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I guess to bring it back to my slavery movie comparison there has to be better ways to show these horrific topics without just being blasted with visceral imagery, and with how much media has already done this type of stuff it turns into viewer fatigue and borderline exploitation
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Sep 11, 2020 16:17
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The movie can be a thoughtful piece on the tension between conservative Senegalese values clashing with Parisian sexual liberalism and how kids are easily entrapped in dangerous situations under the guise of personal liberation while the advertising is all about titilation and edginess. Netflix is definitely on the hook for making a very stupid, careless, and crass approach to marketing it, and people are right to condemn it. Especially in our current climate where Hollywood is under scrutiny for how the industry preys on young women. Though the response in this thread of "of course it's a pedo movie, it's French" is also pretty stupid and lazy. In short, it's a mistake to declare Cuties a pedo movie, but it's not wrong to castigate Netflix for trying to present it like it is.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:18
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John Hodgeman wrote a pretty good pilot that almost got made for FX that was a coming of age story but he played himself as a child and an adult woman played his girlfriend. It has a scene where he was on a date with a normal kid and was like "You know something about this seems wrong I'll see ya later"
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Sep 11, 2020 16:20
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Is there a thoughtful piece to even extract from Senegal values against French sexual liberalism? Is the movie trying to say African conservatism is better than pedophilia or that French sexuality identity hinges on it? I’m kinda confused on that very thing too but I guess I kinda shifted the original argument in my rant
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Sep 11, 2020 16:21
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I’m reminded of Leon: The Professional, where the creepy Luc Besson wrote the Nathalie Portman character to be this horny little 12 year old who tries to give her virginity to Jean Reno, and he couldn’t convince Luc to change it enough to not be creepy, so Jean makes the executive call to play the role as an emotionally stunted simpleton, like barely above Of Mice and Men style, to keep the relationship non-sexualized and pure. Jean Reno is a good dude even if that’s an extremely weird way of saving the day.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:22
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PT6A posted:There's this, and also upon further thought, a huge part of it is the idea that the male viewer is somehow the intended or default viewer. What if, and follow me on this one here, a coming-of-age film featuring girls and directed by a woman, drawing from influences in her life, is not really made for men at all? That's not to say that films have to be gender-specific by any means, but inasmuch as art is a form of communication, what if the intended audience for this film, which is in essence a commentary on issues that primarily affect women, is... women? Female pedophiles are a thing too. Also, I agree with the poster above, even if the film had good intentions, it still basically ended up doing the same thing to children that it was criticizing against. Different motives doesn't make it right. I imagine a few years down the line we will hear about one of the child actors that regretted doing the film.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:23
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Whole lotta tipper gore rear end posting in the last page or so
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Sep 11, 2020 16:33
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Professorjuggalo posted:Is there a thoughtful piece to even extract from Senegal values against French sexual liberalism? Is the movie trying to say African conservatism is better than pedophilia or that French sexuality identity hinges on it? I’m kinda confused on that very thing too but I guess I kinda shifted the original argument in my rant I mean, a woman of Senegalese descent growing up in Paris would probably have an experience worth talking about? This isn't like Maïmouna Doucouré made up the whole phenomenon, these dance groups are a real thing happening in Paris right now. And you don't have to declare that all of the West is verboten or say that pedophilia is the price of liberty, you just have to face the truth that being in an immigrant community has cultural hardships. Girls in conservative families want to rebel, rebellion is often exploited by predators, this is a story you encounter with Hispanic culture in America, liberals in Iran, literally anywhere you have a contrast between conservative and liberal sexual mores. Yes, sex positivity is good. Yes, it's good for entertainment to have a sexual element. But we also have serious concerns about how those values can be hijacked for grooming kids—but we want to combat that without giving ammo to Puritanical and controlling parents.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:33
