Posted on 09/17/2020 5:41:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
Netflix, the video streaming giant, is in hot water with at least some segments of the American public because of a French film it is currently showing called Cuties (Mignonnes in the original French).
The film is about a group of 11-year-old girls in Paris who form a team to enter a dance competition. But this isnt ballet or jazz. Its twerking.
The initial negative reaction was to promotional images Netflix used: the four young girls posed provocatively in their clingy, midriff-baring tops and tight shorts. But once people watched the film, shock turned to outrage. During a performance, the girls simulate sexual intercourse; bump and grind their hips; bend over in front of the audience; and touch their crotches while they sigh, look skyward and suck on their fingers. And thats just one scene.
If some Americans were shocked by Cuties, they were even more taken aback by the reactions to their reaction. The right versus left cultural divide in the country has grown so deep that theres no longer even a consensus on something as serious as child exploitation, which would have generated broad agreement just a few years ago. Instead, the cultural elites came out in force to snub and insult the rubes who just dont understand great art.
An insufferable opinion piece by Sam Thielman on the NBC News website proclaims that criticism of Cuties is just a cynical ploy in the culture war. Thielman describes the film as a sweet-spirited French coming-of-age drama about an 11-year-old girl looking for friendship among the competitive dancers at her school. The twerking prepubescent girls are just rebelling as conservative kids have done from time immemorial. (Come on, werent we all simulating sex onstage in front of audiences in major cities when we were 11?)
Thielman says there is no sexuality in the film; its just about friendship between girls; again, as if all little girls watch porn together, blow up used condoms like balloons, grind their rear ends in each others faces, and take pictures of their genitals and post them on the internet.
He also chides us, saying that we watch adult women do this all the time. And, hey, making your butt cheeks slap is hard (Ill take his word for it), so they must have started practicing as preteens.
Probably. And thats a big part of the problem. Director Maimouna Doucoure has defended her film as a feminist cautionary tale about the sexualization of girls in todays society. But it was only Cardi B and other adult women twerking just a few short years ago. If we take director Doucoure at her word, that art has now filtered down to children. So how long before we have 8-year-olds singing about their WAPs? Will we be asked to believe thats just a statement, too?
The problem here isnt Netflix; the problem is a culture that celebrates the sexualization of everything -- including and especially children. And American culture sexualizes children at just about every opportunity.
For example, sex education in schools used to be about teaching human reproduction but has morphed into advocacy for gender confusion, lesbianism and homosexuality, desensitization to vulgar slang and detailed explanations of explicit sex acts -- in early grade school and middle school. Planned Parenthood is responsible for a lot of this educational material.
Teen Vogue -- whose readership, we are told, is the 11- to 18-year-old demographic -- has featured articles on how to have anal sex and what gift to get your bestie after her abortion.
And lets not forget Drag Queen Story Hour. Videos of some of these events -- sponsored in many cases by the local public library -- show men dressed as women cavorting around, twerking (of course), stripping and spreading their legs in front of toddlers. One such performer in Houston was a convicted sex offender.
People are promoting their children as little drag queens. Desmond Is Amazing is the stage name of a slender prepubescent boy who made national news last year when he dressed as a girl and danced at a gay nightclub, with grown men throwing money at him.
Just last week, California passed a law reducing the criminal penalties for consensual anal or oral sex between adults and minors no more than 10 years younger. If you dont think that a 14-year-old boy (and, yes, the law anticipates children that young) is capable of consenting to oral or anal sex with a man in his mid-20s, congratulations: Youre out of touch.
A culture that presents children as sexual objects is a culture that is exploiting them for adult gratification. This is not limited to adults receiving sexual gratification from children. More often, it is about making the adults feel better about the sexual choices they themselves have made, regardless of what this does to the children.
I accept that Cuties directors intention was to criticize the commodification of females in Western culture, but that wont be the result any more than 13 Reasons Why didnt glorify teen suicide. You cant say you want to discourage X and then make stars out of beautiful people who do X on film, become famous, make tons of money, go to glitzy parties and pose for glamorous magazine shoots. You may think youve fooled the public, but you havent fooled the children. They get the real message.
I wouldn’t last a month with extreme wealth. I’d be found dead in a Las Vegas suite in an unflattering manner
Come to think of it I’d rather just be posting here :-)
Pedophiliacs should never be tolerated. Just like globalists, they are in the same category.
Cable and satellite TV should be a la carte. It’s not.
Well said.
In a world where Dance Moms was on for 10 years getting mad about this is burning down the barn cause the cows left.
I don’t disagree but it’s not necessary to throw a baby out with the bath water.
Typically you over react and advocate doing more harm than good
Women got raped in 2019 so raping women in 2020 is ok?
How do you over react to in your face pedophilia? Just how is that possible? Me thinks you DON’T protest to much.
That’s not what I said. But of course we know you’re a flame war addicted moron who can’t read. So I expect no better from you. Bye
Im wondering how you feel after a round of reading FR since it offers a window on the dark world. I know sometimes I get upset while Im here at what is going on in the world. I imagine if the election doesnt go our way the meltdowns here will be epic. I dont want to be completely ignorant of what is going on in the world but I do like your approach of knowing the news isnt everything.
You deserve any flaming you get. Free Republic used to be better.
Yes....FR Zen is the way to go. :)
It was, then you showed up. Been here longer than you drunken idiot.
Just a joke, get over yourself!!!
Iv been here since ‘98. I moved and changed my handle but my start date cannot be transferred. One of the hazards of a geographical handle.
Liar.
Some truth in the title
“If no one watches, it doesnt make it on air.”
I don’t think that works with Netflix. Their line-up is packed with poorly made vanity projects. They must make their revenue from a handful of blockbusters.
I don’t care if you believe it or not. Maybe if I give Jim enough of a donation he would transfer my start date. Remember the early days. Remember Ashe and all of his incantations?
“The problem is purist intolerance
There are thousands of programs to watch. Living to hate is no way to live”
Where to start?
The latency period is defined by psychoanalysis as the stage of personality development, extending from about four or five years of age to the beginning of puberty, during which sexual urges appear to lie dormant. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/latency-period. I would add that this is a necessary stage in a child’s development and something to be respected rather than demolished.
You characterize objections to the age-inappropriate sexualization of 11 year-old children as “purist intolerance” rather than as concern for the well-being of children. You think that objectors are people who live to hate.
How many people do you actually know who object to such films? Where is your evidence that they live to hate? Character assassination indicates that you have no argument. You are, after all, talking about total strangers and not addressing the actual issue: Should the culture be sexualizing pre-pubescent children?
Like everything else these days, it’s political. Alinski’s Rules for Radicals RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. The ultimate aim is the socialist utopia which has repeatedly failed in Africa, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The aim of all this destruction and suffering is to usher in a failed experiment.
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