Netflix's Cuties

[Melifeather]

Defining something as pornographic or exploitive requires intent. If a father carries around a picture of his naked toddler, is that child pornography? If a man masturbates looking at underwear models does that make the newspaper flyer pornography? The dance sequences in the movie are intended to make the viewer very uncomfortable. It just wouldn't be as powerful if the depictions were off screen. It would remain this vague idea of something abstract that wouldn't require the viewer to think anything further about it.

[Rippounet]

37 minutes ago, Melifeather said:

Defining something as pornographic or exploitive requires intent.

That’s actually the crux of the debate here, and it has always been, in cases of "obscenity."

Do not be too quick to state a rule that might end up being far more problematic than you think. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 9/19/2020 at 1:59 AM, Ran said:

It's not odd at all. Depiction is not endorsement. Depiction in this case exists to create discomfort that underscores the message of the film. 

A depiction of something doesn't automatically endorsement of it. True. 

Having a serial killer in a movie doesn't automatically mean the movie is saying murder is cool.

But the depiction of girls twerking in really short clothing, and lingering, and quite unnecessary shots of their butts is defeating the message of how problematic it is for media and society  in general to push little  girls to do this stuff.

In my opinion the story should have been animated. It could/would make people uncomfortable yet not undercut its message. She 

On 9/19/2020 at 8:09 AM, Melifeather said:

Defining something as pornographic or exploitive requires intent. If a father carries around a picture of his naked toddler, is that child pornography? If a man masturbates looking at underwear models does that make the newspaper flyer pornography? The dance sequences in the movie are intended to make the viewer very uncomfortable. It just wouldn't be as powerful if the depictions were off screen. It would remain this vague idea of something abstract that wouldn't require the viewer to think anything further about it.

Not exactly. I mean if a father carried around a picture of him sucking on his toddler’s prick I would say  that’s pornographic even if he says he wasn’t trying to arouse himself or anyone.

 

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

But the depiction of girls twerking in really short clothing, and lingering, and quite unnecessary shots of their butts is defeating the message of how problematic it is for media and society  in general to push little  girls to do this stuff.

No, it strengthens the message because it makes you confront and think about it. That is the exact intention behind what the director and performers are doing in the film. 

4 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

In my opinion the story should have been animated. It could/would make people uncomfortable yet not undercut its message.

No one would care about it if it were animated. Get real. 

The film is fine. The idiots yammering on claiming it's child pornography or made for pedophiles are, well, idiots.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

No, it strengthens the message because it makes you confront and think about it. That is the exact intention behind what the director and performers are doing in the film. 

No it doesn’t.

It simply into the same practices of media they’re supposed to be critiquing.

If a movie how it was bad to kill puppies, and on screen, real puppies were actually murdered to help make the film the idea of commentary wouldn’t have made what had been done better. Even if during the movie we have shots of people remarking on how bad puppy-murder is.

13 minutes ago, Ran said:

No one would care about it if it were animated. Get real. 

The film is fine. The idiots yammering on claiming it's child pornography or made for pedophiles are, well, idiots.

 

Eh. I disagree take Netflix’s series bigmouth which is literally about kids going through puberty. It’s graphic. Uncomfortable plenty times.

And it’s pretty positively received.

But not exploitive since it doesn’t have actual children what the characters are doing.

[Ran]

20 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

If a movie how it was bad to kill puppies, and on screen, real puppies were actually murdered to help make the film the idea of commentary wouldn’t have made what had been done better.

No children were harmed in making this film, thus you cannot make a comparison. Moreover, the intent of the work was not to do harm to them, and so again, there can be no comparison. The children, with the full knowledge and consent of guardians and whatever French and EU guideliens there are for the protection of young people in the film industry, participated in making a work of art that provided a way to make an incisive commentary.  A successful one, as far as that goes.

20 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

But not exploitive since it doesn’t have actual children what the characters are doing.

The children were not exploited, is the thing.

The film is fine. The children are fine. The message is fine. The world is a slightly better place because Cuties exists.

[Varysblackfyre321]

40 minutes ago, Ran said:

No children were harmed in making this film, thus you cannot make a comparison.

Yes I can. The actions themselves-the ones we see them-may be disgusting because it is doing sexually provocative things.

42 minutes ago, Ran said:

Moreover, the intent of the work was not to do harm to them, and so again, there can be no comparison. 

It was to make point on how pressuring such  behavior was harmful.

43 minutes ago, Ran said:

The children, with the full knowledge and consent of guardians and whatever French and EU guideliens there are for the protection of young people in the film industry, participated in making a work of art that provided a way to make an incisive commentary.

And? I mean you could say that about any media that overly sexualized depiction of underage girls. 

Which is a real problem.
 

46 minutes ago, Ran said:

The children were not exploited, is the thing.

Yes they are. Most of the actions the films do to make kids

47 minutes ago, Ran said:

The film is fine. The children are fine. The message is fine. The world is a slightly better place because Cuties exists.

It probably just gave fire to Qanon supporters who’d lack nuance in identifying the problem with the film. 

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

No, it strengthens the message because it makes you confront and think about it.

I'm not sure it's making people "think" that much tbh.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

No children were harmed in making this film, thus you cannot make a comparison.

You absolutely don't know that. You write this because it suits your narraitve, not because you know for certain.

It took more than 50 years for Sue Lyon to explain how Kubrick's Lolita had destroyed her (her words btw). It won't take as much for the actresses of Cuties, but directly or indirectly these kids will have been harmed, even if it takes them time to express this.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Moreover, the intent of the work was not to do harm to them, and so again, there can be no comparison.

Of course there can be. I have no idea why some people here are focusing on intent, as if the images themselves didn't matter.

Louis Malle's Pretty Baby wasn't intented to be pedo-erotic: Malle was an artist who could make brutal images. But that's exactly what the images are (I don't think anyone reasonable can deny that). And though Brooke Shields never regretted the movie itself (she always defended Malle), the controversy hurt her, she resented her mother's management of her career, and she clearly stated she wouldn't do the same with her daughter today.
Conversely, Luc Besson's The Professional was written as an apology of pedophilia. It was inspired by Besson's own relationship with his wife Maïwenn Le Besco, whom he met when she was 12, and who had his child at 16. The Professional though ends up being very neutral, even with the scenes that were censored in the US. I've read that the original script was much worse though, and Besson's intent was clearly disturbing.

Intent vs Depiction is a sticky problem when it comes to obscenity, obscenity itself being subjective, tied to forms of moral consensus. But you can't go too far in one firection or the other. You can't say intent isn't important, or -conversely- ignore reception whenver virtuous intent is claimed.

In the case of Cuties, there's no escaping the fact the movie does exactly what it purports to condemn. There are camera angles that go the extra mile to create something disturbing. The problem is, they obviously succeed.

[Ran]

55 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Of course there can be. I have no idea why some people here are focusing on intent, as if the images themselves didn't matter.

Because they "matter" only in the sense that people are afraid of pedophiles getting off on it. But they will get off on kids on the beach, they will get off on kids in the park, they will get off on whatever. We do not and should not live in a society that hides kids away out of paranoia, and we should certainly not live in a society that decides that paranoia trumps art and artistic commentary.

Does Cuties have artistic merit? If yes, then as far as I'm concerned everything else is misguided concern-trolling and not to be taken seriously.

[Melifeather]

6 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Not exactly. I mean if a father carried around a picture of him sucking on his toddler’s prick I would say  that’s pornographic even if he says he wasn’t trying to arouse himself or anyone.

This is ridiculous. The act of sucking a toddler’s prick is obviously morally and legally wrong even without a picture.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Because they "matter" only in the sense that people are afraid of pedophiles getting off on it.

I beg to differ. Beyond the conservative fake-outrage, the question is how valid/efficient criticizing something by showing/depicting it is.
Use any convoluted argument you want, showing what you want to condemn is at best a risky strategy, at worst inadvertently participating in normalisation.
Lolita ran into this very problem before. The book was meant as a rejection of pedophilia and a demonstration of the power of literature. However, Kubrick failed to show the narator's subjectivity in his movie, thus inadvertently condoning what Nabokov meant to condemn (in the book, the last chapters do not actually happen ; this alone changes the overall message quite a bit). To this day, many people are convinced Lolita is an apology of pedophilia and the term "lolita" is misused (her actual name was Dolores, i.e. pain).
The case of Cuties isn't that dissimilar. I had never seen 11-year olds twerk before, certainly not scantily dressed ones. While the message that such images are disturbing is indeed properly conveyed, the movie also represents something that many people had never even imagined, the consequences of which can not easily be foreseen. Therein lies the problem: to go the extra mile to create something that barely exists IRL effectively participates in pushing the boundaries of the norm regardless of intent. Just as Lolita normalised the idea of a consenting 12-year old, Cuties may normalise the idea of scantily-dressed twerking 11-year olds. You can't say this is mere "concern-trolling" if it's happened before.
In the greater picture, it is possible for the criticism to succeed and for the message to be counter-productive nonetheless.

