The Cuties Controversy

My issue is not the message. I just can’t believe that the little girls who were in the movie weren’t harmed in some way, no matter how many protections were in place. They’re not old enough to consent with full understanding. They still had to do sensual things with their little bodies, they still had to have to understand adult things, and their little bodies WILL be lusted at by people who watch the film for the wrong reasons. And there’s just no way to know if there will be psychological or emotional impact on the actresses until the damage has been done already.

To me, the message isn’t worth the risk to the girls in the film.

Now if they’d used adults who looked like adolescents, or they’d done a documentary or something else, the conversation would be different for me.

SO wondered why there wasn't any outrage directed at Toddlers & Tiaras, Dance Moms, and similar shows.

The child actors are just that- actors. Damn good ones, too. I think it is vastly different to be playing a role than to be dancing like those “single ladies” girls, in terms of harm.

Child actors in certain roles has been an ongoing controversy I’m not sure I have the answer for. But they are actors, acting, and to me that makes a huge difference.

Don’t you think pervs will jack off to images of kids wherever they can find them? Should we ban minors from appearing onscreen in any form or fashion?

I haven’t seen this film and I don’t plan to, but my first thought when Ted Cruz posted about it was that he needs to look a lot harder at the dance and cheer culture for little girls in his own state. One of the reasons my oldest didn’t go into the competitive team (besides the outrageous cost) was my discomfort with the outfits and highly sexualized moves that coaches say are required to win.

Nobody currently trying to virtue signal by boycotting Netflix - ie, a network that features a lot of liberal talk show hosts and comedians - seems too worked up about something that’s been going on under their noses for decades.

themighty.com/2020/09/sexual-abuse-survivor-review-of-cuties/link

I read this article last night and it gave more information, like that there was a psychologist on hand for the girls. (I have not watched the film.)

"Before I weigh in on the film itself, I’d like to mention that aside from being a survivor of sexual abuse and fierce advocate for body safety and age appropriate sexual education, I am also a survivor of cultural objectification of women by a highly patriarchal Hungarian family of women. Additionally, I was a competitive dancer for most of my teens and early 20s, I have a bachelors degree in French and I did my semester abroad in Paris so I tend to have a slight bias toward French film and media. As such, here is my take on the film and controversy.

The film itself is a thought-provoking piece that at its heart delves into the dangers of social media to children. But it’s much more than that. The film deals with everything from bullying to religious and cultural patriarchy to the difficulties of discovering ones femininity and power in a world where we seldom have healthy or meaningful conversations about what it means to be a woman. I found myself riveted by the acting, the story and the message even if at times it was downright uncomfortable to watch.

From the beginning to the end, the one through line I found to be most disturbing was the utter lack of parental supervision in the lives of these girls. If there is one thing I feel the movie highlights most importantly, it is that children can not discern right from wrong when it comes to social media. All they see is what is popular, and as we all know, being “liked” is so important to teens that they will often do anything to feel like they belong. If parents are uninvolved or unaware of what their children are doing on their phones, there is no safety net in place to keep these kids from acting out of their impulsive need to be accepted.

Another theme that evolves throughout the film is the degree to which Amy, the lead girl, is feeling trapped between two no-win situations. On the one hand, her home environment is a polygamous Muslim family where once a girl gets her period she is considered to be an adult and told by her aunt that at her age she was married and having children. (Since when are 11 year olds mature enough to have children and husbands?) Yet at school, if she wants to fit in, she feels like she has to dress and act in a more grown up, hyper sexualized way, even going as far as posting a photo of her private parts on social media because the school kids teased her for her girlie underwear. The abused little girl inside of me who felt as though she was being objectified and primed to be an eligible “sexy” wife for a future husband fully resonated with this child, and it was quite heart wrenching to watch.

But let’s get to the heart of the debate surrounding this film — the dancing. Many believe that by having these girls dance in the way they do, these girls are being exploited and therefore the point of the movie is invalidated. Is the dancing far too mature and vulgar for 11-year-old girls? Yes. Is it hard to watch? Absolutely. But… I don’t believe the story would work without the girls actually learning the routine and performing it to a horrified audience (and this particular plot line is based on the lived experience of the director, which is where the idea for the film emerged). Witnessing the awkward evolution of the girls’ dance routine based upon a viral video they see on social media is vital to the story.

I can tell you from personal experience that what they do in their dance routine is not all that shocking when compared with anything I’ve seen on reality TV dance shows or at high school half time shows. This type of dance has become far too normalized — and I believe that is exactly the point the movie is making by shocking the viewer with the movement coming from such young bodies. These children have no idea what the movement means. They aren’t asking to be abused, used or objectified. They just want to win. If a responsible adult had been present to guide them, the routine could have been tempered into something less blatant and more age appropriate, which again comes back to the overarching message of the movie, children cannot exist in a vacuum, they need competent and involved caregivers.

