In the last couple of days, I’ve seen several Left-leaning sites defend the Netflix release of the Sundance award-winning film Cuties.
Defenders of Hollywood keep sending the message “don’t judge it until you see it.” (WaPo and the New Yorker said the same thing)
Apparently the controversy is from the Netflix description:
Additionally, Vulture reports, the description on the film’s Netflix page read at the time, “Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions.”
One dance routine has been posted online. I’m not linking it here.
The original reviewer was deleted but a screenshot was captured an posted online.
That is disgusting.
Now let me remind you that when Wonder Woman came out, the Left was up in arms that the costume Gal Gadot was wearing was overly sexual.
A costume, by the way, that covered more of Gal Gadot than the costumes these girls wore for their dance routine.
So I just want to see if I understand the situation.
A 32-year-old woman doing stunts in a mini skirt and corset is overly sexual, the director is a misogynist for the costume, and we are bad people if we go to see the movie…
But…
A group of 11-year-old girls simulating intercourse in spandex short-shorts and sports bras is art that you should see before you criticize it, and if you do criticize it you are a xenophobic, misogynist, racist knuckle-dragging reactionary because it is a French film made by a Senegalese Muslim woman.
From this, I might be inclined to believe that Hollywood press and critics are a bunch of pedophiles trying to normalize their perversion.
But I keep being told that is something in the realm of a 4Chan conspiracy theory.
I have heard the same thing from many on the right. If you have not seen the movie, I suggest you watch Ben Shapero’s review. I have no comment on the film as I have not even seen the trailers.
Ben is right leaning and presents a different point of view. As far as my opinion goes, I’m not going to watch the film.
Thanks for mentioning the Ben Shapiro interview. Way more detailed, nuanced, and fair than you’d expect from Ben Shapiro based on his “reputation”. He takes the time to acknowledge the directors intent and pose the correct question: did the director go too far to make her point?
I highly recommend everyone watch it.
For objectivity, in general, I like Ben Shapiro.
I saw Ben’s review. I also saw the clip in question.
The writer/director can make a point about the sexualization of children without showing it.
Jodi Foster had a body double when she played a 12 year old prostitute on Taxi Driver.
You don’t need to make a snuff film to show me murder is bad. And the little redemption at the end doesn’t make up for what was done.
Allegedly the director wants to bring attention to the sexualization of girls. She certainly seems quite successful in doing that one way or the other.
I wonder how many people are seeing this sort of dancing, with young girls performing, for the first time? Sadly it’s nothing new and has been something I’ve been complaining about to my wife for ages along with pageants etc. They are all at the very least creepy and at worst extremely exploitative to me, but they somehow always get a pass by our betters because of the art.
My wife brought this up when JonBenet went missing. When you looked at this little girl that was in beauty pageants dressing up to look like a woman, it was sort of sickening.
The sexualization of children is something that has been happening for a long time, with the current ability for children to video tape and share videos of themselves to “close friends” it is getting much more attention.
Most of the same people critical of this movie were critical of that case, Toddlers in Tiaras, and little girl beautify pageants in general. I am.
“Hollywood press and critics are a bunch of pedophiles trying to normalize their perversion.”
2 words: Harvey Weinstein
‘Nuff said.
A long, long time ago, when I still watched TV, there was an episode of Law and Order SVU involving some kind of pedophile ring. That’s not surprising, and would otherwise have been a fairly bland, easily forgettable episode.
What stuck with me was the ringleader’s monolog at the end. Paraphrasing, he essentially said “One day you’ll realize that sex with children is normal, and that the opposition to it is what’s abnormal. There are more of us than there are of you, and soon that will become clear.”
That was probably 15 years ago. At the time I thought it was a brilliant display of how delusional the guy was, but in the last 3-4 years I’ve been wondering of it wasn’t some sort of inside joke for Hollywood.
First of all, there is a big difference between young girls emulating some dance video, and a filmmaker choosing to focus on that. The problem with cuties is not that young girls will mimic what they see on the screen, it is that someone decided to turn that into a “celebration” of…. well, of pre-pubescent female anatomy.
Next point. I think one of the main reasons why Gal Gadot got as much crap as she did was her nationality and religion. Granted, her WW costume was a bit risque, but WW’s outfit was risque in the initial comic book series, in the TV series, etc… In other words, it was normal.
Additional point. When Wonder Woman came out, Hollywood was all about virtue signaling, body acceptance, putting POCs in roles traditionally filled by whites, etc…. It was Hollywood blasphemy to cast a good looking (Gal Gadot was the Israeli Miss Universe contestant, if I remember correctly) heterosexual white woman in a role that diversity required be cast to a minority.
A beautiful warrior princess from a small Mediterranean country played by a beauty queen who served in the army of a small Mediterranean country.
I don’t think another super hero has been played by an actor whose life so closely matched the roll since Robert Downey Jr. played the wealthy self-destructive alcohol Tony Stark.
On your additional point, I don’t see what the issue was. Gal Gadot is ethnically Israeli/Middle Eastern, a religious minority, and female.
Intersectionality theory objectively places her near the top of the “marginalized groups” matrix, only missing the LGBTQIAA++ check-box.
But subjectively, she’s Israeli and Jewish, and having served in IDF neutralizes her femininity.
It just shows that Hollywood and the intersectional Left (but I repeat myself) only care about certain minority groups, and don’t care at all about women (case in point, Harvey Weinstein’s DECADES-LONG career of depravity).