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I actually think that Cuties was widely mischaracterised as a movie by people who didn't watch it and just reacted to what they thought the content of the movie

I actually think that Cuties was widely mischaracterised as a movie by people who didn't watch it and just reacted to what they thought the content of the movie was. It's actually a good thoughtful coming of age movie that talks about important topics and actually criticises the culture of hypersexualisation of young girls.

_gabe_ 4y ago
I respectfully disagree. I haven't seen cuties, but I just watched the trailer. The movie may be a good thoughtful coming of age movie, but the trailer (at least in my opinion) did not characterize that at all. If I watch a trailer and it seems to indicate a movie that's about the sexualization of very young girls, I think it's perfectly fine for me to cancel my subscription without watching the movie. You may disagree with that sentiment, and that's fine, but I think that many people who did not watch the movie had seen the trailer and had a similar reaction that I just had.
- aftbit 4y ago
  I'm not sure you're disagreeing. It seems more like you are proving the parent post's point. You didn't watch the movie, yet you had an emotional reaction to it anyway, and used that to make a decision about the service. The parent isn't saying that's unethical or anything, just that the movie is being mischaracterized by people who did not watch it.
  - _gabe_ 4y ago
    Because I choose not to watch something that implies it may be sexualizing young girls? So by this logic if you see a trailer for a movie that's highlighting the dangers of child pornography, but from the trailer it seems to be showing and possibly promoting child pornography, and I choose not to watch that because I don't want to unwittingly view a film that promotes child pornography, I have now unreasonably cast judgment on this film? I don't think that it's unfair for me to criticize a film if the way they promote it seems to insinuate it's a film about ethically horrendous and illegal material. The producers created the trailer to promote the film. If the trailer looks like it's promoting ethically perverse material, I have every right to cast my judgment at that point and say this film is not for me. I'm not going to sit through a film that seemingly promotes itself as the sexualization of young girls because someone told me that it has a good message at the end. And that's fine. And it's fine for people to cancel a subscription because of that presumption. I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to stuff like this.
    - dboreham 4y ago
      Argument would have been more compelling if it had begun "Oh I see your point, so I just sat down and watched the whole movie and after that I still think..."
    - margaretdouglas 4y ago
      The marketing material for the movie was absolute dog water. I agree with your position there, but wish you'd take other sources and allow them to add color to your reaction to something you have only a single perspective on. Perhaps they could in form you that your reaction, based on bad information, is inaccurate. Perhaps you could use that realization as an opportunity to view the film yourself and come to your own conclusion based on the new information that your initial reaction was heavily biased based on an inaccurate portrayal of the material.
      - _gabe_ 4y ago
        I'm genuinely curious then. Is the IMDB parents guide enough of an outside perspective for me to determine whether or not I want to watch a film? I'll frequently look it up to see if the film contains any material that I don't want to see, and I'll avoid the film if I get a bad perception from the parents guide. After reading the parents guide about this film it has only reinforced what I originally thought from the trailer. I'm fine with watching a documentary that highlights the evils of the sexualization of young girls, but I'm not going to watch: > Frequent scenes of 11-year-old girls dancing lewdly where the camera pans in and zooms in on the children's buttocks and midsections (both still in skin-tight clothes) Close up shots of the girls dancing with their leg spread above their head while camera focus on crotch area. These views are fairly frequent. And much more content like that just to get to the conclusion that the sexualization of young girls is evil. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity
    - karaterobot 4y ago
      Yes, it is unreasonable to cast judgment on something you have no knowledge of. You may cast judgment on the trailer if you like, since you've seen that, but not the film, which you haven't seen. I don't find this complicated, having seen many trailers that don't accurately portray the films they're advertising, just as I've seen many books that shouldn't be judged by their covers.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Another way to interpret the GP is that even if the movie itself was a great coming-of-age story, the trailer Netflix made to promote it was disgusting and unacceptable. That seems reasonable enough to me. (Note that I’ve watched neither the movie nor the trailer.)
    - nicolas_t 4y ago
      Ok, that I'll concede, the trailer which I saw after watching the movie was really really bad. Very poor and tone deaf marketing.
- danlugo92 4y ago
  Read yourself.
- mbostleman 4y ago
  This post is getting downvoted, but it does bring up an interesting point. The idea of judging a book by it's cover seems to be universally criticized. But especially with movie trailers, it can be unambiguously clear how the movie is being sold and what the intent is. I haven't seen Cuties or its trailer, so I'm not speaking specifically about it. But I would say trailers say quite a bit more about a movie than covers say about books. OP said that the movie was actually a criticism of child sexualization. If that's the case (which it may or may not be) and the trailer would generally be considered as instead selling child sexualization (which it may or may not), then there's something missing unless the trailer is being ironic, which seems unlikely given that the topic doesn't seem like a very appropriate subject for irony.