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Quote is not edit, my bad.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:33
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Part of the problem is that people are loving dumb. If you have a slavery movie that does not show the brutality and inhumanity of slavery, just puts it offscreen or something, people will see the movie and proudly proclaim how not bad slavery is. I don't really think it's possible to have an effective movie about how society is teaching young girls that they are sex objects without some gross objectification. If it doesn't feel gross people are just going to "I had barbies when I was a kid what's the big deal" pooh-pooh it away. The message of the movie isn't "hey look at these hot tweens dancing" it's "These are YOUNG GIRLS who chose to act this way because society told them that's how girls are supposed to be and that's wrong". I'm not going to watch that clip because it's entirely without context. I will watch the movie, to see how it handles things.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:37
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Professorjuggalo posted:I guess to bring it back to my slavery movie comparison there has to be better ways to show these horrific topics without just being blasted with visceral imagery, and with how much media has already done this type of stuff it turns into viewer fatigue and borderline exploitation You can have a coming-of-age story with child actors where a character has an experience with sexuality, but it would be better to do that through narration (e.g. by the character's now-adult voice) or implication than by having the actors to simulate the act. Even in previous cases where the child actors don't know the implication of what movements they were doing, the parents consented, and even without the camera focusing where it shouldn't, there is still the potential that the child actor feels violated once time passes and realize what they were doing.
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Sep 11, 2020 16:42
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Blaming french liberalism for the dance scenes is pretty short sighted, because you could set the movie in any country with mixed cultures where young children have easy access to social media and the internet. There are huge professional child dance groups and competitions in America that are the same if not worse then anything shown in the film. The most notorious one is from years ago with the children dressed in revealing dance outfits dancing to Beyonce songs to a full audience of cheering parents. The movie is very art house, and all the scenes that people are calling sexual or provocative as stand alone clips are nearly painful to watch during the movie. This seems like another of the movies where the gender of the reviewer is going to have a big impact in how they read the movie's tone. If you find that dance scene erotic or sexual then you are able to completely ignore literally every other sign in the movie that tells you it isn't and that's a individual problem not a film problem. pentyne fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 16:53
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https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1997-12-30-1997364099-story.html And tons of black people were mad at the amistad for being another slave movie where the white man functionally saves another negro again while forcing ethos by blasting you with tried and true imagery. The films gaze is problematic in itself the same way cuties is even if the message/theme is correct. In this aspect django unchained or like hard candy is a way better movie even if there isn’t a lick of historcal accuracy (you can look at the difference in youtube comments between a django scene or American history x scene) You say what I say in the second paragraph where we can do all these these things with a positive gaze on top of good themes/messages. White people didn’t care about amistad but I hated it, and I only learned about this movie from black woman on twitter blowing up about it so the ‘I think woman understand it more than you guys’ flies about as hard as the ‘12 years a slave was made by a black man actually’. There’s already been films that did this topic better with more nuance but even trying to discuss this is a no go?
