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Peaceful Anarchy posted:Is that the issue they're claiming to rail against? Some people are, but some people in this thread and the other one were railing against the actual exploitation if children, not the imagery itself. For them fake exploitation can be ok as long as no children are harmed in the making, or a documentary is ok because that exploitation is happening anyway so it's just documenting reality. I understand this point of view but I disagree very strongly with it. A documentary of this would not be okay, because an adult would be obligated to step in. Not because the images become magically more offensive, but because it depicts things that would cause real harm if done in real life. If you saw a minor taking a photo of their crotch, first of all, you would not film it, and second of all, you would step in and stop it for obvious reasons. The question of whether the creation of this film is inherently exploitative is a different one altogether. I'm sympathetic to that argument; namely, that the actresses cannot provide informed consent to filming something of this nature even if it's not sexual abuse, and parents cannot consent to it either. I'm sympathetic to it, but I do not agree with it, and the reason I do not agree with it is that I don't believe this film depicts an exceptional circumstance. I think this film depicts issues which are familiar to girls of the actresses' age in general, and I believe in the presence of adequate support (which I've read was provided) there is no reason to believe the filming of this film caused them any harm or duress. God knows the reaction to the film might be causing harm and duress, but I suppose the most ardent supporters of this moral panic don't really give a gently caress about that, because I don't believe their primary concern is the actresses' wellbeing. pentyne posted:The real issue is less about child exploitation and more the recurring message "girls don't think about sex, until they're old enough to have sex with adult men, in which case they are 100% fully informed to consent" I agree. I believe deeper than that, the fundamental concept of female sexuality in a patriarchal society is one where female sexuality exists to satisfy men primarily or exclusively. Lesbians are okay if they're hot and on camera, since that still gets 'er done. Therefore, the idea that female sexuality exists and develops prior to a point where men can take advantage in a way which is completely legal and absolves them of the shame of getting a hard-on of it is just... unspeakable! Why would such a thing even exist? By contrast, male sexuality exists to be satisfied! Therefore it's cool and good that boys of the same age are clumsily navigating the transition between childhood and adulthood and trying to get laid, the devious little scamps. Never mind the fact that boys can be and are sexually abused by adult women as well. If you want a thought experiment, just think how those films would read if the boys were gay and pursuing men instead of women. Oh! It got uncomfortable again, didn't it? That's probably because the issue has never been about the kids, and I think that's the point this movie is trying to make.
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Sep 17, 2020 07:37
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Being supportive of the actors, having psychologist there, making sure the girls are as comfortable shooting the scenes as possible, does that keep them from feeling used and exploited? does a simple talk with a psychologist really heal the feeling of being a trending search term on porn sites? I would find that highly unbelievable.
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Sep 17, 2020 08:52
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EA Sports posted:Being supportive of the actors, having psychologist there, making sure the girls are as comfortable shooting the scenes as possible, does that keep them from feeling used and exploited? does a simple talk with a psychologist really heal the feeling of being This can apply to literally any female child actor in any role ever portrayed in media, and it doesn't even have to just be the preteen girls told to show off their feet on nick shows because Dan Schneider was a pedophile foot fetishist. Mara Wilson made the point that all the people who want to use the words like "exploited" about cuties don't really seem to have a problem with a culture that both incessantly serializes female children in a regular manner and also expects them to be wholly ignorant of any sexual identity until they are of age to consent to sex. https://twitter.com/MaraWilson/status/1304883825789423616 https://twitter.com/MaraWilson/status/1304885731916017664 https://twitter.com/MaraWilson/status/1304886220745371648 Going back to the well of "these poor girls are suffering so much damage from being exposed to this" is such an extremely patronizing and paternalistic view. This is the experience of women and girls in media (and in life) and has been since media consumption became a thing. Quit with the bad faith bullshit of how fragile and vulnerable these little girls are. They aren't china dolls you keep on a shelf and protect, they are living human beings capable of learning and understanding and taking that away from them is exactly what causes the problems the film presents. pentyne fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 09:30
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As a male, if i became a trending topic on a porn site after doing some magic mike routine in a movie, i would feel very betrayed. betrayed by my parents, the adults that choreographed the scene and all of the people involved with it. It would make it hard to trust any adult or so called authority figure for a very long time. having all that extra support would almost make it worse, by vis-a-vis making them all seem impotent. Id like to think i'm not some super fragile person, but maybe i am? I mean, that is where my problem with the scenes lies. Its something that would harm me to see those scenes used that way. I'm certainly not arguing in bad faith, which is something that ive seen claimed literally thousands of times this past month in internet arguments. Please try to be a little more original if you're going to throw ad-homs around.
