Response online to the movie is pretty disappointing. It was announced way back late December/early January where it was one of the more anticipated titles coming into Sundance. Reception has been largely positive as a well done look at the struggle of maturation of young girls in cultures that expect and demand one thing but reward another. Very much shows how out of sight out of mind people are. Something that calls attention to the mental toll that hyper-sexualization of young girls has, in particular to those that are pulled at home towards puritanical social conservatism and outside pulled towards sexualization, is causing more of an uproar than any of the actual underlying problems that the film is addressing. It takes minimal effort to look into this film and see that it's been in varying levels of release since January and then to see what those that have seen it have had to say. The talk of it before its January Sundance debut had me interested. It's been on a watchlist of mine since late December or early January. Also one thing I consider is that a movie I didn't watch last year but was popular was Good Boys. From quick glance on the internet they were likely 11-12 while filming and the movie looks like it plays up for laughs male sexual appetite in young boys. I don't see how that is preferable to something that wants to criticize the over sexualization of minors. When it's little boys exploring their sexuality media regularly portrays it as adorable or playful. Like no backlash. Perverted little boy character is a trope. Why is portrayal of little girl feeling pressure and discomfort from sexualization so taboo when it's critiques the sexualization compared to ones for boys that trvialize it or even celebrate it
The response I see on the internet does not make me think that something like this should not be made. The response on the internet makes me think something like this is more important since it looks like people would rather keep it out of sight and out of mind rather than actually trying to address the underlying problems that make this film relevant. The director made this film out of inspiration of her own life and what she saw in communities she walked through. Make something so vanilla that lacks truth to life will not build much of an emotional connection. It'll be 2-dimensional. It'll be arrogant and patronizing; the kind of shit younger people will say "OK Boomer" too. People will walk away feeling largely content as the issues they had were cleanly resolved or too minor to actually cause the discomfort that could spur action. It's how people dance. It's how people my age dance and younger than me dance. When I was in middle school during any school dance teachers had to patrol to have no grinding. Enforce no miniskirts/dresses. If I remember right they may have even tried to prevent any physical contact at all, of course they would fail. Just like abstinence would fail and kids are having sex at 12. Deny a pretty major part of their life experience and don't be surprised when kids don't take you seriously. Twerking is not new. It was not invented the past decade when the term was made mainstream. People have been doing it for decades. People getting mad that they know of something they wish they didn't know. Like when a guy get's all bent out of shape when they learn their girlfriend has had x amount of sexual partners in her life
Make a coming of age 90 minute movie where it's constantly avoiding what it wants to criticize to then end on a sweet note is how you make crappy feel good and content about something terrible media. Especially bad for something currently relevant and has been relevant for decades and seeing the response on the internet, will continue to be relevant because people only want to act when it's exposed to them but it's a wildcard on whether people will want to act against the underlying cultural incentives or if they'll just attack the messenger for interrupting their train of thought. In this case, the messenger is being attacked by people that are well intentioned but unproductive and hurts the discourse. Shout down the media that so far has actually brought way more attention to the topic than anti child beauty pageant online rhetoric has. Too bad attention has just led to friendly fire self-flagellation. Ultimately people don't actually care enough to de-incentivize sexualized culture but they care enough to keyboard warrior it every now and then. Done in a manner so lazily that they attack their own supporting media instead of anything that inspired the creation of the supporting media. If Netflix didn't bungle the marketing and place it in peoples view, people would not have watched, would continue to think the same concerns but do nothing. If they had used the French poster it would have just been glossed over not even looked at
edit: Also the TV-MA rating. I wouldn't be surprised if this rating is more on the pearl clutching side rather than any content being grotesque. Like how much content that actual 11 year old dance videos on social media would be TV-MA if it were to be broadcast. Difference is this has context built around the dance with a moral intent. Also I'm not sure what those that think this movie shouldn't exist should be done about sexualized dances. Most I can think of have some sense of sexualization to them besides line dancing, not just American country there's line dancing all around the world unrelated. Even types you'd think in ballroom dances I'd associate with courting, romance, with moves meant to accentuate the female figure. A lot of these dances, ballroom and figure skating types, are male+female and definitely doesn't feel like it has nothing to do with intimacy (feels like a euphemism to say intimacy)