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Sep 11, 2020 17:05
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I can get Cuties making a statement about oversexualization of children bad, thats totally valid. But it really loving sucks that to make that statement, actual real life children had to do that dance routine, likely hundreds of times to get it just right, in front of probably a hundred actors and film crew members. over and over. and have it recorded and available for anyone to see. over and over, forever. Best case scenario, it fucks over their ability to get "normal" acting roles in the future, they get harassed on social media, and all of their interview question forever are tied to the controversy of the movie. Worst case scenario, a dangerous viewer that missed the point does something dangerous. The points the movie has to make about social media and sexuality are valid and need to be said, but I wonder if there was a safer way to do so? I know the shock is supposed to be the point and drive the ideas in, but way too many people are going to miss the point and take things out of context, and there's plenty of room for the young actresses to suffer for it.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:32
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I suppose you could make it an animated movie. At least then you wouldn’t need to use actual child actors.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:37
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John Wick of Dogs posted:John Hodgeman wrote a pretty good pilot that almost got made for FX that was a coming of age story but he played himself as a child and an adult woman played his girlfriend. This is literally how they did the show Pen 15 on Hulu
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Sep 11, 2020 18:39
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Phylodox posted:I suppose you could make it an animated movie. At least then you wouldn’t need to use actual child actors. This is why Big Mouth works as a show much better than Pen 15 does
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Sep 11, 2020 18:40
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Phylodox posted:I suppose you could make it an animated movie. At least then you wouldn’t need to use actual child actors. The increase of creeps watching the movie then would be incredible, though.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:40
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Grendels Dad posted:The increase of creeps watching the movie then would be incredible, though.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:43
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Professorjuggalo posted:I guess to bring it back to my slavery movie comparison there has to be better ways to show these horrific topics without just being blasted with visceral imagery, and with how much media has already done this type of stuff it turns into viewer fatigue and borderline exploitation Sometimes I think the "show" part is the problem; some stories that are fine in prose become tasteless when translated to a visual medium. Francois Truffaut famously said that there was no such thing as an anti-war movie; he didn't say that there was no such thing as an anti-war novel.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:44
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Phylodox posted:I suppose you could make it an animated movie. At least then you wouldn’t need to use actual child actors. then we gotta fight the extra stigma of "animation is 4 kids so this movie is for children???" This is hard. they'd have to go out of their way to make it look extra gritty and gross. Maybe rotoscope it or something to make it offputting. I could see it working really well if it came out looking kinda gross but realistic like Seoul Station or Aku no Hana.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:45
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Vir posted:In what world would more creeps get off to something like Big Mouth than to actual real children simulating sex acts? It was an anime joke, I have no idea what Big Mouth is.
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Sep 11, 2020 18:45
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Pasketti posted:But it really loving sucks that to make that statement, actual real life children had to do that dance routine, likely hundreds of times to get it just right, in front of probably a hundred actors and film crew members. over and over. and have it recorded and available for anyone to see. over and over, forever. It's a dance routine. Similar dance routines probably happen all over the world on a daily basis, and no one really bats an eye. My sister was in a group 30 years ago that did similar stuff. Not as overtly sexual, but, it was still leotards and pop music and no one batted an eye. I highly doubt anyone was left traumatized by performing a dance with friends in a movie. Pasketti posted:Best case scenario, it fucks over their ability to get "normal" acting roles in the future, they get harassed on social media, and all of their interview question forever are tied to the controversy of the movie. Best case scenario? Oh come on.
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Sep 11, 2020 19:03
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There’s also a case to be made that by making this film, you’re also putting these young actresses in danger simply by exposing them to the film industry and the multitudinous problems it contains re child labor, high powered pedofiles, etc. There’s also virtually no way the actresses understand what the story being told around them is, and maybe using children as sexualized props to tell a story about how sexualizing children is bad is... the wrong approach? “There's no such thing as an anti-war film,” is a quote often attributed to the late French filmmaker François Truffaut. People interpret this as saying “you can’t make an anti war movie without bombs and planes and guns and soldiers and those things actually are all designed kind of to make war look cool and exciting, which negates the point of the film” and I think Cuties is touching a similar issue: You can’t make this movie without inadvertently giving pedos more pedo fuel.
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Sep 11, 2020 19:13
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If a movie is critical of minstrel shows and features scenes of blackface to make its point, are those actors/the filmmakers being racist regardless of context? Serious question.
