The discourse around the movie Cuties or Mignonnes is so rancid, all because people feel the need to regurgitate the takes of White American men who felt weird feelings about seeing young girls dance onscreen in a Senegalese French immigrant woman's biopic.
It was about her, as a young girl, being torn between the hyper sexualization fed to young girls of the 2000s from American media and her own deeply conservative religious family life which made her own mother suffer. It's about young girls finally being able to be kids instead of being pressured to grow up too early or try to act a certain way because of overwhelming pressure.
The actual film is mostly meant to incite discomfort and sadness. It's remarkable to me how much the voices of angry uncomfortable White American men who felt weird feelings about dancing kids have been amplified over that of the mostly BIPOC women the film resonated with and was made for.
Excuse the rant. I'm tired of people shitting on a movie they never watched on the word of some YouTuber who hated it because it made him feel uncomfortable to see the effects of American media and culture on young women. Because they don't want to acknowledge or look at a reality so many of us lived and still live.
This film reflected my own childhood in many ways. This was a film that I assumed would be taken in good faith instead of being demonized by people who thought agreeing with Ted Cruz was a totally normal thing to do.
In the very least, if you've never watched this film and aren't planning to, don't take the word of White American YouTubers on how you should feel about it. Try to see how BIPOC women -- especially non American ones -- felt about it, how people actually talked about it before it became the centre of a culture war where centrists and right wing lunatics decided to agree on demonizing it.
Idk if anyone on Tumblr knows about Mignonnes (Cuties) but apparently Netflix advertised everything in a hypersexual way instead of doing what the original filmmaker wanted. 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️
I watched Mignonnes so you don't have to, if you were at all discomfited by the way Netflix's marketing decided to sexualise children in a film critiquing the sexualisation of children.
SPOILERS BELOW
The film is about how both hyperliberal and hyperconservative cultures force girls to grow up too fast. Amy is a first-gen immigrant from Senegal. Her family's culture tells girls they are marriageable once they get their first period, and in anticipation of that she is expected to know how to prepare an entire wedding feast and provide for her two younger brothers.
Amy is disenchanted from this culture when she finds out her dad back in Senegal has married another woman. He will be bringing her to France with him and they will live in the same apartment. Amy's mom tries to put on a brave face and accept it, but it is obvious this move is humiliating for her. Amy's excitement for her dad turns into anger, compounded by her alienation and isolation at school.
The Mignonnes are a dance clique of 4 French girls who are clearly better adjusted to Western culture than Amy. Their ringleader lives in Amy's apartment complex and Amy is clearly enchanted with her because of the way she dances. She wants to be friends with the Mignonnes, but they bully and tease her. So in an attempt to win their approval, Amy learns the dance routine they are practicing for a local competition.
(The infamous "OMG NAKED BOOBIES ON A CHILD" shot is a blink and you'll miss it moment on a music video posted by a rival dance group. The incident is treated like a wardrobe malfunction, the girl quickly covers up, and the camera cuts away. Also, breasts aren't inherently sexual in France so a lot of the morality screaming is really American puritanism at play.)
The girls' antics are rebuffed by the older boys and men they interact with. One such moment is when the girls catfish an older teenager, but when one of them turns on the camera, the boy is visibly uncomfortable and tells them to fuck off. This leads to the girl who turned on the camera to be outcast from the group, which is Amy's avenue into the group. To secure her place, she offers to teach the other girls how to twerk.
This is where the film's dances become more notably uncomfortable. I can tell why people are upset about the sexualisation of children based on only these scenes from the film, but within the context of the film they are treated as a dangerous addiction that is destroying Amy's dignity. She acts more and more "mature" in an attempt to gain the approval of the Mignonnes. In these subsequent dance scenes the camera mimics the angles from a music video, but the child subjects make the overall scene grotesque and uncomfortable.
