UPDATE: 1:10 p.m. EDT – Netflix has now posted a public apology on social media.
Original story: The French import of Netflix “Cuties” has not yet begun to air, however, a new petition seeks to save its service premiere. Some accuse “Cuties” of sexualizing young women, but critics have said the film was heavily involved about the hyper-xuization of teenage girls.
The petition to remove “Cuties” (or “Cutes” in French), which will not be published until 9 September, has so far accumulated more than 35,000 signatures. “This film/show is disgusting because it sexualizes a one-year-old for the visual emotion of paedophiles and also negatively influences our children!” Request Bed Change.org. “There is no need for this type of content in this age group, especially when sex trafficking and pedophilia are so widespread! There’s no excuse, it’s harmful content!”
“Cuties,” a French film, follows Amy (Fathia Youssouf), an 11-year-old girl from a conservative circle of relatives who joins a dance organization called Cuties. The official synopsis of the Sundance Film Festival, which hosted the premiere of “Cuties” in January, says:
Amy, 11, lives with her mother, Mariam, and younger brother, waiting for her father to enroll in the Senegalese family. Amy is fascinated by the free-spirited dance gang of the disobedient neighbor Angelica, an organization that contrasts with the deeply rooted classic values of the stoic Mariam. Undeterred by the women’s abrupt initial dismissal and eager to escape the trembling mess of her family, Amy, through a fierce awareness of her nascent femininity, impels the organization to enthusiastically embrace a sensual dance routine, awakening women’s hopes of making their way to fame. at a local dance competition.
However, this is not the “Cuties” description originally used by Netflix.
According to The Independent, Netflix’s summary said first: “Amy, 11, is fascinated through a twerk dance team. Hoping to enroll in them, he begins to explore his femininity, defying his family’s traditions.”
This was released with a poster of a women’s film posing suggestively on short T-shirts and shorts in a dance competition.
A Netflix representative told Deadline: “We regret the pointless illustrations we use for this film. It is not an accurate representation of the film, so the symbol and description were updated.”
Netflix now shows the description as follows: “Amy, 11, begins to oppose the traditions of her conservative circle of relatives when she is fascinated with a free-spirited dance team.” The movie poster has also been updated with a more sober image.
Written and directed by The French-Senegal filmmaker Ma-mouna Doucouré, who won awards for his Sundance film, the film is an observation about the hyper-xuization of the young women, according to several Critics of Sundance.
“Doucouré’s script perfectly captures this tween depression of integration, which so many women perceive as ‘sexy’. With the barrage of hyper-sexualized women in the media, how can we blame them? Amy’s purpose is not to sleep with men. – again, slightly perceives the mechanisms of sex – it is to win the approval of her classmates,” said Anna Menta de Decider.
Meanwhile, Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney noted that while “Cuties” shows the effects of exposing young women to super-sexual images, he does not seek to publicize them. «… The film sets out its critical vision of a culture that leads impressionable women towards the hypersexualization of their bodies,” she writes.
Screen Daily critic Fionnuala Halligan said the photographs are meant to make the public uncomfortable. “The twerk view of the bodies of the tweens is explicitly designed to surprise a mature in contemplating the destruction of the present innocence,” he wrote.
Currently, “Cuties” is about to be released on Netflix next month.
A petition seeks to save him the release of Netflix’s “Cuties”. Photo: Jean-Michel Papazian for Good or Good Productions