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2020-

2020-09-14 c
Prurient Garbage on Netflix

Preteen Bada Bing

Despite its director’s claim that she is making a feminist statement, Cuties cannot disguise its attraction to barely pubescent bodies.

Cuties, the latest culture war bombshell to arrive on our overworked home screens, turns out to be anything but cute. Written and directed by the Senegalese-French first-timer Maïmouna Doucouré, Cuties—Mignonnes in French—won an award for direction in the World Cinema section at the Sundance Festival and was quickly picked up by Netflix. The public has not been as enthusiastic. Politicians took to Twitter to condemn the film, the hashtag #CancelNetflix trended on social media, and a Change.org petition called for taking the movie off the air. As I write, the petition has attracted almost a half-million signatures.

That’s quite an uproar for an indie foreign film by an auteur almost no one had heard of the week before last. No doubt some of the outrage is grandstanding and some of it pure political posturing, but that doesn’t mean that Cuties is an innocent bystander. The story of 11-year-old Amy Diop, a Senegalese immigrant girl living in a Paris project who takes up with a group of precocious classmates practicing routines for a local dance contest, is an eyeful. The girls skip around in skin-tight short shorts and faux leather jeans or bandage skirts no bigger than a scrunchie. Their midriffs are exposed and exercised so much that they are at risk of callouses. Aficionados of the Kardashians, rap music videos, and porn, the cuties hump the floor, spank their buttocks while looking coyly over their shoulders, rub their crotches, and suck suggestively on their fingers. These young Lolitas have enough moves for generous tips at Tony Soprano’s Bada Bing.

The director and her advocates insist that all this is to illustrate the exploitative, hypersexualized culture girls swim in today. Netflix called Cuties a “social commentary against the sexualization of young children,” while Doucouré describes it as a “deeply feminist film with an activist message.” I could almost believe them, except that the camera zooms in on pre-pubescent arching and lingers on twerking buttocks with all the subtlety of a Pornhub video. (read more)

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