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Sep 17, 2020 09:47
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EA Sports posted:As a male, if i became a trending topic on a porn site after doing some magic mike routine in a movie, i would feel very betrayed. betrayed by my parents, the adults that choreographed the scene and all of the people involved with it. Maybe don't speak "as a male" when making sweeping declarations about the female experience in media and life. I can't imagine a more bad faith argument then declaring "well, IF I was harassed, I'd feel this way and so should they" when you're a man. As for "scenes used that way", Mara Wilson explained it perfectly clear she played completely non-sexual saccharine roles in kids movies and was subject to sexual harassment by grown men over it. You think there has to be some specific threshold of performance at which women and girls in media will feel "betrayed" by the "response" and the reality is the very moment they appear on camera they are going to get that "response" in some form or another. Seriously, you're doubling down on this patronizing tone and a paternalistic attitude of how bad this girls will feel based on your view, as a man, of what harassment will feel like. News flash they know what it feels like and it's something they are going to have to worry about and face for the rest of their lives regardless of being in a movie or not.
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Sep 17, 2020 09:55
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Though I'm a man I was sexually harassed when i was younger. starting since I was 12. groping, impromptu lapdances, getting called over to peoples cars. even some gay men were brave enough to flirt with me. I know my experience is atypical, but I still wouldn't fell comfortable with millions of people being forced to leer at me in a movie. if my parents pressured me to do this in hopes of stardom and them some psychologist plied me to be comfortable with it i would look back on the whole situation feeling betrayed by society. With regards to the girls ever feeling this way, time will tell. Though I'm not a betting man I feel that in a few years time one of girls will demand this movie be taken down.
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Sep 17, 2020 10:17
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Yeah, I think most men would probably see their Magic Mike routine being a trending topic on Pornhub as a badge of honor.
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Sep 17, 2020 11:21
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EA Sports posted:Though I'm a man I was sexually harassed when i was younger. starting since I was 12. groping, impromptu lapdances, getting called over to peoples cars. even some gay men were brave enough to flirt with me. I know my experience is atypical, but I still wouldn't fell comfortable with millions of people being forced to leer at me in a movie. if my parents pressured me to do this in hopes of stardom and them some psychologist plied me to be comfortable with it i would look back on the whole situation feeling betrayed by society. So based on your story, your experience with sexual harassment is what almost all girls and women, actors or not, can expect to be on the receiving end of in their lives? the actresses in the movie don't have a monopoly on being "betrayed by society" its something every girl can expect to learn growing up, again a MAJOR POINT OF THE FILM. You seemed to have a vendetta against psychologists the way you phrase them as some master manipulators forcing these girls to do something they didn't want to as well as implying they were forced into by abusive parents. Every statement you make reduces the girl actors to having 0 agency or understanding of what they are doing, like they are a poor little faultless goose harmed irreperably by being exposed to these concepts. And you keep ducking the main point. Girls can act in a kids movie wearing parkas and overalls and still get leered at and harassed. This movie isn't suddenly going to turn people into pedophiles and there's not some required amount of sexualized behavior that suddenly sets off someone who wouldn't have done it before. You really keeping hammering that this movie is going to be the source of endless misery in these actors lives. Not the fact that, you know, they are going to be women (some of color) and face no shortage of racist and misogynist treatment in all societies regardless of said film. That's where the patronizing and paternalism comes in, you're refusing to acknowledge that this film is merely representing what already exists in society, wildly inappropriate sexualization of young girls and the attitudes towards it. You present it as a problem created by the film specifically and that actresses should feel betrayed for being allowed to take part in it. Debates about the effectiveness/appropriateness of the content are valid, but trying to dismiss it as some parent forced, head shrink manipulation is extremely gross and borderline misogynistic. People don't have this debate about 11 year old boys in films watching porn, talking about sex, and being exposed to naked women, that is apparently all youthful hijinks that cause no harm or damage. However when its young girls, its some horrible thing that damages them for life. pentyne fucked around with this message at 11:49 on Jan 1, 2021 |
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Sep 17, 2020 11:46
