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I watched Cuties. This is going to be an attack thread, which I open by first mentioning everything I thought the movie did well. It ends with me not having Netflix anymore. Somewhere in the beginning I have feelings of wholesomeness. This is not a thread on poor marketing.
Let's for a second pretend that the children appearing in the movie were AI generated, and thus not real. We will make them real later, and cry, because we have just sacrificed them to make a point. I am a part of this in some way. The movie is quite harsh (in an artistic way).
It is a coming-of-age story for Amy, a young Senegalese immigrant, who lives with her mother Mariam. Early on, we learn Amy's dad is to take on another wife and as her mother processes this, she keeps on watching from the outside and performing family duties. They are religious.
Her family is Muslim, her grandmother a carrier of tradition. One of my favorite scenes is Amy and her grandmother carrying pots on their heads as they walk down the street. Granma is her strongest link to Africa, her mother a close second. Amy is somewhat lost in a new world.
Eventually, she notices her neighbor, Angelica, dancing. Later, she finds out Angelica is a part of a dancing group with 3 other girls. They dress skimpily and act wild. They catcall boys, are obsessed with social media likes, stage a freeze flash mob, and disobey authorities.
Amy is intrigued and slowly steps over into their world. She starts watching them dance, watching dance videos online, learning the moves, and eventually joins the group. She changes her clothes and her behavior. She gets obsessed with it. Here, the movie is now superimposing her
family culture and the new world she had joined. It is quite powerful. Women wearing hijab, praying are contrasted to highly sexualized dancing, a social media obsessed culture, and growing up in the new wild. Amy learns about her own budding womanhood, but in this new context.
This is accentuated by her getting her first period as the plot is thickening. She notices her mother has a butt like the women in the videos twerking, and understands it through that lens first. Her mother is my favorite character in this. She is the rock of Amy's life.
Even stands up to grandma, as Amy is called a 'whore'. In the end, Amy falls apart on stage (in that clip that is being shared), the music goes silent, and she can hear her mother praying. She cries and runs away, rejoining her neighborhood, and becomes the embodiment of an old
culture in a new world, as she accepts a little bit of a mix between the two cultures and rejoins the kids playing in her neighborhood. She is happy. The movie built the life of two girls (Amy and Angelica) growing up, within the insanity of this new culture. They eat gummy bears
jump on beds, share stories. Angelica feels like she has failed her family. Amy hates her father. All of these scenes are quite deep. This is a disturbing, powerful critique of what little girls are exposed to, and what it is like to experience this from their POV.
Now, let's dial it back. These girls are not, AI generated. They are real children. I don't know their exact ages, but nonetheless, the oldest of them might be barely a teenager. The movie uses insanely disturbing ways to carry its point. The girls twerk, hump the floor, run hand
across their groins, lick, smack each other's rears. Amy takes a photo of her naked private parts and posts it online (during the plot apex). The camera work, during dancing, does not focus on their faces, almost at all. You see close ups, over and over and over and over
of little girl rears and groins. You see their cleavage. Amy gets attacked by some other girls at school and her pants are pulled down, revealing her underwear. This is a lot. I will say, without a doubt, I took their point about what is being done to girls. But at what cost?
At one point, Amy and the girls get busted for sneaking into laser tag. To convince the security guards to let them go, Amy twerks for one of them. For a gross looking middle age dude, who stares at that child's ass as she twerks for him.
Marketing is not the issue here. Just watch the movie. Imagine how long it takes to film so much sexualized material. Imagine you are the parent of those girls. There are stage managers, choreographers, directors, producers, a whole host of people, hour upon hour, day by day,
having children sexualize themselves for them so a piece of art and social critique can be made. Will those girls become famous now? Are they supposed to be child stars that continue their careers into adulthood? What does it to a kid to leave them so bare in front of the world?
No one seems to give a shit. The creators are ready to sacrifice these girls to prove how the culture is sexualizing girls. Kids come before any social commentary. Societies protect them. We do not make points with them. That's what anime is for. Or just wait for AI to produce it
The End.
Don't be a jerk in the replies. This, in the end, is just one opinion, of a random internet guy. If you disagree, I remain open to hearing it.
Don't be a jerk in the replies. This, in the end, is just one opinion, of a random internet guy. If you disagree, I remain open to hearing it.
