They repulse, but this is even worse.
I know that the editor of the Daily Caller is either Göbbels or Himmler, but the screencap on the story is my point excatly. You simply can’t defend the movie, it’s at best borderline softcore child porn.
But, this is not a play-rape or a play-assault, they are actually twerking. It’s not implied, it’s not body double of 18-year-olds who look surprisingly young.
I didn’t watch “Cuties” but I felt a little uncomfortable watching parts of the “Bring It” series with my daughter and wife. Hard to imagine “Cuties” is more sexual than the Dancing Dolls twerking.
You mean like “Married With Children”? How they’d go out of their way to show that Kelly was jail bait in a very skimpy outfit…meanwhile the audience is hooooting?*
*TBF while Ms. Applegate was 16 when the show started, I dont know if they actually introduced that sort of thing until later seasons.
Yeah, and that line is “don’t actually do the thing you’re portraying as bad.” So you wouldn’t, you know, actually show a real rape. So they also shouldn’t show a real kid being sexually objectified and exploited.
The whole thing reminds me of that meme where someone would say they were asking for nudes specifically to know what not to look at, or would say they were just for educational purposes. Except they were aware no one believed them–that was the joke.
And what sucks is that it’s going to be used by the pedo distractors like Tom Cotton. It’s going to make QAnon seem more legit. I can’t say anything to the Facebook people condemning this.
@Dark_Sponge: the Facebook post I saw (at the top of my wall, since it’s that popular) claimed it was worse than what was in “Bring It”–they said they were expecting something along those lines, and were horrified with what they actually got.
He’s a video that has more stuff than was on Twitter. It’s a guy explaining the problem, and using clips. And, note, I’m following the two click rule here:
Link to video inside
It is shot exactly like a music video where they’re trying to sex everything up. I’ve watched stuff like cheerleader and dance competitions, including in movies, and I’ve never seen it filmed this way with even teens, let alone 11 year olds. And I’ve watched a few episodes of the child beauty pageant stuff, and saw nothing like this.
As much as I hate Tom Cotton, I’m not sure this couldn’t fall afoul of child porn laws. Sure, there’s no nudity–belly shirts and short shorts seem to be as far as they go–but the dance scenes are just so clearly sexual. It would depend on how the laws are crafted.
I don’t care what the filmmakers intended, what they made is a film that will appeal only to one type of person. This was soft core child porn, nothing else.
There’s a really shitty pop culture journalist for a mainstream site that infamously declared all men who liked anime were “pedophiles” even if the women depicted were adults because “anime makes everyone look like a child”. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave Cuties a glowing review.
OK, now having had further chances to look into this it’s time to adjust my reaction a bit. I still say, this is not something that must be “forbidden” or outlawed and the people calling for it need to take a deep breath… BUT, much in the portrayal does seem gratuituous and yes, discomforting. But then…
Let’s say IF that WERE the intent, to make the audience uncomfortable over how they feel about the subject, the creators had plenty of chances to make that clear, and for all I know in the dialogue they do. But people are not paying attention to dialogue but to visuals. And if the film was supposed to make people think “oh, those poor girls (characters), they are getting caught up in such conflict between one repressive culture and one sexualizing objectifying one, we need to make changes to our culture so this does not happen to girls”, and instead what they are getting is “OMG THIS FILM IS CHILD PORN!! HOW IS IT EVEN LEGAL TO MAKE IT!!!”, then I say there has been a failure to communicate.
Some of the items expounded in the link that BigT linked up, ISTM are not per se thematically improper to include in a work about girls becoming exposed to growing up in a culture of sexualization (and in the age of sexting) but yes, surely could have been done differently. ISTM the question becomes, do we want to do a story about tween girls exposed to growing up in a culture of sexualization, without, well, portraying what is it they’re dealing with? Because otherwise you risk ending up with a lecture. Yet at the same time, how much do do we really have to boldly front-and-center it to shake up the audience? And shoudl we avoid it completely just because pervs will perv, effectively giving them a veto?
ISTM the best reaction should have been to ignore it and let it stay an obscure Art House Sundance curio. But of course people in the public eye could not resist a chance for posturing with little or no downside. Like I said, I stil don’t think it’s something to ban or outlaw but OTOH if people freely use market pressure to dissuade the distributor, that’s their legitimate right.
