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Comment by pythonic_hell | Hacker News Reader

Have you watched the movie? At its core it’s a story about how vulnerable children are and how society sexualizes children.

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That they showed by sexually exploiting children in the filming. There is no excusing this - forget about the 'message' - one is watching children in sexually explicit situations and trying to say 'the artistic direction excuses it.'

I think I'm going to sit far far far on the other side of the overton window.

This is a pretty standard film criticism- you can't make a movie about something bad without glorifying it. Scorcese comes in for that a lot, Fight Club, people reading or watching Liar's Poker and feeling inspired, the list goes on.

This is not the same. Nobody actually gets their face broken in fight club, and there are no actual murders filmed in Goodfellas.

Cuties exploits children on camera in an attempt to tell a story about child exploitation.

I'm curious by what standard the film's production sexually exploited the actors, and it's a serious accusation. On first approximation, having watched the film and due to the fact nobody has been prosecuted by and government for the film, I'm inclined to disagree.

Anorher commenter in the thread called it 'child pornography', which is an even wilder claim, from a legal or moral perspective.

The exploitation is on and off camera.

How many audition tapes did they go through in order to choose those 5 girls? 50? 100? Someone sat there and watched dozens of half-nude 11 year old girls twerking on camera. This is disturbing to me. If it isn’t to you then i don’t know what to say.

You're making an assumption that the actresses are chosen on whether or not they can twerk, and then an assumption that the producers of the show (or the audience) see it with a pedophilic gaze. Are parents who read shop catalogues showing children in underwear pedophiles, or looking at the image in that way? How about the people who take the photos?

I really can't see why it would be disturbing, unless the person watching is doing so in service of a pedophilic desire - and you still have to prove that.

I feel uncomfortable watching the trailer, much less the movie. I’m not sure I know anyone who wouldn’t.

Also, I don’t understand that reasoning. You could make a film about the horrors of prison rape. That does allow or require you to film the actual rape.

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