Posted on 01/18/2024 10:10:24 AM PST by Morgana
A new movie starring actress Emma Stone is being criticized for featuring children in an adult sex scene, further raising alarm for how much children are sexualized in Hollywood and in overall culture.
In an apparent twist on Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” “Poor Things” tells the story of a woman named Bella Baxter, played by Stone, who initially committed suicide while pregnant. A mad scientist finds her body and takes the brain of her preborn child, implants it into Bella’s body, and resurrects her. This results in a living person with an adult woman’s body and an infant’s mind.
From the very beginning of the film, Bella is depicted engaging in sexual behavior, even when she purportedly has an infant’s mind. This, alone, is disturbing given that Planned Parenthood’s allies commonly repeat the claim that “children are sexual beings” — and by this, they typically mean that even very young children can experience sexual feelings and desires much like adults — an assertion based on the pedophilic “research” of Alfred Kinsey.
Though she develops throughout the movie, Bella has a child-like mind, and yet she is frequently having sex in the film, including while engaging in prostitution. This is portrayed as justifiable because Bella “is a being of free will” and therefore has the agency to do what she likes; even her would-be husband shrugs off her promiscuity, remarking, “It is your body, Bella Baxter; yours to give freely.”
As if this weren’t disturbing enough, one of the scenes in the movie is garnering a great deal of controversy. Bella has many clients while working in a brothel, but one of them is a father, who brings his two sons there to watch him have sex with her, as a warped version of sexual education.
According to BuzzFeed, this “original sex scene only ever featured in Poor Things’ film festival run,” because before being submitted for formal consideration, filmmakers re-edited the scene so that it did not depict “sexual activity in the presence of children.” If it had not been re-edited, it would have violated the UK’s Protection of Children Act 1978. The movie, however, was still rated by the BBFC as an 18 — the highest possible rating — largely due to the amount of nudity and graphic sex included. The run time for the film is the same in the U.S. and the UK.
Shockingly, angry cries of “censorship” erupted as a result of this “re-editing” to avoid depictions of the sexualization of children. Yet on X (formerly known as Twitter), one user responded to the censorship outcry by stating, “Well… don’t have sex scenes involving children, in any way, in your movie.”
It has become increasingly common for graphic depictions of sex to be pushed onto children. Even actress Gwyneth Paltrow, an outspoken supporter of Planned Parenthood, was in shock when she learned what her daughter was being taught in sixth grade sex ed class. “They taught them sex ed in sixth grade, which, like, yeah, OK. But I really was not prepared with the information that they came home with,” she said, explaining, “They taught them everything. Everything. Anything you’re thinking — they taught the 11-, 12-year-olds. Told them everything, I swear.”
This is not unusual for Planned Parenthood, which has long been in the business of selling sex to children. Bill Taverner, Executive Director at the Center for Sex Education —Planned Parenthood of Northern, Central, and Southern New Jersey’s sex education arm, with the largest national conference for sex educators — has openly claimed that children are “born sexual” (again, a Kinsey-created falsehood) and has even advocated for using pornography in sex ed classes.
The notion of letting children be children, and not exploiting and abusing them with adult sexual desires, is clearly something in which Hollywood and the abortion industry are not interested.
Editor’s Note, 1/12/24: This article has been updated for clarity.
I can only wish for the Hays Code era again.
This is the first I have heard of it and I will pass.
I wish I didn’t know about this. I’m somewhere between weeping and vomiting. Some things only make darkness darker.
The suicide was because she was married to a monster of a man and did not want to have his child.
She died, but the child (sort of) survived because a mad scientist put her brain in her mother’s body.
There wasn’t really any abortion advertising in the movie.
The movie was quite bizarre and there were some odd plot elements. It was also so graphic that I wondered how it got away with an R rating.
Its a way to depict pedophilia.
The mind of a child in the body of a woman.
