'Cuties'
On its face, the current controversy over Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties is a classic case of a movie being advertised as something it’s (allegedly) not. The French film, starring Fathia Youssouf as an 11-year-old girl who befriends a group of dancers at school and begins coming to terms with her burgeoning sexuality, is by all-accounts not an exploitation flick or a crass exercise in sexual vulgarity that happens to center on a handful of pre-teen girls. The film’s initial Netflix
Parents Television Council president Tom Winter condemned the movie in a statement by saying “the only motivation” for producing such a film is “to sexualize children and to fuel the appetites of those who would feed on the sexualization of children.” If I may, that such a motive could be the “only” reason for making a movie focusing on young girls coming to terms with the sexuality says a lot. Maybe, just maybe, Doucouré’s (a Black woman, by the way) feature is intended for young girls who themselves are coming to terms with their sexuality and/or their potentially discomforted parents. Once again, it’s up to girls to protect boys and men from their own uncontrollable libidos. The notion of a girl’s coming-of-age need not be defined by boys and men who might see that as a license to do harm.
The cruel joke is that, with Netflix having apologized and removed the poster from their official materials, the backlash is arguably a raging success, as everyone is now talking about an otherwise obscure Sundance acquisition and the film is now “news.” I cannot say for certain whether the film will debut to higher viewership numbers when it drops on Netflix on September 9, but it can’t hurt. Because Netflix movies can be viewed anywhere, as opposed to a theater, it’ll be that much easier for the merely curious to sample the film versus making an explicit trip to the theater. That’s different than other “nicked-by-controversy” flicks like Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody’s Tully (which was wrongfully portrayed as being a farce unsympathetic to post-partum depression) or Damien Chazelle’s First Man (which got embroiled in an entirely fabricated controversy arguing that it contained no American flags).
We all discussed Universal’ delaying Blumhouse’s The Hunt after it got smeared by accusations that the movie was a fiercely political screed arguing that “red state Americans” deserved to be murdered by “blue state elites,” but nobody actually showed up to see it in theaters. To a certain extent, these kind of false flag controversies (like a fake video that implied that a dog was abused on the set of A Dog’s Purpose) only matter for smaller films that audiences didn’t much want to see anyway. Sony took opening weekend heat for Peter Rabbit’s scene of our rabbit hero attempting to murder his rival (who was, to be fair, trying to murder him) by exploiting his food allergy, but the PG-rated family flick still legged out to $115 million domestic from a $25 million debut. It certainly didn’t hurt Joker last year.
If Cuties (titled Mignonnes in France) was a theatrical feature, I would argue that the controversies and mea culpas wouldn’t do a damn thing for its eventual theatrical fate. But as a Netflix acquisition, when all it takes is a touch of a button to see what all the fuss was about, well, it’s a different equation. Do I think Netflix intentionally sold the film in a provocative manner in order to drum up SEO-friendly publicity for an otherwise under-the-radar foreign flick? Maybe, marketing is marketing and a keen understanding of how the media works in 2020 would show them that this was actually a viable clickbait-friendly strategy. Or, more likely, they made a poster with four kids in dance costumes which wouldn’t be out of place at any dance recital and are now contending with the film’s director getting chased off social media.
It’s just as likely that the film was initially sold in a way, at least in terms of the poster art (even a cursory glance at the 75-second trailer would have told folks what the movie actually was), that would have theoretically appealed to the Netflix subscribers who watch shows like Dance Moms (which is not on Netflix), their hit Cheer docuseries along with oodles of teen/college dance movies available on the service. It is indeed unfortunate that the small-scale coming-of-age story has become caught up in this frenzy, although it’s certainly not the first movie to be sold as something bawdier or tawdrier than it actually is. But to what extent is Netflix responsible for those now inclined, even incentivized, to look at every image, every spoken word and every written word and interpret it in the worst possible way?
That said, I imagine this kind of thing won’t become par for the course for Netflix acquisitions. Future filmmakers who might sell their small-scale, coming-of-age dramas and comedies to the streamer might want some kind of promise that it won’t be sold in a way to ignite a firestorm of controversy. This won’t help Netflix’s image as a safe place for diverse/inclusive content any more than their pattern of hyping up such shows (One Day at a Time, Tuca & Bertie, Patriot Act) and then prematurely canceling them. That this controversy involves a French Senegalese Black woman mining her experiences is another issue, namely that folks want diverse voices and then proclaim their stories problematic if those stories don’t line up with their own ideas, but I digress. Come what may, if publicity was the goal, well, everyone is talking about Cuties.
The good news is that this controversy will likely be forgotten about in a matter of days, with the movie itself being allowed to speak for itself on September 9. If the handwringing means that more journalists and critics cover the movie, which in turn leads to higher initial viewership, that might just be a happy ending for this frankly ridiculous situation. Regardless of whatever blame Netflix has for this situation, at least some responsibility should go to folks who, if they really cared (as opposed to those acting in knowing bad faith just to pour gasoline in a fire), could have watched the trailer or did a quick Wikipedia search and very quickly discovered that the film was not what they feared it was. Cuties debuts on Netflix in three ways. It looks… fine?
Meanwhile, for perspective, here’s Roger Ebert’s review of Bring It On...