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Mara wilson never trended on pornhub, asmuch as her experiences sucked. lots of people who are sex/porn addicts or predatory are going to get off on this stuff, just as most kids aren't even molested by pedophiles, but by predatory people who see them as an easy target. It's a false equivalence, the gravity of the situation is so much worse. its like feeling ashamed of undressing in a locker room, but then that becoming a scene in a tv show where millions of people can watch. It would be an immense amount of embarrassment that would follow me for years. Mara never experienced that as a child. I'm sure her parents protected her from creepy letters men sent, or so I hope they would. addressing your point about girls being sexualized for any/everything, Youtubes algorithms for pedos is a criminal thing, ultimately after looking at the comments and seeing so many poor English speakers on them it seems more like a world wide problem with males in general over it being a cultural problem. Maybe eugenics can change it? I don't think the world's in the mood for supporting that.
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Sep 17, 2020 12:14
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pentyne posted:You really keeping hammering that this movie is going to be the source of endless misery in these actors lives. Not the fact that, you know, they are going to be women (some of color) and face no shortage of racist and misogynist treatment in all societies regardless of said film. My suggestion that parents would force their child actor to do whatever they could to land a big role is merely occams razor. in regards to dumping on the psychologist what other reason were they there? they were there to help them rationalize away feelings of discomfort. That was their function. Showing little boys porn is against the law, so if a movie did it whoever is responsible for it should be arrested. I'm going to assume you're talking about something foreign or from the 70s/80s before people gave a poo poo about protecting children from hollywood. EA Sports fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 12:28
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EA Sports posted:Mara wilson never trended on pornhub, asmuch as her experiences sucked. lots of people who are sex/porn addicts or predatory are going to get off on this stuff, just as most kids aren't even molested by pedophiles, but by predatory people A lot of your arguments seem to assume that (teen) boy dance routines would be uploaded to PornHub and enjoyed and not immediately reported, taken down, and the uploader put under investigation. Sex Addiction doesn't begin and end with pornography. Your argument defeats itself. Mara Wilson was target of pedophilic interests and fantasies, before PornHub, DeepFakes, or the Dark Web existed. She was still sexualized. Some weirdos just rented Matilda, dude. And yes, Mara Wilson did experience this as a child. While working on a film after her mother died. While playing a character with abusive parents and a murderous teacher who emasculates and tortures children. She's been getting rape letters from savage fanatics since before puberty. Your vicarious xenophobia and suggesting eugenics as a solution to pedophilia is really hosed up and you should log off the internet for a while and do some soul searching. EA Sports posted:My suggestion that parents would force their child actor to do whatever they could to land a big role is merely occams razor. in regards to dumping on the psychologist what other reason were they there? they were there to help them rationalize away Psychologists don't rationalize things. Have you been through therapy for your abuse? Therapists give you a safe space to talk and vent about your experiences. Through conversation they listen and make sure that there's no red flags or behavioral issues, no excess stress, and underlying issues. They can provide coping mechanisms for stress, depression, fear, etc., but if a child is being endangered, they are literally obligated by their profession to help remove that child from the harmful situation. They aren't brainwashing the children, they aren't normalizing everything. That you assume the director would maliciously endanger a child for 20-something days for a project, that their parents, who are on set, would allow their child to be abused for a camera, and that they have a psychologist on the payroll to brainwash a child, shows more of a deeper paranoia and nihilistic distrust in people that you are projecting. You are not positing objective truths. You are positing subjective paranoid fears you have of what could possibly have happened. Which, I understand, if you are a victim of abuse, why you would have those thoughts, but a message board about a movie isn't the best place for you to share those fears as if they are objectively about a movie that is being discussed. I would genuinely recommend you find a therapist you trust and work on that stuff. EA Sports posted:Showing little boys porn is against the law, so if a movie did it whoever is responsible for it should be arrested. I'm going to assume you're talking about something foreign or from the 70s/80s before people gave a poo poo about protecting children from hollywood. Good Boys came out last year and has a joke where the three boys, 11-13 in age, look up "How To Kiss" through google, and instead find a bunch of porn. One of the kids say "Why is she kissing his dick?!" From the viewer's perspective, we only see the back of the laptop and the faces of the kids horrified by pornography, while we hear the sounds of pornographic scenes. Now, through movie magic, the kids didn't actually see porn. They probably just looked at a blank screen and read lines which they memorized.