This results in a living person with an adult woman’s body and an infant’s mind................IOW a member of the View.
I think you might find this discussion from Jan. 10, 2024 between Pastor Jack Hibbs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYtghPxx_2E) and Seth Gruber of The White Rose Resistance (https://thewhiterose.life/) very informative.
Lot’s of info on Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood, abortion, eugenics, Hitler and PP getting their homosexual agenda material into public schools.
Once again Ricky Gervais is proven correct.
You either broke the law or you didn't. Trump has a hundred indictments and a few convictions from Mittens for nearly breaking the law.
Yes, it is getting darker all around us.
...
I haven’t heard of this movie. A new low for Hollywood. I can’t think of anything more repulsive.
Thanks for the heads up. Another movie the critics will love and decent people will avoid like the plague.
Yorgos Lanthimos is an acquired taste. So far, I haven’t acquired it. I made it through The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, partly to see what the fuss was about and partly because both are A24 films and at the time I was testing the A24 limits. Both were tedious. (YMMV) I will give credit to directors who are determined to avoid formulaic genre pieces, take chances, and swing for the fences. But when they swing and miss ....
I have not seen Poor Things. It is being well reviewed; both critics’ and audience scores are high, the critics’ scores being higher. My suspicion at the moment is that this reflects Critics Disease; they are jaded from watching too many movies, which makes them suckers for High Concept films that at least give them something new to think and write about, as opposed to the 634th iteration of Flying Spandex Man from Disney or The Studley Action Hero Named Chris from any of the big studios churning out cookie cutter retreads.
I may eventually watch Poor Things in a spirit of opposition research. I am predisposed against it, mainly due to all the chatter about sex, but at this time last year, I was similarly predisposed against Babylon. Reviews of Babylon were much more mixed — people seemed to love it or hate it — but enough people I respect liked it that I decided to check it out. I won’t repeat my review of it here except to note that the wretched excesses that drew so much gossip were not, in the movie, presented as alluring or provocative. They are not glorified. They are presented as degrading and allegorically — in some cases almost literally — as visions of hell. There are also some over-the-top gross out scenes that had made me cringe when I read about them, but when I saw the film and understood the context, I quickly realized that Damien Chazelle was attempting Mel Brooks level parody. Think of Blazing Saddles where most of the jokes don’t quite land. The movie is still too long and needed Mel Brooks to polish the final script, but I can respect what the director was trying to do.
So ... I will probably add Poor Things to my list of films I watch simply to see what the critics are all going nuts about. It sometimes pays off. Drive My Car, Living, Compartment No. 6 and Living are all recent films that I only watched for this reason, and I recommend all of them. It sometimes pay to take a chance and go in with an open mind.
And I am still sticking to my resolve not to dump on a movie unless I’ve seen it first. So my open question to all here, and especially those who are unloading on Poor Things based on online graffiti, is this: have YOU seen the film? If you have, I’d love to hear your reactions.
Even that premise is nuts. The brain controls the glandular system (through a gland in the brain). It’s not developed in an infant, and ot until puberty do the sex hormones that cause sexual desires kick in. Sickos in Hollyweird as usual.
I don’t need to smell crap to know that it stinks.
Oops. I recommended Drive My Car, Compartment No. 6 and Living twice. Me bad. I meant to include Past Lives as the fourth recommendation.
Actually, we went to see this movie because it had good reviews from critics and audiences. It has a 93% tomato (critic) rating and 82% popcorn (audience) rating, according to Rotten Tomatoes. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/poor_things We could have gone to see the Wonka movie, but decided against it since we know that story quite well. Poor Things was an interesting story and there were some beautiful scenes in the movie, especially if you are a fan of steampunk. It was just so graphic. I am amazed it got away with an R rating instead of X.
It’s based on Frankenstein, not exactly a scientific text. And much like Frankenstein it’s really about society. In this case about sexual mores and how much of them focus on women saying no but not men.
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