|
i don't really think that 11 year olds doing sexualized dancing on a film set is all that damaging to them. it's a disturbing thing to portray for sure, like a tween lighting off a whole string of racial insults and curse words because that's what they've been socialized into through like unsupervised multiplayer gaming voice chat. but this sort of seems like shooting the messenger to me, kids this age are exposed to all sorts of confusing messages about sex and sexuality all of the time, in real life. i don't know if the young performers doing this dance is any more damaging than the actual real world depiction of sexuality that these girls, and other girls like them, would be exposed to in their daily lives i think that a lot of the wider criticism around this film and how it is exploitative is a bit of projection, in that people are trying to displace the uncomfortable feelings created by this film by blaming the film's creators and distributors rather than blaming the societal problem the film is reacting to in the first place. this blame is also a super handy way to raise your media profile by voicing uncritical and misguided #savethechildren level nonsense, or sounding off about the corrupt sinful world. meanwhile completely removed from people slugging it out on twitter over who is most debased, kids are still browsing tiktok and watching highly sexual music videos and getting confused as poo poo about what the hell sex even is i wonder about the conservative critics who are disturbed by this film. talking about sex with kids is tough, and if you don't get there early enough then kids will turn to other sources of information like other kids, and the internet, and these are both horrible ways to learn about sex. but it's got to be a continual conversation, you can't just wait until the one day when you have The Talk and all secrets are revealed. i think we treat death the same way, in that hiding these heavy subjects from kids ultimately creates more confusion in the long run. for a lot of the folks who think that the topic is of kids trying to figure out sex is inherently disgusting, how do they prepare their children to deal with this themselves?
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 15:55
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 23:46 |
|
|
Starks posted:lmao yes? they have no agency they're 11 dude. That's why we assume they're too dumb and immature to vote, drive a car, smoke cigarettes, etc. i think you're confusing "agency" here for "consent". kids cannot legally consent to many things but they certainly have the agency to understand things like dancing, or even inappropriate sexy dancing if it were explained to them going on a tangent about the exploitation of child labor is a bit distinct from whether or not an 11 year old is able to process the idea of twerking and why kids shouldn't do it. or why doing so in the context of a performance would be damaging to a child actor i'd say that treating kids like simpletons is part of why this problem even exists. like if we don't discuss adult topics at a semi-adult level with kids then they're at risk of trying to find out about the topic themselves, and with the internet who knows what rabbit hole they'd fall into i think it's valid to say that this performance was exploitative, and that the exploitative nature of the scene was too much to support the argument in the film. but i don't think it's valid to say that these kids simply couldn't understand the performance and thus when they realize what they've done, they'll be scarred
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 17:46
|
|
|
Starks posted:No I don't think I am? Here's what google gives me: "Agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices". Children don't have that freedom for their own safety because their brains are literally not developed enough to understand the consequences of their own decisions. kids have the agency to dance. like there are kids this age dancing like this every day for their own amusement and the amusement of other kids. a critical theme of the movie is what happens when children use their agency to try to understand something which is both a highly visible part of the adult world and also very confusing because they are just on the cusp of being able to understand things like making yourself sexually attractive to others Starks posted:Do you think the children understand that they will end up on CP websites? kids end up on CP websites just existing in public. like this specific tweet seems to undercut your argument https://twitter.com/MaraWilson/status/1304885731916017664 i'm not saying that the dance scene was not exploitative. what i am saying is that if you're trying to stop perverts from sexualizing kids then we might as well just hide all the kids under a giant sheet or something until they're 18. the existence of perverts is not a sufficient reason to not tell this story about girls featuring girls. like saying things like "it is wrong for people to profit off the work of children" means that we may as well remove all representation of living children in media, which is not a great outcome really ultimately while the sexy dance scene is disturbing, it's something that really happens all of the time in real life. kids dance like this, maybe not in public on a stage, and certainly not as well choreographed, but they do this and many other things as they clumsily try to figure out a path towards adulthood as portrayed by the media surrounding us. it seems like we first have to assume the child actors were exploited before we can then criticize that exploitation, but i'm not really sure that the actual practice and performance of the dance sequence was sufficiently exploitative of the actors (as opposed to how it could have been alternatively shot to be less disturbing to the viewer)
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 18:34
|
|
|
Starks posted:I didn’t say it’s proof the movie is exploitation, my point was that there’s no way the children have the “agency” to understand these complicated feelings that child stars wrestle with well into adulthood, and that it’s not right to put them in this position. eh, i think there is merit to this argument even if i disagree with it. i think that if we end up removing kids from acting roles for their protection, we end up not telling stories that feature kids, and this may be more harmful overall i'm an old man but i remember kids in my middle school dancing in similarly adult and provocative ways. a much tamer and less stylized version but still, it was clear the kids i grew up with were consuming media intended to titillate adults. i think that child actors on a set, in the context of a performance, would be able to better understand what they were doing and would have sufficient support for the performance to not come back to haunt them - or if they are haunted, it will likely be in response to the controversy around the film now Franchescanado posted:Why not put the same effort into arresting/rehabiliting sexual deviants and making sure they can't harm children or make art that makes them victims. It just seems like a really backwards solution that ignores the actual problem. i think we all agree that this is where the greater emphasis should lie, it's just not something which has otherwise been within the scope of this thread and the film Starks is i think, emphasizing a very anti-exploitation of any kind stance towards children, and this is a noble attitude to have - i personally think it also locks kids out from participating in society which may be a net loss for that kid. as you say, being on stage in a performance can be enriching to a child. "no exploitation at all" is a fair argument though imo Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Sep 14, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 18:55