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Sep 17, 2020 13:31
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I know Mara Wilson has been used in this discussion, since she's been vocal about her experiences as a child actor, but I'd like to maybe try to start using other examples. Mara Wilson reads SomethingAwful and might be posting somewhere, and it makes me feel pretty awkward that she'd have to constantly read about herself, especially being a target of harassment, in the Cuties thread. Not banning discussion around her outright, but maybe let's limit it and use other examples.
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Sep 17, 2020 13:45
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Franchescanado posted:A lot of your arguments seem to assume that (teen) boy dance routines would be uploaded to PornHub and enjoyed and not immediately reported, taken down, and the uploader put under investigation. Mara was obviously let down by the adults who were supposed to protect her, if that was the case. quote:Psychologists don't rationalize things. Have you been through therapy for your abuse? Therapists give you a safe space to talk and vent about your experiences. Through conversation they listen and make sure that there's no red flags or behavioral issues, no excess stress, and underlying issues. They can provide coping mechanisms for stress, depression, fear, etc., but if a child is being endangered, they are literally obligated by their profession to help remove that child from the harmful situation. They aren't brainwashing the children, they aren't normalizing everything. That you assume the director would maliciously endanger a child for 20-something days for a project, that their parents, who are on set, would allow their child to be abused for a camera, and that they have a psychologist on the payroll to brainwash a child, shows more of a deeper paranoia and nihilistic distrust in people that you are projecting. You are not positing objective truths. You are positing subjective paranoid fears you have of what could possibly have happened. assume the child is being pressured into this by desperate parents, well whatever that's your prerogative. im not a nihilistic rear end in a top hat for assuming the worst. Since a mod is nearly calling me racist and crazy in response to my post, I'll make this my last one since I've seen this dog and pony show before and would rather keep my account. Just to repeat I am almost positive one of these girls are going to heavily regret being part of the film and want it taken down and I hope anyone defending it here will join her when that time comes.
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Sep 17, 2020 14:45
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pentyne posted:poo poo, look at this from 1994 Look no further than Adrian Lyne's Lolita, which is straight up an erotic thriller!