krona 4y ago
> hypersexualisation of young girls Which is what the producers did to create it in the first place. Hence why it was unethical. I'm sure there are some snuff films with interesting character development too.
- _gabe_ 4y ago
  I really don't understand why people are down voting you for this. The end does not justify the means. There are much better ways to tell the story of how young girls are hypersexualized without sexualizing the young girls in the process. You don't have to watch a documentary on the Zodiac Killer and get presented with unedited video of him actually killing his victims to understand that he was an evil individual. And you don't have to watch: > Frequent scenes of 11-year-old girls dancing lewdly where the camera pans in and zooms in on the children's buttocks and midsections (both still in skin-tight clothes) Close up shots of the girls dancing with their leg spread above their head while camera focus on crotch area. These views are fairly frequent. > Four preteen girls mimic the dance movements they see in hip-hop/rap music videos including: slapping each other's buttocks, kissing their hands and then touching their crotches, rubbing their buttocks together, and making seductive faces while sticking their fingers in their mouth. > Two young girls in bed view the dance routine of a rival dance team. One (considerably older) girl from the rival team, Sweety Swag, lifts her shirt and bra and fully exposes her right breast. To understand that the sexualization of young girls is bad. All those descriptions are from the IMDB parents guide https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity
- lukifer 4y ago
  I've heard it quipped that there's no such thing as anti-war movie. No matter how searing the criticism, no matter how horrifying the violence: war simply looks good on the screen, and the spikes of adrenaline we get during a war film excite us. The same could be said of films with any form of taboo sexuality, even when done in the spirit of satire or social criticism. > I'm sure there are some snuff films with interesting character development too. The criticism is absolutely worth considering, regarding the ethics of production. But it's worth contrasting like-with-like (not to shut down the argument, but to try to define the boundaries): - Was the production of "The Professional" or "Taxi Driver" ethical? Both films sexualized young girls; and in the former case, Natalie Portman found the experience (particular the response and aftermath) moderately traumatic, and explicitly avoided roles with any sexuality until her late twenties. - Was Kubrick's directorial process ethical, particularly in regard to The Shining, where he was blatantly abusive to Shelley Duvall (charitably, to elicit the best performance)? If that instance is over the line, exactly how hard are directors allowed to be on actors, and how much explicit prior consent should be necessary for "method directing"? - To what extent is child labor in film-making ethical to begin with? We've converged on 14 as the minimum age for W-2 employment (notwithstanding family businesses, kids with apps, kids with YouTube channels, and "off-books" tasks for pocket money). If hiring a kid for a movie is fine, why can't that same kid sweep floors at a gas station? We could say "because there's no other way to make realistic movies"; but that's not that different from "there's no other way to tell a story about coming-of-age in a hyper-sexualized world". - To what extent should such limitations be a product of individual ethical choices, vs social norms / taboos, vs "market ethics" (boycotts), vs public law and policy (either in the sense of labor laws, or indecency constraints on expression)? Again, not saying that criticizing the production of Cuties isn't valid, or appealing to the status quo, and definitely not making some backdoor argument against child labor laws or age-of-consent; just that these questions are larger in scope, and don't have obvious answers.
flavius29663 4y ago
would you be fine with a movie criticizing child pornography, but ending up doing a little bit of CP (fake, of course, but still CP)? I guess the parent is making a similar comparison. I am not that enraged by this, but I haven't watched the movie. I am very weary of any "think of the kids" outrage, it's usually bullshit...except the LGBTQ indoctrination at a young age, that is real. We ended up having 21% of young people to identify as LGBTQ. You can't convince me that this is the base rate and up until now 1 in 5 people were LGBTQ but were just afraid of coming out. https://www.axios.com/2022/02/17/lgbtq-generation-z-gallup https://www.axios.com/2022/02/17/lgbtq-generation-z-gallup
- antifa 4y ago
  > I am very weary of any "think of the kids" outrage, it's usually bullshit...except the LGBTQ indoctrination at a young age, that is real That is probably one of the most obviously not real moral panics you could possibly fall for. > You can't convince me that this is the base rate and up until now 1 in 5 people were LGBTQ but were just afraid of coming out. Why not? They use to not tell anyone because they were afraid of being murdered, that seems like the most obvious explanation, application of occams razor, etc..
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    If my math is not wrong, the murder rate for trans people is actually lower than the general population https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2021 https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-tra... https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we-know-about-the-increase-in-u-s-murders-in-2020/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we-kno... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227946/
    - virgildotcodes 4y ago
      I mean, if you want to give his point a generous interpretation, replace murder with bullying/alienation/etc. Seems rational that in a less hostile environment, a greater percentage of LGBTQ people would feel more comfortable exploring their sexuality and coming out as such.
justinmchase 4y ago
You don't need to seem much to realize the movie is sick and if you watched it and didn't think it was sick then there's something wrong with you.