As for the "artistic argument," it quickly finds its limits as well. While disturbing images can of course be used in art, this doesn't absolve said images from critical reception. Gaspar Noé's Irreversible comes to mind. While the movie is an artistic success (at least imho), the popular reception was rather bad. Audiences left theatres in disgust (especially women), and the movie was accused of "gratuitous violence." The fact that the movie was successful as an artistic creation doesn't mean that the critical reception should be dismissed. Both happened and people who were disgusted aren't "more wrong" than those who loved it (bearing in mind that those who loved it were generally disgusted as well)...

Anyway, I have no dog in this fight and will not die on this hill. I'm just wary about insisting too much on intent.
For years The Professional was one of my favorite movies btw.

[DaveSumm]

23 minutes ago, Melifeather said:

This is ridiculous. The act of sucking a toddler’s prick is obviously morally and legally wrong even without a picture.

I have the unpleasant task of informing you about the ultra orthodox Jewish practise of oral suction circumcision. It’s a thing, a legal thing.

I guess my issue is, no depiction isn’t endorsement, but depiction is depiction. In whatever small way the depiction of sexualised children is the problem that Cuties is trying to address, I just can’t see that joining in and doing that very thing is productive. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I had never seen 11-year olds twerk before, certainly not scantily dressed ones.

Skimming this thread this morning made me decide to watch the film, and I'm about half way through it while taking a break to make breakfast. 

I'm not sure if I've specifically seen 11 year olds twerk before, but is this really anything new other than what's en vogue at the time? 

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm not sure if I've specifically seen 11 year olds twerk before, but is this really anything new other than what's en vogue at the time? 

The movie was inspired by a real-life event that Doucouré attended, so kids do twerk in Parisian suburbs. However, I very much doubt the teenagers were as scantily dressed in reality as in the movie, or that their dancing was as good. Living in one of these Parisian suburbs myself (in the South instead of the North), I see far more of these young teenagers veiled than dressed suggestively (yes, even kids that young). The 6 year-old daughter of my sons's nanny has instructions from her father to avoid boys at school. I can't begin to imagine what reactions the scene in Cuties would cause in real life, but it would be swift and possibly violent.
What I believe is that Doucouré took something real and exaggerated it to the point of impossibility in order to make her point. We can call this "art" if we want (I admit the images serve their purpose), but the "artistic" choice she made entailed risks when it comes to reception. My guess is that she did it knowingly, hoping to create a controversy, at least in some places.
It would be wise to keep all this in mind as well.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@Rippounet, have you heard of Toddlers and Tiaras? 

[Rippounet]

Yes, I've seen a short documentary or report on this. 

[Melifeather]

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

I have the unpleasant task of informing you about the ultra orthodox Jewish practise of oral suction circumcision. It’s a thing, a legal thing.

I guess my issue is, no depiction isn’t endorsement, but depiction is depiction. In whatever small way the depiction of sexualised children is the problem that Cuties is trying to address, I just can’t see that joining in and doing that very thing is productive. 

That wasn’t the circumstance of his example, and I don’t imagine rabbi’s take photographs of the procedure.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

25 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Yes, I've seen a short documentary or report on this. 

It was a popular reality TV show here. Which is worse.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I had never seen 11-year olds twerk before, certainly not scantily dressed ones.

You've never been to New Orleans . . . .

Or anywhere in the South either, where young girls as majorettes, baton twirlers, cheerleaders, of every race and color, are highly encouraged by every community to do these sorts of public displays of whatever moves de jour is going.  Not to mention the child beauty pageants.  It's deep culture -- whether or not one thinks it should be, it just is.  These activities for children have drawn heavy criticism for decades.  It's made not an iota of difference.  The little girls practice and 'play' those cosmetic, costumes and displays in the ghettos and in the condos and the mansions, whether they are members of the teams or not.

 

[Rippounet]

39 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You've never been to New Orleans...

I'm assuming the movie was made for French audiences and only became international by chance.