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Sep 17, 2020 14:51
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EA Sports posted:The suggestion that eugenics might work was an absurdist example to strengthen my belief that the problem in near universal, and cross cultural. Since the sexualization of children was continually framed as a cultural problem in this thread. I don't appreciate being called a xenophobe over that, maybe something like humansapienphobic would work better. The combination of "poor English speakers" followed up with suggesting eugenics does not read as absurdism. It reads like a dogwhistle and a suggestion of eugenics as a solution. I'd rather tell you that it reads as hosed up and let you think about that than outright probate or ban you. We're debating; I don't probate or ban people for disagreeing, and you (should) be adult enough to accept when someone tells you what you wrote reads as xenophobic. Now, if you were to double down on it, or continue it, that's a different story. Even then, I'd have other people read the post and tell me if I'm misinterpreting what you wrote before I did anything. EA Sports posted:Mara was obviously let down by the adults who were supposed to protect her, if that was the case. Speak on that. How is a child failed by the adults in her life because anonymous pedophiles wrote her letters for starring in a movie? This goes back to previous arguments in this thread. If a child is in a film, whether the child is an actor, in a documentary, or an animated character, they are, by the nature of society (which you yourself are claiming to criticize) and internet culture, open to being a victim; not because it's wrong to be an actor, not because adults have failed them, but because human nature is open to perversity and vile behavior. This is a sadly inescapable aspect of culture. EA Sports posted:
IF that happened, you'd be correct. There is no evidence of that currently. This is your hypothesis of what possibly could have happened. Even then, the individual psychologist would have broken vows they've taken with that career and would lose their job. And I would agree that they hosed up and are hosed up. EA Sports posted:If the entire world of child celebrity history doesn't have you automatically assume the child is being pressured into this by desperate parents, well whatever that's your prerogative. im not a nihilistic rear end in a top hat for assuming the worst. Actually, I don't assume those things. A great example is The Florida Project, another independent film, made outside of the Hollywood system for the most part. The child actor was 8ish years old. The character she plays has a mother who is a sex worker. She lives in poverty. She is around situations that would be considered abusive. There is a part of the film where a pedophile approaches the kids in hopes to kidnap one of them. The director, Sean Baker, made sure that he provided a safe environment for the child to work in. Exploitation came up a lot in interviews. He said any real director with real care for their actors will always provide a safe work environment. She even went on a press tour to talk about the movie, and Sean Baker said, if there were any hint that she didn't enjoy it, he would have told her no to the tour. But she's a natural performer, she likes the attention, she loves working with Sean Baker and Bria (the actress that plays her mother), she likes being interviewed, she has endless amounts of energy for it, and her parents are okay with it. So, there are safe ways of telling these stories. You are free to assume the worst, I guess, but there's also plenty of room to assume the best, and that actors are able to tell a powerful story through performance that they are proud of and remain proud of. Again. I taught kids in this age group for a while. There are some kids that absolutely would not be suited for the limelight and pressures of a career in performance. But there were also kids who absolutely had the energy, mindset and familial support where they could do it safely. Not every director, producer, psychologist are monsters. Not every pre-teen actor is a victim. In fact, it's always the indie film sets that take the most care with this stuff, and the Disneys an Nickelodeons that wreck lives.
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Sep 17, 2020 15:10
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Horizon Burning posted:'It would've been okay if it was a documentary.' This is incredibly disturbing to me, because it basically says "I wouldn't watch this kind of exploitative stuff unless it was real." One of the most heartbreaking and disturbing films I've seen is the documentary Jesus Camp, which shows kids from like 6-16 go to a Christian summer camp, which brainwashes the kids and mentally and emotionally abuses the kids into a Christian lifestyle. I watch, in horror, as a 9 year old girl has an emotional breakdown, crying her loving eyes out, speaking in tongues, shaking because she wants to use her whole being to save her from eternal damnation in Hell. You watch, in real time, the irreversible damage done to a child in the name of religion. It's a powerful documentary and I think it's won a bunch of awards and considered one of the best docs in the past few decades, but the only way it was made was through the filmmakers using an unflinching eye towards the abuse. They couldn't intervene, because they would have been removed and disallowed the right to film. Hell, they use the girl as the poster. Morality and "doing what is right", which includes intervention, is not inherent with filming a documentary. Even one with a view that is against the subject matter it's showing (The Act of Killing, Jesus Camp), have difficulty with breaking the objective act of filming.