And one final point I’d like to make are about the concerns of these actresses being exploited. As much as we don’t want to believe it, girls this age are sometimes already involved in things like sexting and posting hyper sexualized videos of themselves on social media platforms without the supervision of an adult. In this case, these actresses were not only supervised, but were engaging in the creation of a meaningful dialogue about why this behavior is unacceptable and dangerous. Additionally, the director hired a psychologist to be on the set with the girls to make sure that they were being cared for and had the support they needed. That is not exploitative but rather instructive. And in the grand scheme of things, these young women have been given an opportunity to define for themselves why the exploitation of girls and women is problematic. They have in effect taken back the power and the narrative for themselves of what it means to be feminine.

Should you watch? I’d issue a strong trigger warning because it is difficult to watch and potentially activating. But, if you are interested in seeing something thought provoking I’d highly recommend it. It is unsuitable for younger audiences and it should be viewed through a social justice lens."

My question is, were you equally outraged during The Exorcist or Taxi Driver? Pretty Baby, Blue Lagoon, or Leon:The Professional? What about Lolita, Kickass, or Thirteen? Cuties and Thirteen, at least, had thought provoking storylines.

It's not a documentary.  Maybe loosely based on real life but it's fiction.

I haven't watched it, and I don't weigh in on things I haven't witnessed with my own eyes. But here's the filmmaker's editorial in the WaPo today:

link

Maïmouna Doucouré is a director and writer.

I was at a community event in Paris a few years ago when a group of young girls came on the stage dressed and dancing in a very risque way. They were only 11 years old, and their performance was shocking. Curious to understand what was happening on that platform, I spent the next year and a half interviewing more than a hundred 10- and 11-year-old girls across the city.

The result was my movie "Mignonnes," or "Cuties" in English. I wanted to make a film in the hope of starting a conversation about the sexualization of children. The movie has certainly started a debate, though not the one that I intended.

Puberty is such a confusing time. You are still a child, with all that wonderful naivete and innocence, but your body is changing, and you're self-conscious and curious about its impact on others all at the same time.

The stories that the girls I spoke to shared with me were remarkably similar. They saw that the sexier a woman is on Instagram or TikTok, the more likes she gets. They tried to imitate that sexuality in the belief that it would make them more popular. Spend an hour on social media and you'll see preteens — often in makeup — pouting their lips and strutting their stuff as if they were grown women. The problem, of course, is that they are not women, and they don't realize what they are doing. They construct their self-esteem based on social media likes and the number of followers they have.

To see these youngsters put so much pressure on themselves so early was heartbreaking. Their insights and experiences with social media informed "Cuties."

The main character in the film is an 11-year-old girl called Amy whose family, like mine, came from Senegal and lives in Paris. Frustrated by her mother's failure to take control of her own life, Amy decides to seek freedom by joining a clique of girls at school who are preparing to enter a local dance contest and design increasingly risque routines copying what they've seen on their phones. The girls don't have the maturity, however, to realize what their gestures and dance moves look like to the audience. It is only in seeing the shock on parents' faces in the audience, and at the same time thinking of what her mother is going through, that Amy realizes that these dance routines bring no freedom at all. She chooses her own path, balancing her family's traditional roots and the more liberal city in which she lives.

Some people have found certain scenes in my film uncomfortable to watch. But if one really listens to 11-year-old girls, their lives are uncomfortable.

We, as adults, have not given children the tools to grow up healthy in our society. I wanted to open people's eyes to what's truly happening in schools and on social media, forcing them to confront images of young girls made up, dressed up and dancing suggestively to imitate their favorite pop icon. I wanted adults to spend 96 minutes seeing the world through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl, as she lives 24 hours a day. These scenes can be hard to watch but are no less true as a result. Like most 11- and 12-year-olds, our actors in the film had already seen these types of dances and more. Despite this, during filming we were extremely mindful of their age. A trained counselor was present on set. There was no nudity except for a one-second shot in which the main characters see the exposed breast of an actress over 18 while watching a video of a dance routine on a grainy mobile screen. The project was even approved by the French government's child protection authorities.

This film is my own story. All my life, I have juggled two cultures: Senegalese and French. As a result, people often ask me about the oppression of women in more traditional societies. And I always ask: But isn't the objectification of women's bodies in Western Europe and the United States another kind of oppression? When girls feel so judged at such a young age, how much freedom will they ever truly have in life?

And that's why I made "Cuties": to start a debate about the sexualization of children in society today so that maybe — just maybe — politicians, artists, parents and educators could work together to make a change that will benefit children for generations to come. It's my sincerest hope that this conversation doesn't become so difficult that it too gets caught up in today's "cancel culture."

It was a hard show to watch.

I agree w/ those who said the biggest problem in those girls' lives was a lack of parental supervision.

Sadly, I think for every adult who watches the movie and says "maybe I should have a talk w/ my daughter's dance instructor about those costumes she ordered for the competition," there will be two adolescent girls who watch the movie w/out any parental supervision just to learn the dance moves the girls were performing.

you don't think those same 'pervs' don't find reruns of Toddlers in Tiaras, or dance competition videos posted by proud moms on YouTube to jack off to?!?   if you think this movie is the problem and not the culture depicted IN the movie, then you're stupid.


^^^  I should have just let the film's creator speak for herself.  I haven't seen the movie, but it sounds like a wonderfully done movie that's gotten its point across-- and that people are sticking their heads in the sand about its ACTUAL message.  Nothing like killing the messenger instead of going after the root cause of the message...    

This is a fictional movie.