The response I see on the internet does not make me think that something like this should not be made. The response on the internet makes me think something like this is more important since it looks like people would rather keep it out of sight and out of mind rather than actually trying to address the underlying problems that make this film relevant. The director made this film out of inspiration of her own life and what she saw in communities she walked through. Make something so vanilla that lacks truth to life will not build much of an emotional connection. It'll be 2-dimensional. It'll be arrogant and patronizing; the kind of shit younger people will say "OK Boomer" too. People will walk away feeling largely content as the issues they had were cleanly resolved or too minor to actually cause the discomfort that could spur action. It's how people dance. It's how people my age dance and younger than me dance. When I was in middle school during any school dance teachers had to patrol to have no grinding. Enforce no miniskirts/dresses. If I remember right they may have even tried to prevent any physical contact at all, of course they would fail. Just like abstinence would fail and kids are having sex at 12. Deny a pretty major part of their life experience and don't be surprised when kids don't take you seriously. Twerking is not new. It was not invented the past decade when the term was made mainstream. People have been doing it for decades. People getting mad that they know of something they wish they didn't know. Like when a guy get's all bent out of shape when they learn their girlfriend has had x amount of sexual partners in her life
Make a coming of age 90 minute movie where it's constantly avoiding what it wants to criticize to then end on a sweet note is how you make crappy feel good and content about something terrible media. Especially bad for something currently relevant and has been relevant for decades and seeing the response on the internet, will continue to be relevant because people only want to act when it's exposed to them but it's a wildcard on whether people will want to act against the underlying cultural incentives or if they'll just attack the messenger for interrupting their train of thought. In this case, the messenger is being attacked by people that are well intentioned but unproductive and hurts the discourse. Shout down the media that so far has actually brought way more attention to the topic than anti child beauty pageant online rhetoric has. Too bad attention has just led to friendly fire self-flagellation. Ultimately people don't actually care enough to de-incentivize sexualized culture but they care enough to keyboard warrior it every now and then. Done in a manner so lazily that they attack their own supporting media instead of anything that inspired the creation of the supporting media. If Netflix didn't bungle the marketing and place it in peoples view, people would not have watched, would continue to think the same concerns but do nothing. If they had used the French poster it would have just been glossed over not even looked at
edit: Also the TV-MA rating. I wouldn't be surprised if this rating is more on the pearl clutching side rather than any content being grotesque. Like how much content that actual 11 year old dance videos on social media would be TV-MA if it were to be broadcast. Difference is this has context built around the dance with a moral intent. Also I'm not sure what those that think this movie shouldn't exist should be done about sexualized dances. Most I can think of have some sense of sexualization to them besides line dancing, not just American country there's line dancing all around the world unrelated. Even types you'd think in ballroom dances I'd associate with courting, romance, with moves meant to accentuate the female figure. A lot of these dances, ballroom and figure skating types, are male+female and definitely doesn't feel like it has nothing to do with intimacy (feels like a euphemism to say intimacy)
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I think that we can all agree that twerking is not just another type of dance, right? I think it's obviously inherently sexual and, in principle, 11 year olds into that kind of dancing is really awkward to see. It's the same to me as with beauty pageants and stuff like that, I just don't think they're appropriate.
Having said that, it's the world we live in now where kids have total access to whatever is on the net and they'll take role models from whatever it's the latest fad. I've seen it with my step daughter although, with her she's always been drawn to Kpop stuff which is much milder.
Also, if this is based on a true story, the directors' experience, then I think it's definitely ok to make a movie about it and specially interesting to learn about the culture clash her religious conservative family experienced.
