Netflix apologized after a controversial poster for the film “Cuties,” which has a pre-pubescent girl “becoming fascinated with a twerking dance crew,” went viral. The aforementioned poster, portraying four girls in suggestively risqué poses, sparked widespread backlash and a Change.org petition to halt the release of the film., prompting Netflix to apologize for what it called “inappropriate artwork.”
The petition has now garnered over 50,000 signatures.
The French film, which I saw this past January at Sundance, will be available to stream on Netflix next month and follows an 11-year-old Senegalese Muslim girl who joins a provocative dance group of twerkers. I remember, as I was walking to the Eccles at Sundance, bumping into “Cuties” producer Sylvain de Zangroniz and being asked what I thought of the movie — I tried to change the conversation to another topic, but he didn’t relent, I finally plainly stated to him that “it just wasn’t my cup of tea”.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so nice.
I didn’t care for “Cuties” one bit, in fact, I thought it was a repulsive film that sexualized an eleven-year-old girl’s innocence for the sake of female empowerment. We see outrageous musical montages involving close-up crotch shots and sweaty pre-teens feeling themselves while soaking up the music on-stage. It’s a clearcut attempt at provocation from Doucoure, but it fails miserably. It doesn’t help that the film, a cliche-ridden coming-of-age-tale, is dull beyond belief — there’s nothing interesting about its we-have-to-win-the-dance-contest plottings.
Maïmouna Doucouré, the film’s director, claims the movie “is in fact a critique of the sexualization of children, specifically the Internet’s role in it.” That’s not what I saw. It’s all part of the damage control being created to justify streaming this film to a massively large Netflix audience.
The film, rated TV-MATURE, will be available on Netflix next week.