Netflix Controversy Over “Cuties“ Continues After an Indictment
The cast of Cuties.
Netflix has been indicted by a grand jury in Texas for promoting “lewd material depicting a child” from the movie Cuties.
The film came under intense scrutiny even before its release, following the streaming platform’s promotional campaign that strayed from the filmmaker’s vision.
A Tyler County grand jury found probable cause for an indictment based on Netflix’s advertisements.
“The legislators of this state believe promoting certain lewd material of children has destructive consequences,” Lucas Babin, the county’s criminal district attorney, said in a statement. “If such material is distributed on a grand scale, isn’t the need to prosecute more, not less?”
Before Cuties, directed by the Franco-Senegalese Maïmouna Doucouré, was released on Netflix in September in the United States, supporters of the film battled accusations of pedophilia and claims that it hyper-sexualized minors. The filmmaker even received death threats — at one point resulting in her departure from social media.
"Things happened fairly quickly because after the delays [due to coronavirus], I was completely concentrating on the film's release in France. I discovered the poster at the same time as the American public," Doucouré told Deadline.
"My reaction? It was a strange experience. I hadn't seen the poster until after I started getting all these reactions on social media, direct messages from people, attacks on me. I didn't understand what was going on. That was when I went and saw what the poster looked like."
Before Cuties, directed by the Franco-Senegalese Maïmouna Doucouré, was released on Netflix in September in the United States, supporters of the film battled accusations of pedophilia and claims that it hyper-sexualized minors. The filmmaker even received death threats — at one point resulting in her departure from social media.
"Things happened fairly quickly because after the delays [due to coronavirus], I was completely concentrating on the film's release in France. I discovered the poster at the same time as the American public," Doucouré told Deadline.
"My reaction? It was a strange experience. I hadn't seen the poster until after I started getting all these reactions on social media, direct messages from people, attacks on me. I didn't understand what was going on. That was when I went and saw what the poster looked like."
“I really put my heart into this film. It’s actually my personal story as well as the story of many children who have to navigate between a liberal western culture and a conservative culture at home ”
Netflix’s choice of movie poster was a particular cause of contention among social media users, who expressed outrage well before seeing the film. The streaming platform would later call the artwork ‘inappropriate.’
“We're deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties,” Netflix tweeted. “It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film, which won an award at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.”
The backlash resulted in a surge of Netflix cancelations before the film came out, which peaked at five times the rate of January 2019 before stabilizing to past levels about a week after Cuties was released, according to Newsweek.
Much of the criticism has been cruel and unfair, particularly considering the filmmaker’s goal is to critique a world where girls are sexualized through age-inappropriate dance routines. “I wrote this film after I spent a year and a half interviewing pre-adolescent girls, trying to understand their notion of what femininity was, and how social media was affecting this idea,” the director told Deadline. “The main message of the film is that these young girls should have the time to be children, to enjoy their childhood, and have the time to choose who they want to be when they are adults. You have a choice, you can navigate between these cultures, and choose from the elements of both, to develop into your own self, despite what social media dictates in our society.”
A spokesperson for Netflix told Newsweek about the indictment: "Cuties is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children. This charge is without merit, and we stand by the film."
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