Most people enjoy when movies, books, TV shows or songs cover subjects that are hard to talk about because these subjects are being brought to light and spreading awareness.
“3 Generations” discusses the family hardships that sometimes come with being a transgender teenager, “To Kill a Mockingbird” discusses racism, a “Full House” episode covers the topic of eating disorders and “Black Skinhead” by Kanye West discusses how old school racism is still present in today’s world.
However, what does it look like when an effort to spread awareness about a topic is executed poorly? To many, it looks like “Cuties,” a French film that was recently released on Netflix.
“Cuties” is described as a coming-of-age comedy drama. The plot of the film revolves around 11-year-old Amy wanting to escape her conservative Muslim family after seeing 11-year-old Angelica dancing provocatively in the laundry room of the apartment building they both live in. Angelica is part of a dance group known as the Cuties with three other 11-year-old girls: Jessica, Coumba and Yasmine. There are
several scenes in the film that show the girls dancing provocatively in suggestive outfits.
The creators of the film stated that the movie is intended to criticize the hyper-sexualization of pre-adolescent girls. However, after the film was released on Netflix on Sept. 9, #CancelNetflix was trending on Twitter. The hashtag was full of multiple users complaining about Netflix promoting child pornography, and even users cancelling their Netflix subscriptions.
“I have no words for the movie and I feel so uncomfortable with the movie all-in-all because of how they treat the children,” Stefani Cabusora, a freshman biology major, said.
“Of course I would,” Cabusora said when asked if she would cancel her Netflix subscription. “This movie is wrong and I don’t want children to think it’s okay.”
Freshman theatre education major Abigayle Vinson did not feel good about “Cuties” after watching some of the movie’s scenes.
“I feel disgusted and gross. All I could think about was my childhood and I was watching Disney Channel and playing with my friends,” Vinson said. “I wasn’t dancing sexually in front of groups of people in a perverted way.”
Vinson also said she believes the filmmakers “tried to make it look normal but anyone in their right state of mind would say this is not normal.”
“I use my friend’s Netflix, but I would be willing to delete it from my phone.,” Vinson said when asked if her feelings against “Cuties” would lead her to cancel her Netflix subscription.
“There are other streaming apps like Disney+ and Hulu that are not promoting disgusting things like child porn.”
Paul Smith, a freshman musical theatre major, had a similar negative reaction after watching scenes from the movie.
“I don’t feel great about the movie. I feel awkward watching it,” Smith said. “This reminds me of a satire, which takes a problem and pushes it to the max. This isn’t funny and putting this stuff on the
internet is wrong.”
“I would be willing to cancel my subscription because of this,” Smith said.
Janny Salguero, a freshman theatre education major, interpreted the meaning of the movie as “immigrants having to do this because they live in poverty,” but he also said “they could have done this with college students instead of little girls.”
“The shots from the lower body up; that’s called the male gaze and they do that in movies to sexualize women,” Salguero said. “Doing it to children is even worse.”
Smith also said that “the way it was shot and the angles were explicitly showing everything child pornography is.”
Some Twitter and Facebook users have pointed out that “Cuties” is not the only thing that showselements of child pornography.
One Facebook user pointed out that 16-year-old Charli D’Amelio, a famous TikToker with over 87 million followers on the app, dances to “adult” songs in all types of clothing and dances suggestively.
This user does not understand why people aren’t mad at D’Amelio but are mad at “Cuties.”
“Charli is older and knows more about what she’s doing and not oversexualizing herself,” Cabusora said. “She’s just dancing to have fun.”
“I personally follow Charli on TikTok and I don’t think that her dances are sexual. Some of her dances are explicit, but she conveys a good message of being who you are. I don’t think in any way, shape, or form she promotes sexual things on children,” Vinson said. “This movie promotes child porn and sexualizing pre-pubescent girls. These girls are being way too sexual at a young age.”
“There are a lot of places where stuff like this happens, like YouTube and Twitch,” Smith said. “All of these instances where borderline child porn happens, there’s so many places it happens we can’t keep track. We should find a way to enforce guidelines and take it down.”
Even though Netflix has no problem with “Cuties” being on their platform, many streamers feel that it should be removed immediately.
Graphic by Lizzy Talbert
