(Also, consider the existence of exploitation films, which loudly proclaim how bad X is in order to have an excuse to show X to people who like seeing X.)
Don't understand what is the fuss about it from the conservatives
People who only saw the Netflix poster could have a very different view of the movie and some might even refuse to watch the film.
[0] https://cdn.hobbyconsolas.com/sites/navi.axelspringer.es/pub...
It's actually a good thoughtful coming of age movie that talks about important topics and actually criticises the culture of hypersexualisation of young girls.
The producers created the trailer to promote the film. If the trailer looks like it's promoting ethically perverse material, I have every right to cast my judgment at that point and say this film is not for me.
I'm not going to sit through a film that seemingly promotes itself as the sexualization of young girls because someone told me that it has a good message at the end. And that's fine. And it's fine for people to cancel a subscription because of that presumption. I'd rather be safe than sorry when it comes to stuff like this.
I'm fine with watching a documentary that highlights the evils of the sexualization of young girls, but I'm not going to watch:
> Frequent scenes of 11-year-old girls dancing lewdly where the camera pans in and zooms in on the children's buttocks and midsections (both still in skin-tight clothes) Close up shots of the girls dancing with their leg spread above their head while camera focus on crotch area. These views are fairly frequent.
And much more content like that just to get to the conclusion that the sexualization of young girls is evil.
So much hatred and misery in the world could be avoided if we figured out how to resist this impulse to judge from surface-level impressions.
(Note that I’ve watched neither the movie nor the trailer.)
Which is what the producers did to create it in the first place. Hence why it was unethical. I'm sure there are some snuff films with interesting character development too.
You don't have to watch a documentary on the Zodiac Killer and get presented with unedited video of him actually killing his victims to understand that he was an evil individual. And you don't have to watch:
> Frequent scenes of 11-year-old girls dancing lewdly where the camera pans in and zooms in on the children's buttocks and midsections (both still in skin-tight clothes) Close up shots of the girls dancing with their leg spread above their head while camera focus on crotch area. These views are fairly frequent.
> Four preteen girls mimic the dance movements they see in hip-hop/rap music videos including: slapping each other's buttocks, kissing their hands and then touching their crotches, rubbing their buttocks together, and making seductive faces while sticking their fingers in their mouth.
> Two young girls in bed view the dance routine of a rival dance team. One (considerably older) girl from the rival team, Sweety Swag, lifts her shirt and bra and fully exposes her right breast.
To understand that the sexualization of young girls is bad. All those descriptions are from the IMDB parents guide https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9196192/parentalguide/nudity
> I'm sure there are some snuff films with interesting character development too.
The criticism is absolutely worth considering, regarding the ethics of production. But it's worth contrasting like-with-like (not to shut down the argument, but to try to define the boundaries):
- Was the production of "The Professional" or "Taxi Driver" ethical? Both films sexualized young girls; and in the former case, Natalie Portman found the experience (particular the response and aftermath) moderately traumatic, and explicitly avoided roles with any sexuality until her late twenties.
- Was Kubrick's directorial process ethical, particularly in regard to The Shining, where he was blatantly abusive to Shelley Duvall (charitably, to elicit the best performance)? If that instance is over the line, exactly how hard are directors allowed to be on actors, and how much explicit prior consent should be necessary for "method directing"?
- To what extent is child labor in film-making ethical to begin with? We've converged on 14 as the minimum age for W-2 employment (notwithstanding family businesses, kids with apps, kids with YouTube channels, and "off-books" tasks for pocket money). If hiring a kid for a movie is fine, why can't that same kid sweep floors at a gas station? We could say "because there's no other way to make realistic movies"; but that's not that different from "there's no other way to tell a story about coming-of-age in a hyper-sexualized world".
- To what extent should such limitations be a product of individual ethical choices, vs social norms / taboos, vs "market ethics" (boycotts), vs public law and policy (either in the sense of labor laws, or indecency constraints on expression)?
Again, not saying that criticizing the production of Cuties isn't valid, or appealing to the status quo, and definitely not making some backdoor argument against child labor laws or age-of-consent; just that these questions are larger in scope, and don't have obvious answers.
