"Cuties" Netflix Controversy

Overview

Cuties (original title: Mignonnes) is a French drama film directed by Maïmouna Doucouré centered around an 11-year-old Senegalese Muslim girl (played by Fathia Youssouf) and her experiences with her neighbor's twerking group in Paris, France. The film was originally released on January 23rd at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and is slated for release on Netflix in early September 2020. Online, a campaign was launched against the film by those who felt it sexualized young girls, calling for it to be removed from Netflix. In response, many argued that the film was about the dangers of sexualizing young women, rather than the promotion of it. After a clip from the film began circulating in September 2020, the controversy saw a resurgence on Twitter along with the hashtags "#CancelNetflix" and "#BoycottNetflix."

Background

On August 18th, 2020, Netflix released the official trailer for Cuties on YouTube, where it received upwards of 530,000 views and 14,000 comments within 48 hours. Additionally, the trailer accumulated upwards of 70,000 downvotes compared to 7,300 upvotes.

On the same day, an interview^[7] of Maïmouna Doucouré was released where she explained her motivations to produce the movie: she told the interviewer about a time when she encountered young girls around 11 years of age dancing in suggestive manners while wearing revealing clothing. This shocked Doucouré, who wondered if the young girls were aware of the explicitly sexual nature of their behavior despite their young age. Doucouré later went on to interview several young girls under their praent's authorization on their own thoughts regarding their roles in society as girls and future adult women, and collected stories into what eventually became Cuties.

Netflix Promotion

When a promotion for the film was originally placed for viewing on Netflix, a synopsis stated: "Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family's traditions."

Developments

On August 19th, a Change.org^[1] petition titled "Petition to Remove Cuties From Netflix" was created, which gathered upwards of 34,300 signatures within 24 hours. Meanwhile, Twitter user @MrCable5^[2] tweeted a screenshot of a 4chan moderator post announcing that "imagery from this show which sexualizes children" would not be allowed on the platform and would result in "permanent bans" (shown below, right). That day, the keyword "4chan" became a trending topic on Twitter.

On August 20th, Redditor Kingofnachoe27 posted a screenshot of the cover of the film along with a user-submitted review sexualizing the children in a post tiled "Fuck everyone who decided this was a good idea, and fuck everyone that let it happen, the comment is so disgusting." Within 24 hours, the post gained over 10,400 points (96% upvoted) on /r/cringetopia^[4] (shown below).

On August 20th, the news site Metro^[3] published a statement from Netflix responding to the controversy surrounding the synopsis for the film by stating that the earlier version was "not an accurate representation of the film" and that "the image and description has been updated." The synopsis was updated with the follow: "Eleven-year-old Amy starts to revel against her conservative family’s traditions when she becomes fascinated with a free-spirited dance crew."

On Twitter, user @yeetdere posted a direct comparison of the original movie poster and the promotional image used by Netflix, accusing its marketing team to purposely give the movie a more controversial aspect in order to attract more focus.^[5] A few hours later, the post received over 500 retweets and over 1,000 likes.

Also on August 20th, Netflix posted an apology for the using "inappropriate artwork" for the promotion of the film on Twitter^[6] (shown below). Within three hours, the tweet gained over 7,800 likes, 3,200 quote tweets and 1,200 retweets.

Later on that day, YouTuber Cr1TiKaL/penguinz0 released a video regarding the Netflix promotion of Cuties, quoting the tweet made by @yeetdere and consolidating the blame towards Netflix for the perceived inappropriate promotion of the film, regardless of the original author's intent.

#CancelNetflix

On September 9th, 2020, Netflix released the film. On the same day, Twitter user @GhostJim4 created a Twitter^[8] thread about the film, posting several clips from it, writing that "Netflix is at the forefront of sexualizing children and normalizing pedophilia" and creating a petition^[9] to cancel the film. One of the clips posted by the user,^[10] from a scene in which the scantily dressed girls perform the group dance in front of a public, gained particular attention with over 3.2 million views in one day (shown below).

Someone needs to go to jail for this shit! pic.twitter.com/Ln0CnZSyok

— 𝗚𝗵𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗝𝗶𝗺 (@GhostJim4) September 9, 2020

On September 10th, prompted by several viral tweets^[11][12] by right-leaning journalists and influencers, the controversy went viral on Twitter, with #CancelNetflix hashtag reaching top twitter trends^[13] first in the United States and then worldwide.

Search Interest

External References