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Sep 17, 2020 15:17
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Franchescanado posted:*The average age of a child getting their first smart phone is 10 years old. More than 50% of children aged 12 have a smart phone. The average age a child begins watching pornography is now 11 years old. The recommended age for parents to start talking in depth about sexuality is 9-12 years old. The average age a person starts becoming sexually aware and begins searching for comparisons to see if they're "normal" is apparently 8-12 years old. I'm not saying this is "good" or "morally right or wrong" or anything, these are just facts based on research and polls and psychology studies that are easily searched. Anecdotally, having worked in after school programs to help tutor students, I was informed by many school officials that many of their students had already had The Talk with their parents by the time they were 10 years old. (In tutoring Science, I had kids ask questions about sex, and had to go find supervisors and attendants to know how to even deal with that. Thanks for the great posts. I was wondering if you might share your source on this statement: "the average age a person starts becoming sexually aware and begins searching for comparisons to see if they're "normal" is apparently 8-12 years old"
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Sep 17, 2020 15:17
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Fanana posted:Thanks for the great posts. I was wondering if you might share your source on this statement: "the average age a person starts becoming sexually aware and begins searching for comparisons to see if they're "normal" is apparently 8-12 years old" That specifically comes from The Mayo Clinic, but I also read up on this article about What Sex/Love Topics To Talk To Discuss at Certain Ages. There's also this BBC report on Pre-Teens and Pornography which seems to be a bit of fear-mongering, but I think the stats of ages compared to pornography use seems legit.
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Sep 17, 2020 15:24
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EA Sports posted:If a person feels uncomfortable about performing and being shot with a camera in a sexualized manner and a psychologist teaches them to cope with those feelings, it is textbook rationalization. If the entire world of child celebrity history doesn't have you automatically your entire argument hinges on this unchecked assumption that because the dancing makes other people uncomfortable, as it is intended to do, that it is then likely that one of the child actors in the movie would themselves also regard it as uncomfortable. it's a bit of a questionable thing to say about a child actor, who is probably the most aware person that the entire thing they're doing is a performance and therefore not real. it also depends on the idea that it's not the dancing itself which would make the actor uncomfortable, but rather people's reaction to the dancing. as to whether the dancing could be regretted later in life, i suppose? but at the same time, girls this age choose to act this way all the time, among peers. i doubt it is an inherent source of regret or guilt, to act like a dumb tween when you're a dumb tween. as to whether people's reaction to the dancing is a source of regret, then that's kind of the whole point of the movie. women and girls get bombarded with all kinds of negative feedback just, like, walking down the street, and this can cause self-doubt and guilt like "ah, if i hadn't worn that shirt, that creepy man on the bus wouldn't have made a pass at me". like the idea that these kids will get shamed for being in a controversial movie, the burden there is more on the people getting wigged out and shaming these kids than it is for anything inherent in the film which, to my eye, is an exaggerated but grounded look into what it's like for kids to try to figure out sex and sexuality when left to their own resources you've got to layer on these other arguments like "well pushy stage parents exist, so we can assume that at least one of these girls was forced to do a dance she knew was wrong and she has bad feelings" and it's just a whole lot of leaping to conclusions to justify an emotionally based reaction to the frankly confrontational portrayal of these girls
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Sep 17, 2020 15:29
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luxury handset posted:your entire argument hinges on this unchecked assumption that because the dancing makes other people uncomfortable, as it is intended to do, that it is then likely that one of the child actors in the movie would themselves also regard it as uncomfortable. it's a bit of a questionable thing to say about a child actor, who is probably the most aware person that the entire thing they're doing is a performance and therefore not real. it also depends on the idea that it's not the dancing itself which would make the actor uncomfortable, but rather people's reaction to the dancing. This just reminded me of when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a video of her dancing as a teenager posted to Twitter with a bunch of conservatives saying "Look at this stupid idiot! She should be ashamed! She's making a fool of herself! I would be so embarrassed!" and then AOC responded with "lol, I was a teen girl having fun dancing. What is there to be ashamed of? I look cute." edit: I should clarify, your talking points in this post are good and on-point; it just made me remember that recent "controversy" that is somewhat related. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 15:34
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When on Earth has this thread implied that the oversexualization of young girls is a cultural issue from people who "don't speak English"?Franchescanado posted:This just reminded me of when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a video of her dancing as a teenager posted to Twitter with a bunch of conservatives saying "Look at this stupid idiot! She should be ashamed! She's making a fool of herself! I would be so embarrassed!" and then AOC responded with "lol, I was a teen girl having fun dancing. What is there to be ashamed of? I look cute." I also felt that conservatives saw it as oversexual and tried to frame it as her being a "spicy loose Latina."