_gabe_ 4y ago

I respectfully disagree. I haven't seen cuties, but I just watched the trailer. The movie may be a good thoughtful coming of age movie, but the trailer (at least in my opinion) did not characterize that at all. If I watch a trailer and it seems to indicate a movie that's about the sexualization of very young girls, I think it's perfectly fine for me to cancel my subscription without watching the movie. You may disagree with that sentiment, and that's fine, but I think that many people who did not watch the movie had seen the trailer and had a similar reaction that I just had.

aftbit 4y ago
I'm not sure you're disagreeing. It seems more like you are proving the parent post's point. You didn't watch the movie, yet you had an emotional reaction to it anyway, and used that to make a decision about the service. The parent isn't saying that's unethical or anything, just that the movie is being mischaracterized by people who did not watch it.
- _gabe_ 4y ago
  Because I choose not to watch something that implies it may be sexualizing young girls? So by this logic if you see a trailer for a movie that's highlighting the dangers of child pornography, but from the trailer it seems to be showing and possibly promoting child pornography, and I choose not to watch that because I don't want to unwittingly view a film that promotes child pornography, I have now unreasonably cast judgment on this film? I don't think that it's unfair for me to criticize a film if the way they promote it seems to insinuate it's a film about ethically horrendous and illegal material. The producers created the trailer to promote the film. If the trailer looks like it's promoting ethically perverse material, I have every right to cast my judgment at that point and say this film is not for me. I'm not going to sit through a film that seemingly promotes itself as the sexualization of young girls because someone told me that it has a good message at the end. And that's fine. And it's fine for people to cancel a subscription because of that presumption. I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to stuff like this.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    Argument would have been more compelling if it had begun "Oh I see your point, so I just sat down and watched the whole movie and after that I still think..."
  - margaretdouglas 4y ago
    The marketing material for the movie was absolute dog water. I agree with your position there, but wish you'd take other sources and allow them to add color to your reaction to something you have only a single perspective on. Perhaps they could in form you that your reaction, based on bad information, is inaccurate. Perhaps you could use that realization as an opportunity to view the film yourself and come to your own conclusion based on the new information that your initial reaction was heavily biased based on an inaccurate portrayal of the material.
    - _gabe_ 4y ago
      I'm genuinely curious then. Is the IMDB parents guide enough of an outside perspective for me to determine whether or not I want to watch a film? I'll frequently look it up to see if the film contains any material that I don't want to see, and I'll avoid the film if I get a bad perception from the parents guide. After reading the parents guide about this film it has only reinforced what I originally thought from the trailer. I'm fine with watching a documentary that highlights the evils of the sexualization of young girls, but I'm not going to watch: > Frequent scenes of 11-year-old girls dancing lewdly where the camera pans in and zooms in on the children's buttocks and midsections (both still in skin-tight clothes) Close up shots of the girls dancing with their leg spread above their head while camera focus on crotch area. These views are fairly frequent. And much more content like that just to get to the conclusion that the sexualization of young girls is evil. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity
  - karaterobot 4y ago
    Yes, it is unreasonable to cast judgment on something you have no knowledge of. You may cast judgment on the trailer if you like, since you've seen that, but not the film, which you haven't seen. I don't find this complicated, having seen many trailers that don't accurately portray the films they're advertising, just as I've seen many books that shouldn't be judged by their covers.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Another way to interpret the GP is that even if the movie itself was a great coming-of-age story, the trailer Netflix made to promote it was disgusting and unacceptable. That seems reasonable enough to me. (Note that I’ve watched neither the movie nor the trailer.)
  - nicolas_t 4y ago
    Ok, that I'll concede, the trailer which I saw after watching the movie was really really bad. Very poor and tone deaf marketing.
danlugo92 4y ago
Read yourself.
mbostleman 4y ago
This post is getting downvoted, but it does bring up an interesting point. The idea of judging a book by it's cover seems to be universally criticized. But especially with movie trailers, it can be unambiguously clear how the movie is being sold and what the intent is. I haven't seen Cuties or its trailer, so I'm not speaking specifically about it. But I would say trailers say quite a bit more about a movie than covers say about books. OP said that the movie was actually a criticism of child sexualization. If that's the case (which it may or may not be) and the trailer would generally be considered as instead selling child sexualization (which it may or may not), then there's something missing unless the trailer is being ironic, which seems unlikely given that the topic doesn't seem like a very appropriate subject for irony.

krona 4y ago

> hypersexualisation of young girls Which is what the producers did to create it in the first place. Hence why it was unethical. I'm sure there are some snuff films with interesting character development too.