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Sep 11, 2020 19:54
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Bust Rodd posted:There’s also a case to be made that by making this film, you’re also putting these young actresses in danger simply by exposing them to the film industry and the multitudinous problems it contains re child labor, high powered pedofiles, etc. I can’t recall its name, but there’s some movie out there where the main character goes through hell training for D-Day in Britain, falls in love with some local girl and then dies unceremoniously on a beach within moments of the invasion. Basically the only way an anti-war film can work. E: I was pissed when I watched it as a younger person. The Kingfish fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 20:16
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Just because someone said you can't make an anti-war movie doesn't make it true. That's one man's opinion. I agree that most war movies uncomfortably glorify war, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to do otherwise. At the heart of the issue, I think, is the uncomfortable dualism of film as both art and entertainment. Art can and should challenge us and make us uncomfortable sometimes; it's one of the facilities that humans have in order to wrestle with difficult and disturbing questions and issues, and I don't think film needs to shy away from doing that simply by virtue of the fact that it's a visual medium. If you were to view this film as pure entertainment, it may well seem disgusting. If you look at it as a piece of art which is a personal expression of difficult and disturbing issues that we face individually and as a society, then it might not be your cup of tea, and you might question some of the directorial choices, but I don't think you can say it's disgusting trash that should never have been made. Also, saying that this movie perhaps should not have been made on the off chance that it gives pedophiles "fuel" is like saying women who wear revealing clothes are asking to be harassed, assaulted or raped. If a person is cranking it to this film, that's disgusting, but it's fundamentally a problem with that person, a human being with agency who decided to do a repulsive thing, not the person who made the film.
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Sep 11, 2020 20:24
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Come and See is a successful anti-war film.
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Sep 11, 2020 20:25
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Origami Dali posted:If a movie is critical of minstrel shows and features scenes of blackface to make its point, are those actors/the filmmakers being racist regardless of context? Serious question. I mean.... I loving love tropic thunder and race is just a social construct unlike age. I think I’ve read enough racial theory to say tropic thunder is slightly racist but with how much care it takes in handling it and pure comedy/satire in itself (the blazing saddles exception I guess I’ll call it) it can slide in the grand scheme of blackface history. Maybe a side note that they shoulda handled simple jack as well as the racial stuff. A lot of people can and will go ‘what about whiteface’ but whiteface doesn’t have the cultural or historical weight blackface carries (or any racial caricaturization has) because whiteness is still pretty new and blank in the historical game of race. Black identity only seems so strong because nationalization and tribal/clan systems are long gone for large groups of black people (that’s why biden got in trouble for assuming black people are a monolith very recently). Asians/natives/Hispanic/Arab groups had the same problems for as long as modern fiction has been around but I think blackface is special because it was so used in lockstep with America’s apartheid system, it’s almost a symbol of Jim Crow at this point. Which then multiplies in itself with historical and modern anticolorism that’s in all our media/society (same reason why a top tier black pornstar makes way less than an asian pornstar who’d make less than the Hispanic pornstar and then finally the top billed and paid white pornstar). I think another thing that puts blackface on its own level is even when other races fall and rise in amounts of caricaturization black qualities and blackface itself has always been deemed the worst. It’s easy to say ‘this is just Jim Crow poo poo from America’ but the Netherlands has that racist Santa helper that sprung up from around the early 20th century and even asian/Hispanic/Arab media’s and lenses view black qualities in horrible lights (you can pull dozens of racist East Asian commercials or look at black treatment itself in South America and the Middle East). So yeah I think even in the best context and meaning it’ll still come off as bad at best or anti-black at worst. Art isn’t just in a vacuum that you can nitpick free of the time and context it was made in. But I love tropic thunder a lot it made me lol so who’s to say at the end of the day. Professorjuggalo fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 20:30
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I think at some level movies have to be exploitive since at the end of the day the purpose of a movie is to have people watch it. I think this can be problematic in movies like Cuties in that I can see what the director wants but that still requires little kids to be exploited in a way to make her point.
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Sep 11, 2020 20:34
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Bust Rodd posted:There’s also virtually no way the actresses understand what the story being told around them is, and maybe using children as sexualized props to tell a story about how sexualizing children is bad is... the wrong approach?