No answer yet unfortunately.
I'm not sure whether the fact that the director of a movie with a pedophilic subtext was himself involved in an only-slightly-less pedophilic relationship in real life makes the movie itself less ethical to make or to watch, though it certainly doesn't make it any better. Maybe I'm saying that I'm skeptical that a creator who does some immoral thing can make a creation about that same thing with the context and discretion necessary not to glorify it.
I guess the parent is making a similar comparison.
I am not that enraged by this, but I haven't watched the movie. I am very weary of any "think of the kids" outrage, it's usually bullshit...except the LGBTQ indoctrination at a young age, that is real. We ended up having 21% of young people to identify as LGBTQ. You can't convince me that this is the base rate and up until now 1 in 5 people were LGBTQ but were just afraid of coming out. https://www.axios.com/2022/02/17/lgbtq-generation-z-gallup
That is probably one of the most obviously not real moral panics you could possibly fall for.
> You can't convince me that this is the base rate and up until now 1 in 5 people were LGBTQ but were just afraid of coming out.
Why not? They use to not tell anyone because they were afraid of being murdered, that seems like the most obvious explanation, application of occams razor, etc..
https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-tra...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we-kno...
Seems rational that in a less hostile environment, a greater percentage of LGBTQ people would feel more comfortable exploring their sexuality and coming out as such.
No need to be generous, it's a centuries long historic fact.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_LGBT_people
I don't believe this is generally true, and if it was true, I don't believe any doctors prescribing HRT are falling for it, and even if you proved a statistically improbable thing happened once or twice, the ratio of "trans kids hiding in the closet under coercion" to "cis kids pretending to be trans under coercion" would still be something like 999999:1.
Not as good as HBO - but honestly it seems close. If anything - HBO's content seems to be on the decline more than Netflix. It's still top notch, but it used to be outstanding.
Netflix is really mastering the wide appeal & good enough content: 13 Reasons Why, Elite, Bridgerton, Bird Box, etc...
It seems like the shows everyone is talking about are always either HBO or Netflix.
Disney is obviously dominating in popularity at the box office with Marvel.
It's kind of similar to Westworld season 1 or Lost -- there's this style of storytelling where you drop a bunch of interesting clues to lead you towards possible theories about whats really going on, and then all of those threads are dropped on the floor as if they never mattered. I find it abusive and disrespectful to the viewer.
The notable exceptions being Vince gilligan for BB and hopefully BCS, and the Americans team.
It's rare for a TV series to be excellent and stay excellent it's entire life.
This doesn't really seem unique to Netflix.
There's a ton of movies, shows, books - where the first installment is outstanding and the rest are trash.
My favorite example as a kid was Maze Runner. The first book has terrible prose - but is actually pretty well paced and a good story. The second two are utter garbage (fun fact: the editor quit after the first book AND the publisher dropped the author when the first one was the next best selling sci Fi / fantasy since Harry Potter... That's how bad the sequels were).
This happens more times than not.
That was along with the addition of 1) a disclaimer in the form of the actors talking directly to the viewer before the first episode and 2) an intertitle after every episode reminding of it, again with narration from the actors. 3) Trigger warnings before episodes were also added, but to no surprise at this point. What I certainly haven't seen before is such mutilation of a work as accompanying it with material so expressly immersion-breaking!
A song in the soundtrack was also replaced for reasons unknown, but I suppose that falls more into the general topic of silent alterations to published media that online consumption facilitates, an entire discussion to be had on its own.
This is the same trajectory that Disney is taking. They are losing subscribers also as people are becoming tired of the agenda driven content.
https://insidethemagic.net/2022/03/disney-exec-commits-to-50...
"Disney+ added 7.5 million subscribers in Q2, while Netflix struggles." [1]
[1] https://www.investors.com/news/disney-earnings-q2-disney-sto...
Then of course the classic stuff they use is classic because it is good, so the average will go down as they no longer have access to it.
But it also an inherit problem with any movie streaming service that wants to have fresh content, you have to fill the content bucket with something and mass produced low quality stuff is both cheaper and faster to produce.