|
|
|
Starks posted:Personally I really don't think you need to go as far as banning any depiction. Just no children working in movies. Like I said, the use of child actors is already an exception to child labour laws; all we need to do is take that exception anyway. If you're too young to work at the GAP then you're too young to be in a movie, it's that simple. there's a lot of other exceptions to child labor laws, iirc at least in hollywood there's some pretty stout restrictions around working with kids, how long they can be on set, special considerations you need to give to child actors like on-set tutors, how many adults need to have immediate and constant supervision of the child on set, etc. meanwhile in the united states children as young as 12 can perform agricultural labor with little oversight, involving stuff like spraying pesticide and cleaning out grain bins, which produces some number of fatalities yearly i don't mean to say that your concern about child labor and exploitation is misplaced, but relatively that a well run set may be a positive experience for a child and not entirely just a one sided transactional theft of the child's labor. like nobody wants to work at the GAP but plenty of people want to act in plays and movies because it's fun e: i'll also stop talking now because we're getting on the track of child labor in general, but i think that like sexuality, work is also a vital part of the adult world that kids need to be transitioned into in a healthy and supportive way. being in movies is a lot more fun of a job than, say, caring for livestock Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Sep 14, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 19:14
|
|
|
Franchescanado posted:Here's another weird wrinkle: i believe there's a gendered component here where boys sexuality is often treated as a charming joke whereas girls sexuality is almost seen as dangerous and corrosive. and there's not a lot of implied threats about dads with shotguns threatening to shoot their cishet sons female dates for prom
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 19:28
|
|
|
to be fair, there's not a lot of movies with boys dancing around in tight shorts as opposed to expressing their posturing sexuality by like smoking cigs in the woods and bragging about how breasts feel just like bags of sand part of the controversy is the portrayal of girls cringingly trying to reach for a sense of empowerment by dancing like fully matured adults. the difference is whether this image is more tragic and uncomfortable than it is pervert bait. using any depiction of girls acting like grown women in a sexualized context is going to touch a nerve, i won't watch the film again. but as stated above, i think that a large part of the outrage is people trying to deal with this engineered discomfort by finding someone to blame
|
|
#
¿
Sep 14, 2020 20:24
|
|
|
EA Sports posted:If a person feels uncomfortable about performing and being shot with a camera in a sexualized manner and a psychologist teaches them to cope with those feelings, it is textbook rationalization. If the entire world of child celebrity history doesn't have you automatically your entire argument hinges on this unchecked assumption that because the dancing makes other people uncomfortable, as it is intended to do, that it is then likely that one of the child actors in the movie would themselves also regard it as uncomfortable. it's a bit of a questionable thing to say about a child actor, who is probably the most aware person that the entire thing they're doing is a performance and therefore not real. it also depends on the idea that it's not the dancing itself which would make the actor uncomfortable, but rather people's reaction to the dancing. as to whether the dancing could be regretted later in life, i suppose? but at the same time, girls this age choose to act this way all the time, among peers. i doubt it is an inherent source of regret or guilt, to act like a dumb tween when you're a dumb tween. as to whether people's reaction to the dancing is a source of regret, then that's kind of the whole point of the movie. women and girls get bombarded with all kinds of negative feedback just, like, walking down the street, and this can cause self-doubt and guilt like "ah, if i hadn't worn that shirt, that creepy man on the bus wouldn't have made a pass at me". like the idea that these kids will get shamed for being in a controversial movie, the burden there is more on the people getting wigged out and shaming these kids than it is for anything inherent in the film which, to my eye, is an exaggerated but grounded look into what it's like for kids to try to figure out sex and sexuality when left to their own resources you've got to layer on these other arguments like "well pushy stage parents exist, so we can assume that at least one of these girls was forced to do a dance she knew was wrong and she has bad feelings" and it's just a whole lot of leaping to conclusions to justify an emotionally based reaction to the frankly confrontational portrayal of these girls
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2020 15:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 23:46 |
|
|
Panic! At The Tesco posted:It's doing a huge disservice to hand wave away perfectly legitimate criticism from some people just because a bunch of far right nuts have latched onto this controversy. The whole world doesn't revolve around the American left vs right thing. at least i think we can agree that the controversy wouldn't be nearly as widespread and insane if it weren't for qanon. like this level of media attention would not be sustained alone by people expressing reasonable doubts about the wellbeing of the children on stage - by far, most of the criticism, and all of the baseless criticism, is when we skip past all the discussion of how to portray sexualization of children in a narrative and boil it down instead to corporate pedophile cults
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2020 21:48
|
|