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Sep 17, 2020 17:13
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Franchescanado posted:Not banning discussion around her outright, but maybe let's limit it and use other examples. Enter Natalie Portman quote:I turned 12 on the set of my first film, 'The Professional,'" Portman explained on stage. "[At 13] I excitedly opened my first fan mail — to read a rape fantasy that a man had written me. fuckin' 
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Sep 17, 2020 18:08
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punk rebel ecks posted:When on Earth has this thread implied that the oversexualization of young girls is a cultural issue from people who "don't speak English"? It's a very common thing for conservatives to portray young women of color as somehow sexually enticing and problematic for morally upstanding men. When you get 13-17 year old poc girls abused/raped by adult men quite often the idea of "well she's plenty experienced so nbd/just some temptress" is tossed around. It adds another layer of hypocrisy to this movie. The pagent/dance culture in the US is heavily white, and you get very similar behavior to what happens in cuties but those things are treated as wholesome learning experiences for beauty competitions. EA Sports posted:Mara wilson never trended on pornhub, asmuch as her experiences sucked. lots of people who are sex/porn addicts or predatory are going to get off on this stuff, just as most kids aren't even molested by pedophiles, but by predatory people Like Franch said, you are saying some wildly unacceptable things here, assuming that sex/porn addicts mean they must desire young children, that most people molesting children aren't pedophiles? and advocating eugenics in the same sentence as referring to poor English speakers? That's very troubling no matter what you believe. In addition, predators don't need their target to be "sexy" enough to go after them. You keep focusing intently on the idea that the depiction of sexual behavior is what triggers these people to commit crimes; it's like saying only attractive people need to worry about being raped. You keep talking around the point, seeming to assume that literally everyone involved was dead-set on abusing the children and creating a conspiracy theory level of coercion and brainwashing to effect it. This is some Pizzagate/Qanon level ranting and seems to reflect your own issues more then anything real. Naked contempt for brainwashing from therapists is also very unhelpful as talk therapy doesn't give the therapist the power to force people to behave certain ways. You're obviously checking out playing the "well I'll banned for arguing with a mod" card but there are very real, substantive problems with how you are looking at and explaining your position on this matter. Assuming bad faith on behalf of literally everyone but the girls performing is extreme but not wildly unreasonable given decades of treatment in the entertainment industry. However then focusing so intently on how the dancing is going to be what triggers someone to harass/abuse the girls and not the mere fact that all females in the entertainment industry will deal with it regardless brings the focus back to "it's only a problem when they are sexy enough" pentyne fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 19:08
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It's doing a huge disservice to hand wave away perfectly legitimate criticism from some people just because a bunch of far right nuts have latched onto this controversy. The whole world doesn't revolve around the American left vs right thing. Personally for me, no matter how good the intention or message behind the film, it doesn't excuse using having child actors film such sexualized scenes. I think the message could have been delivered without it, whether by having the dance scenes be shot differently, or using actors old enough to consent. Not because I want to enjoy those scenes without being uncomfortable, as some people have suggested that's what people calling for the use of older actors want. Plenty of people have countered that with the opinion that it needs to be real children to make people uncomfortable so that it provokes a reaction and further discussion about the problem. Yes without this controversy blowing up online nowhere near as many people would be thinking about or discussing it. But for me, the extra attention on the issue is not worth even the slightest risk of the child actors being negatively affected by this whole thing. The bottom line for me is that they're too young to consent to being used in this way, whether the director did their best to try and limit any harm or not. Just because children that young are experimenting and exploring their sexuality in their private lives doesn't mean they have the agency to fully understand the consequences of making a film about this subject. Panic! At The Tesco fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 19:59
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Panic! At The Tesco posted:It's doing a huge disservice to hand wave away perfectly legitimate criticism from some people just because a bunch of far right nuts have latched onto this controversy. The whole world doesn't revolve around the American left vs right thing. I don't think someone using phrases like "forced by greedy parents" and "brainwashed by psychologists into accepting it" is making legitimate criticism.