_gabe_ 4y ago
I really don't understand why people are down voting you for this. The end does not justify the means. There are much better ways to tell the story of how young girls are hypersexualized without sexualizing the young girls in the process. You don't have to watch a documentary on the Zodiac Killer and get presented with unedited video of him actually killing his victims to understand that he was an evil individual. And you don't have to watch: > Frequent scenes of 11-year-old girls dancing lewdly where the camera pans in and zooms in on the children's buttocks and midsections (both still in skin-tight clothes) Close up shots of the girls dancing with their leg spread above their head while camera focus on crotch area. These views are fairly frequent. > Four preteen girls mimic the dance movements they see in hip-hop/rap music videos including: slapping each other's buttocks, kissing their hands and then touching their crotches, rubbing their buttocks together, and making seductive faces while sticking their fingers in their mouth. > Two young girls in bed view the dance routine of a rival dance team. One (considerably older) girl from the rival team, Sweety Swag, lifts her shirt and bra and fully exposes her right breast. To understand that the sexualization of young girls is bad. All those descriptions are from the IMDB parents guide https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity
lukifer 4y ago
I've heard it quipped that there's no such thing as anti-war movie. No matter how searing the criticism, no matter how horrifying the violence: war simply looks good on the screen, and the spikes of adrenaline we get during a war film excite us. The same could be said of films with any form of taboo sexuality, even when done in the spirit of satire or social criticism. > I'm sure there are some snuff films with interesting character development too. The criticism is absolutely worth considering, regarding the ethics of production. But it's worth contrasting like-with-like (not to shut down the argument, but to try to define the boundaries): - Was the production of "The Professional" or "Taxi Driver" ethical? Both films sexualized young girls; and in the former case, Natalie Portman found the experience (particular the response and aftermath) moderately traumatic, and explicitly avoided roles with any sexuality until her late twenties. - Was Kubrick's directorial process ethical, particularly in regard to The Shining, where he was blatantly abusive to Shelley Duvall (charitably, to elicit the best performance)? If that instance is over the line, exactly how hard are directors allowed to be on actors, and how much explicit prior consent should be necessary for "method directing"? - To what extent is child labor in film-making ethical to begin with? We've converged on 14 as the minimum age for W-2 employment (notwithstanding family businesses, kids with apps, kids with YouTube channels, and "off-books" tasks for pocket money). If hiring a kid for a movie is fine, why can't that same kid sweep floors at a gas station? We could say "because there's no other way to make realistic movies"; but that's not that different from "there's no other way to tell a story about coming-of-age in a hyper-sexualized world". - To what extent should such limitations be a product of individual ethical choices, vs social norms / taboos, vs "market ethics" (boycotts), vs public law and policy (either in the sense of labor laws, or indecency constraints on expression)? Again, not saying that criticizing the production of Cuties isn't valid, or appealing to the status quo, and definitely not making some backdoor argument against child labor laws or age-of-consent; just that these questions are larger in scope, and don't have obvious answers.

flavius29663 4y ago

would you be fine with a movie criticizing child pornography, but ending up doing a little bit of CP (fake, of course, but still CP)? I guess the parent is making a similar comparison. I am not that enraged by this, but I haven't watched the movie. I am very weary of any "think of the kids" outrage, it's usually bullshit...except the LGBTQ indoctrination at a young age, that is real. We ended up having 21% of young people to identify as LGBTQ. You can't convince me that this is the base rate and up until now 1 in 5 people were LGBTQ but were just afraid of coming out. https://www.axios.com/2022/02/17/lgbtq-generation-z-gallup https://www.axios.com/2022/02/17/lgbtq-generation-z-gallup

antifa 4y ago
> I am very weary of any "think of the kids" outrage, it's usually bullshit...except the LGBTQ indoctrination at a young age, that is real That is probably one of the most obviously not real moral panics you could possibly fall for. > You can't convince me that this is the base rate and up until now 1 in 5 people were LGBTQ but were just afraid of coming out. Why not? They use to not tell anyone because they were afraid of being murdered, that seems like the most obvious explanation, application of occams razor, etc..
- flavius29663 4y ago
  If my math is not wrong, the murder rate for trans people is actually lower than the general population https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2021 https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-tra... https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we-know-about-the-increase-in-u-s-murders-in-2020/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we-kno... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227946/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5227946/
  - virgildotcodes 4y ago
    I mean, if you want to give his point a generous interpretation, replace murder with bullying/alienation/etc. Seems rational that in a less hostile environment, a greater percentage of LGBTQ people would feel more comfortable exploring their sexuality and coming out as such.

justinmchase 4y ago

You don't need to seem much to realize the movie is sick and if you watched it and didn't think it was sick then there's something wrong with you.