Cuties ain’t so cute.
Is it time to leave Netflix?
Many say it is.
I Told You So
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law last week that would allow a young adult who has gay sex with a minor to escape registering as a sex offender in some cases, based on a judge’s discretion.
SB145, which was first introduced into the California State Legislature in January 2019 by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), finally passed the 40-member state Senate by a vote of 23-10, as The Daily Wire reported.
Proponents of the legislation such as Wiener claim the law, which provides a judge more leeway in statutory rape cases involving non-vaginal forms of sex, rectifies California’s historical discrimination against the LGBTQ community. Under SB145, if a young adult has gay sex with a minor 14 or older who is less than 10 years younger, a judge will have the discretion whether to place the individual on the sex offender registry.
As the San Francisco Chronicle explained, “Under current law, a judge can decide whether to place a man who has vaginal intercourse with an underage teenage girl on the sex offender registry based on the facts of the case. But if anal or oral sex, or vaginal penetration with anything other than a penis is involved, the adult must register as a sex offender[.]”
Scott Weiner said:
“I am so grateful that Governor Newsom — one of the LGBTQ community’s strongest allies ever — once again has shown that he’s willing to support our community when it’s hard. And make no mistake: the politics here are hard, with the massive Trump, QAnon and MAGA misinformation campaign against the legislation. The facts are clear: SB 145 simply ends anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Today, California took yet another step toward an equitable society.”
Wiener said, who also introduced the 2017 bill that made knowingly exposing a partner to HIV no longer a felony.
Weiner has before blamed alleged QAnon conspiracy theorists for sending many of the threats against him and accusing him of trying to legalize pedophilia. “I’ve been the subject of death threats and personal attacks, threatening to decapitate me and send my head to my mother,” Wiener said during an online news conference last month. “This kind of slander, not just against me but against my community, is outrageous and we have to speak out against it.”
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) said, “I cannot in my mind as a mother understand how sex between a 24-year-old and a 14-year-old could ever be consensual, how it could ever not be a registrable offense. We should never give up on this idea that children should be in no way subject to a predator.”
Cuties
So I started the show with California normalizing pedophilia. It seemed like a great segway into a new movie released by Netflix called Cuties. Netflix got into trouble by their poster of four girls, about 11 years old, who were barely dressed and were posed provocatively. Netflix pulled the ad.
The movie was shown at the Sundance Film Festival and won an award. It was produced and shot in France. When watching, one could tell it was dubbed in English. It was directed by an African woman named Maimouna Doucoure. That’s an important detail we will go into a little later.
What is It About?
- A little girl from Sudan, I think, lives in France. She is a Muslim girl that wears the head scarf and the whole thing.
- Her father goes back to his home country to bring back a second wife to the dismay of his first wife. You never see the father and, rarely, the mother.
- The little girl goes to school and decides to shed her Muslim garb. Mind you, she never gets into trouble at home for this.
- She meets four other girls and shows them some of her dance moves. She learned those moves by watching them on her phone from the Internet.
- The girls start practicing their dance moves. The Muslim girl, Amy I think, teaches them how to be sexy. This is actually the longest part of the movie.
- The girls join a dance contest.
- Amy, upset about her parents and exploring her sexuality, sends a pick of her poon on a social media platform.
- The other girls, upset about the poon pic, kick her off the teen for another chick, who is far less talented.
- Amy tricks the girl who replaced her to miss the competition and competes with her former friends.
- During the competition, at the end of their performance, Amy stops and runs off the stage, crying.
- That’s the end of the movie.
That’s the hour and a half movie in a nutshell.
The Controversy
On Rottentomatoes, critics gave it a 90% approval. The viewers score was a little less at 6%. That should tell you something.
Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire, on his podcast, thought the message of the film was good but the execution was bad. Shapiro said that the message of children being hooked to screens and social media, which is what the director announced, was absolutely true. But the exploitation of the children, and all those who had a screen test, could not be denied.
Matt Walsh, also from the Daily Wire said in his piece:
“This is not a “commentary” on child sexual exploitation — it is child sexual exploitation, clear as day, in all its sadism.
With these horrific scenes now publicly available, it seems almost pointless to engage with the plainly absurd notion that the filmmakers had 11-year-old children writhe around and gyrate while barely clothed as some kind of protest against the sexualization of children. It would be like a slasher film, featuring several scenes of various screaming victims being disemboweled for our amusement, claiming in its defense that it only meant to comment on the problem of graphic violence in film. Indeed, that actually is the defense often offered for slasher flicks, and it’s as weak in that case as it is here. The guy who made “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” may have told himself that he had nobler intentions, but the fact remains that most people who watch “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” just want to see, well, a Texas chainsaw massacre.
No filmmaker wants to come out and admit that they have produced gratuitous garbage for a lowest common denominator audience. But many filmmakers do produce that sort of material for that sort of audience, whether they admit it or not. And “Cuties” belongs on that heap. Buried somewhere deep underneath it, hopefully, where it cannot be seen.”
Yeah, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like the film.
Ted Cruz is pretty pissed off. He posted on Twitter:
Tulsi Gabbard Tweeted:
.@netflix child porn “Cuties” will certainly whet the appetite of pedophiles & help fuel the child sex trafficking trade. 1 in 4 victims of trafficking are children. It happened to my friend’s 13 year old daughter. Netflix, you are now complicit. #CancelNetflix pic.twitter.com/GI8KFH7LFq
The director of Cuties, Maïmouna Doucouré stated that her film was actually a feminist film. She said:
“It’s because I saw so many things and so many issues around me lived by young girls, that I decided to make this film and sound an alarm and say, ‘We need to protect our children. It’s bold, its feminist, but it’s so important and necessary to create debate and try to find solutions, for me as an artist, for politicians and parents. It’s a real issue.It’s important to see someone like you on the screen, and to grow up with a lot of possibilities. So, of course, diversity and inclusion have to be the keys to progress in our cinema.”
What I Think
I saw the movie. Let me give you a quick synopsis: it sucked. It just wasn’t a good movie. It was boring like every dance film.
The sexualization of the little girls was over the top.
I do question how many kids were actually exploited during the screen shots.
The “message” that the writer and director wanted to show were only visible at the very beginning and the very end. Though I do think the use of social media and its importance to our children was very well portrayed. But the message was lost due to the hyper-sexualization of the children.
Biden Boofs
https://www.dailywire.com/news/slate-op-ed-explores-the-creepy-conservative-obsession-with-netflixs-cuties
https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-child-sexualizing-cuties-movie-on-netflix-is-even-worse-than-we-thought-its-time-to-cancel-netflix
https://www.dailywire.com/news/you-are-now-complicit-tulsi-gabbard-blasts-netflix-for-promoting-child-porn
https://www.dailywire.com/news/ted-cruz-joins-other-gop-lawmakers-calling-on-doj-to-investigate-netflix-for-distributing-child-porn
https://www.dailywire.com/news/cuties-director-hits-back-against-critics-its-bold-its-feminist