There is a scene where Amy is pantsed in a fight. This is when she is desperately trying to look "more mature", so the revelation that she still wears "kids' granny panties" is humiliating for her. Once again, the shot is really quick, in the context of a fight, and the Mignonnes come to her rescue quickly. This moment is the tipping point where Amy's outside activity seeps back into her home. She steals her mom's wallet so she and the Mignonnes can go on a shopping spree for more ~mature~ underwear.
Since Amy is in a lower-income first-gen immigrant family, she doesn't have her own smartphone. The girls at her school do, though, so she steals her cousin's smartphone. This is also part of her attempts to become accepted by her peers -- that phone is her first foray into hypersexualised Western online culture and part of her first major interaction with the Mignonnes. It is also part of the worst thing she does: post an inappropriate photo of herself online.
The film clearly shows her reasoning for doing so: she is deep in social media at this point and needs more and more provocative actions to score the same high. The Mignonnes were humiliated by the pantsing incident and need something to show they're "not kids" (even though they are). Amy doesn't know it's inappropriate to post that kind of photo online. She does it anyway. And she is punished by both her home culture and Western culture for doing it.
There is a scene here where her mother and auntie sprinkle her with water, presumably to purify her from her sins. Amy becomes overwhelmed with some sort of emotion and starts half-twerking in front of them. The camera circles her entire body when she does so. It really makes her look possessed, which is why her mother calls in an imam (I think?) to check her for demons. The man tells her mother there are none, and reminds her that she is free to divorce her husband if she cannot bear the stress and humiliation of this impending wedding. "God does not burden women with more than they can bear," he says, making a clear distinction between Islam as a religion, and Islam as a tool used by a patriarchal culture to force the submission of women.
Amy is also rejected from the Mignonnes (and they welcome the other girl back in). They tell her she acted like a slut and ruined their reputation, completely uncaring that they were responsible for her actions up to this point. The line is clearly: you can twerk and lick your finger and bite your lips and do all the other stuff that the women in music videos do, but you cannot post nudes. Amy doesn't know that's the line. She tries to justify her actions and is only pushed away by the other girls.
(I should also mention, the actual action of her taking the pictures does not show you anything. The camera keeps itself above the belt outside of dance scenes. You know what she's doing based on the glow of the phone screen and the tops of her knees. You never see the photo itself, either. That, to me, tells me more about the film's treatment of these kids more than the dance scenes.)
So with this further isolation from both of her cultures, Amy grows increasingly desperate. On the day of her dad's arrival and wedding, she tries to push her way back into the Mignonnes for their final dance. This feels like an act of self-harm at this point, but Amy needs that high of having friends and getting approval (since she's not getting any of it at home). The dance is horrifically provocative, and many people in the audience are uncomfortable. The fact that Netflix decided to focus on this scene in their marketing campaign subverts the entire point of the film, since anyone who only watches the trailer would not know Amy was self-harming by dancing like this at this point.
Amy receives an awakening in the middle of the dance. She realises this is also not what she wants to do -- she doesn't want to be viewed as a prospective wife OR a prospective whore. So she runs off, rejecting the Mignonnes.
(There is a scene earlier on when Amy gets her first period and the auntie tells her that she herself had been engaged at Amy's age, and after she got her first period she had only a couple more years before she was properly married. Also the second wife is heavily implied to be only a couple years older than Amy. This is not framed in the context of Islam but rather in the context of Amy's family's culture.)
In the end, however, Amy manages to find a middle ground between her two cultures, and rejects the expectation from both for girls to become women before they're ready to. She rejects both the hyperfeminine dress sent from Senegal for her dad's wedding as well as the risque dance outfit, and dresses like a kid to go jump rope with other kids in the neighborhood. When she finally gets to act like a kid, she is happy.
I could honestly say more about the film's use of that dress from Senegal as a magical realism plot point, the relationship between Amy and her mother, and how the camera is a stand-in for Amy's mental processes and perceptions. But given the current puritan fervour on the Internet about how the film is "paedobait" I felt obliged to write up the film so people can be aware of how the subject is actually handled in the film itself and make their own judgement as to whether or not to watch it. I personally thought it was more evocative of the immigrant experience; I remember making many of Amy's mistakes when I was growing up (but thankfully mostly not offline, lmao).