But that poster was just out of line, even if based on the movie's own footage. I'm glad Netflix removed it but they've done so much damage to the movie and it's director who's now receiving death threats... what a mess. And those child actresses now they'll probably be bullied at school too. Horrible stuff.
Having said that, it's the world we live in now where kids have total access to whatever is on the net and they'll take role models from whatever it's the latest fad. I've seen it with my step daughter although, with her she's always been drawn to Kpop stuff which is much milder.
Also, if this is based on a true story, the directors' experience, then I think it's definitely ok to make a movie about it and specially interesting to learn about the culture clash her religious conservative family experienced.
But that poster was just out of line, even if based on the movie's own footage. I'm glad Netflix removed it but they've done so much damage to the movie and it's director who's now receiving death threats... what a mess. And those child actresses now they'll probably be bullied at school too. Horrible stuff.
I would agree in principle, but Cardi B is an adult. Not the same thing. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying here.
Lol @ people bringing up Cardi B in here, as if grown ass women twerking is the same as asking 12 year old girls to do it on camera.
That's exactly the problem. Even if it wasn't the director's intent, Netflix's atrocious marketing (which they now probably think was "genius" because it got people talking) made it look this way on purpose to get more attention and people are acting like shitty, questionable marketing can't be called out. If none of us have seen the movie then we're clearly talking about this garbage trailer. This trailer made it look like they were more interested in sexualizing children for the reactions.
I don't agree with that, no. It's moving your body. Most dances are about moving your body in provocative ways and I don't think there's anything about twerking that makes it inherently worse than any other dance. It's like pole dancing. Yes, it can be sexual, but it doesn't need to be. As a society, we need to stop sexualizing the dance and the people that engage in it.
I'm not saying kids should be twerking, by the way. But kids WILL do it and our first response shouldn't be "that's too sexual" without any deeper introspection.
Warning that KPOP is not much milder. It's a swath of things from things most parents would be fine with to things they'd clutch pearls. It cycles where sometimes the zeitgeist is like cute girl next door to super sexy far more sexualized than just about any American pop music. It's still popular for the groups to eventually mark the change from cute concept to sexy concept by performing live the coming of age song. The idea and that it became tradition feels creepy to me but I can't speak for how young girls feel about it. Quick youtube found this video
The History Of Adult Ceremony (성인식) || The Pioneer of K-pop's Sexy Concept
A series where we look back on an idol’s or group’s career. As well as diving deep into K-Pop’s fan culture and see how it’s changed since the beginning. In ...
www.youtube.com
I pretty much agree with Pirateluigi. You can disapprove of how they dance but if you just keep saying that's bad but these are acceptable. You'll get no traction. At the very least they won't respect your opinion especially if they're dancing how they like and you're applying purpose to their acts that aren't their own. You'll have to police them and helicopter parent. Feels more of a guy problem than girl problem. Satanic panic, just because you dance provacatively doesn't mean you're looking to mate. Girls dancing like this often are having fun with no intent for anything sexual unto others. It's like the girls I've met that love going to gay bars and clubs to dance because they don't have to deal with guys trying to hit on them when all they want to do is dance, which may include twerking. Same with a lot of girls I knew that liked to rave. Plenty would go in a group of only girls just so they could dance among themselves but would always have to deal with guys that would want to grind on them and take them home or someplace therefore there always had to have a couple that stayed sober to police any creeps and make sure everyone made it home without a stranger. I now recall a girl telling me the only reason they like going to line dancing bars on occasion regardless of the music is because there's way less chance of being grinded on suddenly by a stranger. They want to dance but a lot of guys make dancing dangerous. Starting to feel like this is stretching into slut shaming when so much is made to be anger at the girls for dancing as so rather than those that take advantage of their dancing for pleasure
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I think it's fair to say for the majority who balk at this film, seem to think this. Frankly it's ridiculous. It is not inherently sexual unless you're stating the use of a person's body(Ass shaking is not gender specific), in this case their ass, can only ever be seen as sexual, and that's ridiculous. Twerking is not special with respects to dancing. There are MANY other forms of dancing that involves predominant usage of your ass across various cultures, in my experience Latin culture specifically it's such a fucking norm.
