i woke up this morning to see hashtag cancel netflix trending on twitter
and decided to see what this was all about unsurprisingly the film cuties is
once again bringing the top streaming service
a ton of backlash if there's anything that will bring the left and the right
together is the topic of child predators but the story around
cuties and hashtag cancel netflix is much more nuanced and it really sheds
a light on the veil many of us willfully pull over our eyes on a daily
basis if you're wondering what people are
saying about cuties on twitter look no further than right-wing
loudmouths like ben racism doesn't exist shapiro ex-infowars
b-team member paul joseph watson and conservative convert tim poole it's
no secret that we live in a world of headline readers and it's really
interesting to me how many movies tv shows
books and other forms of entertainment receive backlash before
anyone has even witnessed them from the outside it's easy to intuitively believe
that this movie is abhorrent and that people should boycott netflix
for allowing it on their platform but what is this movie actually about
recently npr wrote an article about the
controversy and it included quotes from the creator
the french film cuties is being praised for its critique
of the hypersexualization of young girls and the consequences of that as they
rushed to become adults in the age of social media
it began several years ago when filmmaker i'm sorry i don't know how to
pronounce this name mamuna di quare was at a neighborhood
gathering and her jaw dropped a group of young girls in revealing
outfits came out on a stage and performed a choreograph routine
decorate says that they couldn't have been more than 11 years old
and they were dancing very sexually sexually and i was very disturbed about
what i was seeing but instead of passing judgment the
self-taught writer and filmmaker said she wanted to understand what she
was seeing she dove into research interviewing more than 100 adolescent
girls over the course of a year and a half
it's a period that's very specific de quarre says
where you are not any more totally a child and you are not
an adult you are looking for yourself and
everything is changing very fast so on the surface this movie looks like
the twisted fantasy of some sort of child predator but it's
more of a commentary on the massive issue we face today in the age of social
media for example look at the young creators
like danielle cohn who has been sexualized since she was 12
or just flip through tiktok for five minutes and you'll see kids trying to
become the next rich and famous influencer
i don't think people necessarily have a problem with the film
i believe they have a problem with the reality that we're refusing
to face as a culture and that reality is that for
years we've been glamorizing an industry that takes advantage of children and
oftentimes it's to the benefit of the parents if
you need further proof of industries that sexualize
young women and turned a blind eye recall the story of larry nassar
nassar was sentenced to over 300 years in federal prison and these were
for the disgusting crimes that he did against young women who were
gymnasts and he did this for years the story of nisar is complex and i can't do
the victims justice in this short piece by explaining all
the people who neglected to help these young women but in short this
doctor of young female olympic gymnasts spent years
molesting these young women when you hear a story of how a monster like this
got away with this for so long you can't help but ask how much was
ignored because the parents wanted their daughter
to help them get rich and famous as much as people want to signal to the world
that they were against nephilis hosting the movie cuties
the culture as a whole looks extremely hypocritical
the show dance moms premiered in 2011 and it's so successful that it's been on
for eight seasons this is a reality show about
real young women in the industry the writer
and director dicor a is trying to shed some light on what
people don't want to admit is that cuties
isn't a fictional story as mentioned in the npr piece
de quarre interviewed more than 100 young girls and researched this industry
thoroughly this is less of a movie and more of a
documentary this is a prime example of the analogy
that you never want to see how the sausage is made when you understand the
truth about the industry you can no longer enjoy it this movie
puts a spotlight on the shows that we've glamorized like
dance moms and young women like jojo siwa who grew
up in that industry since the dawn of
hollywood parents have been using their kids as cash cows
and as a means to impress their friends the reality is that this
isn't pretty and drew barrymore has very publicly discussed
how she started drinking smoking pot and snorting coke
by the age of 12. today in a world where any kid with a cell phone can get famous
and a vast majority of kids want that reality we should be grateful
for a movie like cuties as a father i know that i'd much rather know what's
going on in the world of child exploitation
than pretend that it's all just the fun world of dance moms
it's a whole lot easier for us to get outraged at a movie on netflix
than it is to face the reality that there are more larry nassars out there
by focusing our energy on trivial things like netflix movies
we don't have to face the reality that people like larry nassar were able to
get away with their heinous acts right under our noses
uh what's up everybody thanks for watching this quick video essay i
actually just posted this up on medium too i had to talk about it
and i'm not saying anything new like when this first started bubbling up i
saw a lot of people saying these things they were saying
that like this woman who created this movie
she was shining a light on what's actually going on
but right now there's this huge movement you know um where it's easy to call all
these things for like being a child predator and all this
other stuff but here at the rewired soul remember
we critically think we don't just look at the surface okay
we dig deeper we try to take things a little bit further and really think
about them and look at the broader picture
like i said this is something that's going on on a daily basis like
in reality but we're wasting valuable time by freaking out over a
fictional movie that is depicting real life you would think that this
movie would be a call to arms for people to start looking into these
industries and doing something about it and doing something about these parents
who are letting this happen to their children you know but one of
the biggest issues that i see today is that when we jump into these outrage
cycles we neglect the real problems that are actually
going on all right but anyways that's all i got for this video if you
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or gets merged from the merch store you're all amazing thanks again for
watching i'll see you next time