So: are the dance scenes disturbing? Yes. That's the point. I would be more concerned if you were NOT disturbed by the dances. Is the film sexualising the kids? I personally think this is an example of depiction =/= endorsement. Would creeps use the dance scenes for their own ends? Yes, but creeps also used to use innocent YouTube videos of kids doing gymnastics and ballet or playing at the beach, which is why all YouTube videos for kids now have comments disabled. So dogpiling a woman of colour for talking about her own experience through film, accusing her of being a paedophile, and sending her death threats is incredibly excessive.
Also, the original accusation of this film being paedobait originated from 4ch*n, a known internet cesspool of racist paedophiles, so really. Are we really going to take 4ch*n at their word. Do your research, everyone.
By the time you could watch it on Netflix, heated controversy had already brought notoriety to Cuties. A botched marketing poster and a viral clip had eclipsed the entire film. I watched it early, as the call to cancel Netflix subscriptions due to the film’s content was so loud that I felt there was a real chance that the platform would pull the movie (Netflix, to its credit, stood by the film and its director for the entirety of this fallout).
The claim: Netflix is promoting child pornography by showing pre-teen girls performing highly sexualized dance moves.
The counter: Cuties is a film that criticizes a culture that sexualizes children.
It’s true that the things that upset people about this film are the same things that necessitate its message, but Cuties is much more than political shock art. It is first and foremost a personal coming of age story from director Maïmouna Doucouré, who drew from her experience as a child of Senegalese immigrant parents growing up in France. Her story is at the heart of this movie, and it’s something to keep in mind when we watch Amy, the 11-year old protagonist of Cuties, as she tries to exist in the uncomfortable realm between girlhood and womanhood.
Like all girls this age, Amy is astute enough to perceive what’s going on with the adults around her. When she observes the purity culture in which her mother and aunt are attempting to raise her, she begins looking for other examples of what adulthood might look like. In an early scene, Amy longingly glances at her brother who is playing and horsing around while she is forced to attend women’s prayers. Later, she gives this same jealous glance to the popular girls practicing dance moves at her school.
Cuties explores a time in childhood where becoming an adult seems to be the most freeing possibility, but you’ve yet to understand the tools you need to accomplish it. Amy in particular is seeking tools to liberate herself from what feels like an oppressive fate as she watches her mother pretend not to be in pain at the thought of her husband bringing home a new wife. The tools that Amy finds are commonplace for most children: new peers, an after-school activity, social media, and all of the pitfalls that accompany it. The first time Amy posts a photo of herself online, it feels revelatory. Showing her face in this new way is a form of ownership and autonomy she has not experienced before, and as she receives a heart reaction, it’s like watching someone take the first hit of a drug. It’s a new form of currency.
This currency - being seen, being desired, being on exhibit for the approval of others - is the crux of Cuties and a large part of what upsets people about it. Amy and her new group of friends choreograph their dance based on hip hop music videos they have seen on their phones, and they perform with the brazen fearlessness of teen girls who have just discovered a superpower. Their confidence is intoxicating, and Amy latches onto it with the desperation of someone who fears she has no other options.
The girls, of course, do not understand this superpower, only that it is powerful. Cuties is very much about using sex appeal to feel grown up despite not understanding its consequences. Similar to how boys playact war (in games and in Hollywood), girls too will look at the world we have built for them and respond in kind. What does power look like for a woman? What do we tell girls when they ask us for help? Dancing is a form of joy or play. It is not inherently sexual, just like young girls and their bodies are not inherently sexual. It is the rest of the world that thrusts sexuality upon them before they know how to use it. If you give a young girl no resources to navigate the world, then of course they are going to make do with what they have. Amy’s actual power is her quiet observation, and it’s this skill - observing the world around her - that leads to her incorporating risque dance moves into her act.
Any time we are faced with shocking or upsetting content in art we should start by asking: “Was this made in good faith?” If the answer for Cuties is yes, then we owe it to the storyteller to give it the same chance we give to countless movies that show young men engaging in violence and war. An artist must be careful when using content that could potentially be harmful to people. Doucouré, like all auteurs, is very, very intentional in her filmmaking. It’s not a coincidence that the title - “cutie” - is a word that people use for a dog they want to cuddle, but also a word they use for a person they want to fuck.
The incongruence is jarring. Doucouré continually reminds us that these characters are just children. As they pound gummi candies into their mouths, as they shriek when they find a condom, as they accidentally humiliate themselves with language, objects, and actions they do not comprehend, their defiance is so confident. It is the opposite of what Amy has witnessed from the women in her own home, and Cuties is at its ugliest any time Amy’s newfound freedom is threatened. When the other girls try to exclude her or when someone tries to take her phone away, she lashes out. Horrified at her behavior, Amy’s mother asks at one point, “Who are you, Amy?” For the whole movie, Amy has been asking “What choices do I have?”
How do you become a woman? How do you navigate growing up into something that is loathed, feared, put on a pedestal, and objectified? The fact is that young girls do regularly have to tackle adult issues of womanhood long before they are ready, and when they do, they have no choice but to take their cues from the adults around them. Doucouré is showing us this reckoning through the lens of a young Muslim girl, and Cuties tells her story well.
What might it look like for a young girl to have power that isn’t pulled from a poisonous culture? The closing shot of the film shows Amy jumping rope, and the image is a bit too idyllic, giving no space for the realistic ramifications of what has just transpired in the movie. But it is a moment of relief in a movie that’s been very stressful, making Cuties less a lecture on sexualizing children than a story for young women to see themselves represented. Women who perhaps had to recognize their power only after first being harmed by the way the world sees them. This is not a film for people who think it’s OK to sexualize young women, but rather, a film for women who have suffered and who might feel validated by seeing this story told. People think the content is meant to shock you into being horrified at our culture. And sure, it is. But it is also meant for women who have encountered this story and who have been harmed by this narrative. It’s meant to recognize the stories they have lived through.
I am taking the risk of losing my followers but I'm going to give my two cents anyways because I feel like it'll also clear my conscience. I will try to put my thoughts as objectively as possible without attacking or demeaning any school of thoughts or ideology.
I watched Cuties on Netflix because I wanted to know why it is getting so much backlashes. My conclusion is, I hate this movie and I wish I could unsee this.
Hear me out why.
I did some background checks. This is a French coming-of-age comedy-drama film written and directed by French-Senegalese Maïmouna Doucouré-I am copy pasting this sentence straight from google. The initial poster that Netflix used was really disturbing and points out Netflix’s desperation to draw mass attention-which is plainly disgusting given a room full of people were okay with this idea. Netflix although came up with an apology and replaced the poster, but that doesn’t make this movie any less disturbing for me.
If I want to summarize the plot in a few words- Amy comes from a typical conservative Muslim family which tells her how to act like a Muslim woman. Her father married another woman and her mother was struggling with the reality of raising 3 children in a foreign country on her own. A 11 year old girl is sure to have a lot of confusion about her femininity; a girl that age also feels rebellious given the dysfunctionality of her family. Amy gets drawn to Angelica who was dancing to raggetone while doing laundry. After that, Amy embarked on a journey where she twerked and grinded and made seductive gestures multiple times (which she learned from videos of stripper women wearing little to almost nothing) for dance competition practices with the group, took a picture of her private part and posted it online-just to name a few. These kids wanted to be treated as ‘not just kids’. In the end, Amy had an epiphany (which felt really vague because she started to tear up and left the dance competition for which she did all sorts of questionable things) and began her life as a normal child.
I know that pedophilia, hypersexualization of underage children, child trafficking are all too real issues. I read somewhere that the director wanted to tell this as her story. Did she do a good job? My answer is-not at all. You wanted to tell a story where underage girls dress and act like adults because they feel pressured by society; you could choose documentary style film execution or animated movie. This movie felt like you wanted to say that don’t do serial killing by showing long shots of graphical murder and showing footage from such an angel which feels intentional and at times, I don’t know how to put it in word even, to preach that serial-killing is a crime. It’s a contradiction. You used real underage girls and took uncomfortably long and zoomed shots of their legs spreading, chests and buttocks shaking, grinding on the floor, biting their lips - it felt way too detailed and intentional which I feel like no sane person would want to watch. I couldn’t look at those scenes, it’s really disgusting cause it felt like these girls are way too young to be exposed to this kind of stuff. I heard that a psychotherapist was consulted during shooting this movie but this doesn’t avoid the damage. Children can’t consent, so their parents allowed this to happen, which also felt morally wrong to me. I didn’t want to make a rash decision so I tortured myself to watch it to its entirety and I feel nauseous. I was shocked to see that audiences were clapping while the Cuties group was performing, all actions that I mentioned previously as if it’s normal for some 11 year olds to do these.
This movie has TV-MA certification which means-”This program is intended to be viewed by mature, adult audiences and may be unsuitable for children under 17. Contains content that is unsuitable for children.” So you’re making a movie where some 11/12 year old girls are allowed to do suggestive sexual poses, and only adults can watch it? Why would you endanger children for adult entertainment? Aren’t we supposed to protect kids from harms?
The religious portrayal in this movie is not entirely accurate (I was born and raised as a Muslim) but the movie wanted to depict the underlying conservatism which are superstitious to some extent, and my 2-cents are concerned with these children so I don’t want to drag religion here. Trust me I wanted to make sense of this movie but I couldn’t. My heart broke seeing those girls doing shits like these. Unfollow me if you feel like I’m overreacting with this issue. I just couldn’t swallow it.
EDIT:
If you want to skip my long post, watch this instead. This youtuber articulated the issues thoroughly.
Just wanted to mention that if you support or defend the Cuties movie on Netflix at all, unfollow me right now. That movie is absolutely disgusting. I scrolled through the movie and saw portions of it on Netflix simply because I couldn't believe that they would actually film something like that.
I have no intentions of watching the movie or associating myself with anyone who would.
If you're watching that movie, you're a pedo. You can say that you support the message it sends, but let's get down to it, you're a pedo.
The supposed message of the story seems pure enough, but you don't need to see the movie to know it.
I support making sure little girls aren't being encouraged to make provocative moves or wear inappropriate clothing. That movie, even if you claim that it's trying to support that statement, is showing how little girls get famous by wearing clothes and dancing in an inappropriate way for their age.
There should not be a TV-MA rating for a movie centering around little girls.
This movie should not even exist in my opinion.
As I said before, if you defend it at all, please unfollow me now. I don't want you here.
Concerning the French movie Mignonnes (Cuties) and that whole thing:
It doesn’t so much matters that the woman who created this movie wanted to point out the issues of the media oversexualizing young women, when her movie literally provided the world with more pedophile wet dream material. It doesn’t matter that the message of the movie was supposed to be “see, this is gross, look at these grown men making 11-year olds twerk for them with a closeup of their butts”. YOU PUT THAT ON SCREEN. YOU CREATED MORE MATERIAL FOR PEDOPHILES TO TAKE OUT OF CONTEXT AND DROOL OVER. That’s literally it. If you don’t like kids being sexualized, don’t make a fucking movie like this. Your message doesn’t really matter. Don’t put things like this into the world. Do people really don’t get that?
Regardless of what the director’s motivations were in creating Cuties, the exploitative film sexualizes eleven year old children (11-13 y/o actors) to the point of legally defined pedofilic material under U.S. law.
“But it’s supposed to make you uncomfortable—that’s the point!” BULLSHIT.
There are other ways to get the very important and poignant message of the culture sexualizing children across other than actually sexualizing children.