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Sep 11, 2020 20:42
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Timeless Appeal posted:I think that's a bit of a condescending view of the actresses. The concepts the film's discussing are not that heady. Especially since the concepts are absolutely things girls that age especially in the acting world would 100% be aware of. All criticism that stems from "these poor girls just don't understand this" is pretty misogynistic given that the entire problem is female children in repressive sheltered cultures then have no contextual understanding of their gender differences beyond basic proscribed gender roles. When they are then exposed to it absent healthy emotional support and education it can create the issues as shown in the film. pentyne fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 20:58
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Professorjuggalo posted:Is there a thoughtful piece to even extract from Senegal values against French sexual liberalism? Is the movie trying to say African conservatism is better than pedophilia or that French sexuality identity hinges on it? I’m kinda confused on that very thing too but I guess I kinda shifted the original argument in my rant Yeah, why the gently caress does a French Senegalese woman think we should care about her personal experiences? She's not me, why should anyone care?
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Sep 11, 2020 21:15
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Lot of talking heads losing their poo poo over this movie but were apparently fine with Dance Moms running for 9 years.
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Sep 11, 2020 21:17
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Skwirl posted:Yeah, why the gently caress does a French Senegalese woman think we should care about her personal experiences? She's not me, why should anyone care? Idk probably looks like straight up pedobait? I’m African too and think it’s hosed up contrasted to my African or western values. If the message isn’t that strong to begin with then there’s as much merit to dissecting that then there is to the piece of art itself. You constantly keep using her race as some deflection or conflation to everything else you could talk about in the film. And for the 3rd time even with all the messages and themes there’s still something to be said with all this especially in the ‘sexual assault and culture of Hollywood thread’ Last post since I’m obviously just going in circles repeating myself I guess Edit:.If a white Frenchman made the movie then you’d just fall back on the ‘it’s just art we should be able to critique art ok’ and it should be even more damning that the only thing you’re holding as a defense is identity. I’m glad I used 12 years a slave as an earlier example cause I didn’t even know the director was black till well after the fact, it’s still exploitative And since the French already have a history with this material and topic I could just as easily turn around and say it’s some schlocky problematic French film at the end of the day. But that isn’t the core argument Professorjuggalo fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Sep 11, 2020 |
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Sep 11, 2020 21:30
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Babysitter Super Sleuth posted:Whole lotta tipper gore rear end posting in the last page or so
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Sep 11, 2020 22:03
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As others have mentioned, it's a similar issue that good satire has. Good satire is (generally) subtle, and so while the intent is to caricature a subject it's scorning, it can come across as sincerely promoting the subject instead. We already know most people's media literacy is dogshit, which is why something as bombastic as Starship Troopers is read by most moviegoers as sincere/just a hecking good time. There's another problem with Cuties that makes it not directly comparable to something like 12 Years a Slave. The worst reading you could have of a movie like that is that it says the idea of slavery isn't so bad. The movie itself isn't actively committing slavery. A genuine argument against Cuties can be made because itself actively hyper-sexualizes children in order to show how horrible it is. It's committing the crime directly to make a statement. It's not removed from it through being a depiction of something horrible, because that something horrible is itself just a depiction. A depiction of a depiction is effectively the same thing.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:09
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The Kingfish posted:I can’t recall its name, but there’s some movie out there where the main character goes through hell training for D-Day in Britain, falls in love with some local girl and then dies unceremoniously on a beach within moments of the invasion. Basically the only way an anti-war film can work. You're probably thinking of Overlord (1975). Groovelord Neato posted:Come and See is a successful anti-war film. Mainly, I think. I suppose some could latch onto the ending as a recruitment advertisement. It's kind of like how rightists can watch Falling Down (1993) and ignore the last few minutes.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:10
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I met two different people at two different colleges who were there on the GI Bill and said they joined the military because of the movie Full Metal Jacket. And before finding out that bit they had both struck me as pretty smart people.
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Sep 11, 2020 22:14
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Little Miss Sunshine is loving canceled!
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Sep 11, 2020 22:15
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