This is a very dismissive look at both dancing and in this instance women's usage of their bodies, even if they are in this case young girls.
People have complained about every popular dance being "too sexual" for at least the last 200 years.
This is uncomfortable to confront for white people, but the idea that twerking is inherently sexual has some deep racist roots revolving around the perception of the Black female body.
Yep. Grew up in a Pacific Islander household and if you were to tell me some of the dances (which involves ALOT of hip shaking) I've seen were sexual I would've been confused as hell. There should be a preface as to what culture and what part of the world posters grew up in if they see all the dances (how typical it's always the dances performed by brown people) as sexual.
I'm assuming the poster means young people will watch the video and emulate the moves and sing the lyrics. I haven't seen the movie, but influence seems to be a big part of it. And an 11 year old dancing "adult" doesn't exactly understand what that means--they are just dance moves.
If I saw several young boys mimic a Backstreet Boys dance and do some hip thrusts, I'd think nothing of it. Just kids dancing.
I laughed a lot at this post, but I really wasn't expecting this thread to take a swerve into an earnest "actually twerking isn't sexual" argument.
It can be sexual and it can be fun and it can be sexual and fun. This is what the pearl clutchers can't understand. Twerking looks sexual to me but it is not inherantly an invitation for sexual acts or even a suggestion that sexual acts are wanted. It can be done just to have fun. So when you just go to a little kid and say that dance is bad, it's sexual stop doing that. You're speaking from an entirely different knowledge base that they don't understand. The concern should be peodphiles. The dance should not be the issue, it's pedophiles that take advantage of the dancing. Just going to women twerking and saying, that's sexual stop it, isn't going get great reception.
TV-MA just means the rating board thought it had content they found was only suitable for mature audiences which includes themes. Themes dealing with sexuality regularly push rating even if it's pretty innocuous. This is a video game forum. Plenty of video games get rated M for weak reasons. Change the color of blood to get a T rating. Films limit the amount of F words to avoid an R rating. The ratings are weak indicators of what the content is and they vary hard by region
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Also how black women and girls are looked at as older than they are by society, sexualizing them at a younger age.
the movie is out in France. it has been at film festivals. i translated part of an interview that included the director sharing positive reactions from parents a page or two ago. everything was fine before the anglosphere was introduced to it the way the op introduced it here.
edit: to be clear i think the actual problem is more likely just racism and misogyny, but the us marketing gave those people cover.
Then at this point go forth and explain why a person would Twerk in the first place. What's the goal of doing the dance.
The sexualization of twerking is an interesting topic, because there's many things to consider.
One of the dances it's compared to, whining, isn't considered (as far as I'm aware) overtly sexual. And that's a dance that's Black af, and still has strong ties to its Caribbean roots. But then you have to consider that maybe due to whining having a cultural anchor in the Caribbean, it wasn't able to be warped by White people into a 'deviant' sexual dance form.
I believe due to twerking being a Black American creation, divorced from it's true West African roots, it was ripe for the picking for White America to commodify, pervert, and discard it, like it does with everything else in Black culture.
So I don't blame people for considering twerking inherently sexual. I actually blame that on White America's perpetual twisting of it within pop-culture. But it's sadly become a reality.
One of the dances it's compared to, whining, isn't considered (as far as I'm aware) overtly sexual. And that's a dance that's Black af, and still has strong ties to its Caribbean roots. But then you have to consider that maybe due to whining having a cultural anchor in the Caribbean, it wasn't able to be warped by White people into a 'deviant' sexual dance form.
I believe due to twerking being a Black American creation, divorced from it's true West African roots, it was ripe for the picking for White America to commodify, pervert, and discard it, like it does with everything else in Black culture.
So I don't blame people for considering twerking inherently sexual. I actually blame that on White America's perpetual twisting of it within pop-culture. But it's sadly become a reality.