(Yet… if you want some really bad reactions, I’ve seen sites where the comments are to the effect of “that’s bad enough but they’re also ugly [insert ethnoreligious slur]”; or even “heeeyyyy there… too bad they’re [insert ethnoreligious slur]”. Because, of course, the Internet, home of the worst of humanity.)
Well, I’d say this has been a resounding success for the director as far as drawing attention to the things she wants to highlight. If she HAD directed it like others have suggested…this would just be some unknown art-house fare seen by about 14,000 people.
Now it’s going to be watched non stop by pedophiles for the next hundred years, rousing success.
Damn…and we almost had pedophilia wiped out!
[quote=“YWTF, post:52, topic:918608, full:true”]…The clips I saw on Twitter literally made my skin crawl.
[/quote]
I hope you went to retrieve it after it literally crawled away.
mmm
No it’s not like Married with Children. It’s like if Christina Applegate was 11 and she was spreading her legs in front of a camera that zooms in so close you can see each individual strand from her too-short cut-offs.
This is not an exaggeration.
No one compared MwC with Cuties. He said he was reminded of 80’s sitcoms and i mentioned an 80’s-90s sitcom he may be referring to.
Your argument here seems to be missing part of the point. Dialog or intent wouldn’t matter. Because they actually did the thing that they’re saying is wrong They can say in the dialog that it’s wrong–that would be hypocritical. They could have intended people to be disgusted by it. But by actually engaging in the sexual exploitation of these children, they harmed them and did a moral wrong–the same moral wrong that is why we outlaw child porn.
As I said before, the way you depict something that’s wrong is that you do something else instead of the bad thing. You don’t hire someone to actually get raped in order to have a rape scene, nor hire someone to get murdered to have a murder scene. You fake it. You get close enough that people know what it is, but you fake it.
Or, if you go the documentary route, you can actually show (with permission) actual videos of it happening–as long as you don’t make it happen. But, even then, you may want to censor the worst parts of it.
@YWTF shows at least one option: you put it offscreen. They didn’t show the kid undressing for the child pornographer in the Webster show. They stayed focused on Webster while we heard what was happening with the other boy, IIRC. But there are other possibilities. Show it from a distance. Don’t make them large musical musical numbers. Have adults describing what the kids do. Hire adults to do the actual dancing, and cut between them obviously, with it cutting to the kids for a bit to remind you how gross it is. There are so many possibilities.
But they chose actually doing it And that’s wrong. And, as much as I don’t like the posturing of the politicians, I’m not sure they’re wrong to compare it to child porn or say it should be illegal. I’m not sure filming sexually exploitative music videos of children shouldn’t be outlawed. That there shouldn’t be stringent laws on what is and is not allowed, same as there are just for just generally using kids in acting.
And I can’t in any way think that ignoring this was the correct solution. Ignoring sexual exploitation has never worked out well. It just allows it to continue. That’s the message of #MeToo.
And, since I’m invoking that, I might as well invoke what I think is in the back of most people’s minds who are really grossed out by it: it would not be surprising at all if someone involved actually was a pedophile. It’s not just about potential viewers. I mean, the guys who make child porn are generally into it.
If you saw some other director make all of Tarantino’s foot scenes, would you not think they were likely into feet? When the shots are that gratuitous, that’s just what people think.
I can’t say for sure, of course. But I do think that people are reacting that way, as you wouldn’t expect anyone not into kids not to be grossed out at having to do this. And while the actual camera people might not have had much choice, the director and similar would.
I don’t think people are overreacting at all to this. I do think maybe a politician is posturing, but not ordinary people. They really are this disgusted by these children being exploited in this way. They’re imagining their kid in the same position.
After they save the critique video linked upthread, to point out “the good parts” 
JK JK but I’m sure there’s gonna be people questioning him about just how could he even point out and reproduce the scenes… because, again, everyone’s horrible in the comment section. Thing is, “take my word for it, it’s that bad” is not much of an argument, he had to. And BTW that could be a point to make with the film: “our society and media tell girls this is what we want of them – uncomfortable? You should be, but you only are because they’re 11, if they were 18 you’d be throwing money.” But the presumption is that portrayed = celebrated.
Hey! We had them reduced to holding on to old DVDs of the Olsen Twins!
The problem is making 11-year-olds do it. You don’t need old guys grabbing 11-year-old girls’ breasts to show why it is wrong.
You can imply it very well.
Oh, absolutely understandable - and that’s why if people want to use market pressure to dissuade distribution, more power to them.
Oh, no question about that, like I said: