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Have not seen the movie, and honestly I think the debate going on here right now is actually something the director wanted to invite, so I hope I'm not throwing too big a wrench in the discussion when I bring up this point. One of the big issues about the controversy -- not the film itself but the controversy -- is the conspiracy theory, culture war lens its being viewed under. For example, the critics in the OP who defended the film have been receiving massive harassment (including by-name attacks in Breitbart) as defending pedophilia and being categorized as part of a liberal intelligentsia that wants children to be sold into sex slavery. These are bad faith attacks made by people with no interest in the nuanced issues of depiction versus endorsement and the sexualization of children in Western society, but rather as a political cudgel with a tunnel-vision view of the world as being controlled by baby-eating cabals. So much of this uproar has been astroturfed to fit into a delirious, reality-defying worldview bent on depicting anyone left of Donald Trump as literally subhuman monsters. The film is almost immaterial as these people are wholly uninterested in it or the questions it is posing, only in what political expedience the film as a cultural object provides. What's interesting is there was generally an equal outrage from left and right when the Netflix poster dropped. However, most left-wing sources, once they found out what the film actually was, backed down and recognized this was just a massive fuckup in marketing by Netflix. Whereas the right gives zero shits and has honed in entirely on "Cuties is a pedo film for pedos made by pedos and anyone who suggests it may be nuanced or about something is also a pedo." And I think that's tragic in a way, because Doucouré's message is being lost and the debate it's inspired is not being had on level ground. At the same time, I only bring this up in here because I think there's still -- even in this environment talking about the film on its own merits or dismerits -- a reactionary impulse. The idea that we just shouldn't allow children to act in films is kind of patently absurd merely on the grounds of what restrictions are we applying to art? It's a nonsensical, moral panic Save The Children kneejerk response when these issues crop up. So, if I'm reading this right, the argument is we just shouldn't have any kids movies or movies about children because there's some sort of ill-defined, inherent exploitation to have a child work on a film set? A Wrinkle in Time, Stand by Me, Kramer vs. Kramer, Harry Potter etc etc etc -- all films of varying themes and genres about or featuring children just shouldn't be allowed to exist? Am I reading the argument correctly? It reminds me of a comment I made a few months back in the CSPAM Epstein thread about how I was surprised that Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here hadn't seen a major revival given its themes of elite child trafficking, and someone replied to me about how the film itself was probably tainted under the dark, absolutist assumption that any film made featuring children was somehow a front or a portal to actual real world trafficking. There's no evidence that the set of You Were Never Really Here was in any way host to those types of crimes, or even that the children in the film were made aware of what the movie was actually about (much in the way that Stanley Kubrick protected young Danny Lloyd from knowing that The Shining was a horror movie), yet in this online discourse this fantastical thinking takes over where any depiction of a child is exploitation and it's only a small skip and a jump from there to imagining shadowy cabals and pizza basements. Anyway, I haven't seen Cuties. I don't know if I'm even all that interested in it beyond the unfortunate Qanon connection and how the film has been consumed by The Discourse. But people I trust have said the film is nuanced and provocative and Doucouré seems to be earnest in her intentions and her goal for the film was noble.
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Sep 14, 2020 19:53
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sexpig by night posted:yea tbh this is the biggest annoying thing to me. Like, I do accept that there's a non-minor amount of people 'upset' over the movie who aren't Q freaks trying to say the scary black lady wants to abduct your children for a sex cult, but I can't help but wonder where all these people were when there were plenty of movies where young boys did lewd and absurd things as a joke. Like, if the stance is 'having a child around anything sexual is inherently exploitative of that child's lack of consent' that's fine, but where was this ~discourse~ during fuckin, I dunno, Bad Grandpa when Knoxville was having a kid talk about his grandpa's droopy prosthetic balls or something for a joke? Why was 'no see it's funny because it's a kid' a more valid reason than this movie actually trying to tell a story? I get the sense is because the former makes your idiot brain laugh and the latter criticizes this practice, makes you feel uncomfortable and forces you to confront complex issues you would rather ignore. So it's easier to just get mad and say, 'No THEY'RE the ones at fault.'
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Sep 14, 2020 20:16
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They're here for the puzzle and the stories of underground lairs. Present them with the actual mundanities of real life abuse and they couldn't care less. See also: The Wayfair debacle.
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Sep 14, 2020 20:34
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The other film Cuties draws to mind is Little Miss Sunshine, which ends with a provocative dance performed by the family's young daughter that's played for a mix of laughs and discomfort but also iirc lacked as pointed a commentary as Cuties does (I haven't seen it since like 2007 fyi). And that movie was nominated for Best Picture!
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Sep 15, 2020 01:20
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