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Sep 17, 2020 20:15
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pentyne posted:I don't think someone using phrases like "forced by greedy parents" and "brainwashed by psychologists into accepting it" is making legitimate criticism. I wasn't talking about anyone in particular in this thread or otherwise. It's more something I've noticed as I've read discussions on the film. I'm not defending or excusing those right wing nutters either (there are definitely some idiots who are using it as a political tool and making poo poo arguments like in your examples). I was just pointing out that a lot of people have decided that anyone who isn't cool with the film must be one them.
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Sep 17, 2020 20:43
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Panic! At The Tesco posted:I wasn't talking about anyone in particular in this thread or otherwise. It's more something I've noticed as I've read discussions on the film. I'm not defending or excusing those right wing nutters either (there are definitely some idiots who are using it as a political tool and making poo poo arguments like in your examples). I was just pointing out that a lot of people have decided that anyone who isn't cool with the film must be one them. It's so rife with bad faith arguments it's hard to be clear who is just saying "nah this sucks" and who is trying to make political hay over it. The first viral twitter video was the ending dance scene edited down to remove the crowd reactions showing disgust and shock and presented as "this is what hollywood liberals want". Further major critiques mention how the girls talk about sex, discuss penises, trying to get a pic of a guy in the locker room, the main character posting a nude on IG, etc. all things that are explicitly condemned as abusive and pedophile-adjacent for the mere act of showing the girls have sexual awareness and curiosity absent any sort of healthy educational perspective from responsible adults in their lives. There's definitely a strong argument to be made about art vs exploitation when the art is blatantly depicting it for that reason, but the vast majority of the discourse is "lol hollywood pedos" and politicians trying to grandstand about "saving ur children".
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Sep 17, 2020 21:04
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Panic! At The Tesco posted:It's doing a huge disservice to hand wave away perfectly legitimate criticism from some people just because a bunch of far right nuts have latched onto this controversy. The whole world doesn't revolve around the American left vs right thing. at least i think we can agree that the controversy wouldn't be nearly as widespread and insane if it weren't for qanon. like this level of media attention would not be sustained alone by people expressing reasonable doubts about the wellbeing of the children on stage - by far, most of the criticism, and all of the baseless criticism, is when we skip past all the discussion of how to portray sexualization of children in a narrative and boil it down instead to corporate pedophile cults
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Sep 17, 2020 21:48
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It's also a sad reality the foreign nature of the film and the race of the actresses are certainly a factor. Many comparisons have been made to shows like Dance Moms and other reality pageant shows that depict a culture that places extreme importance on the percieved attractiveness of female children for the purposes of competition. The southern belle pageant culture is constantly described in terms like "wholesome" and "harmless" I would go so far as to say raising female children up in a practice by where they are rigourously judged for their appearance and perfomance from age 5 and up is vastly more harmful to children then anything this movie could ever do.
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Sep 17, 2020 22:35
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pentyne posted:It's also a sad reality the foreign nature of the film and the race of the actresses are certainly a factor. Who is describing southern belle culture as “wholesome” and “harmless”? Certainly nobody in this thread. I’m sure you can find people who defend child pageants, but my impression is that they are widely considered to be weird as hell. Reality TV programs like Dance Moms and Toddlers in Tiaras are popular because they are freak shows. Psycho moms and weirdo children make for good television, but their popularity shouldn’t be mistaken for public approval. The Kingfish fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 00:13
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Watched the movie yesterday with my wife. Context; Dutch, two kids (boy 9, girl 6), live in a fairly big city. From reading on SA and Netflix' marketing, I expected a beauty pageant kind of movie. It's nothing like that and based on my experiences reading here I feel I need to point that out. The movie starts off fairly well, showing a male dominated environment where women are submissive to their man (culturally / religic infused). A young girl is followed and gets exposed to what impact this has on her mother. Especially when her husband takes another wife and she is forced to phone various people for the upcoming wedding. This was actually a strong part of the movie and well acted at that. The girl starts to get exposed at school to a different morality (lack of) and here it becomes a bit muddy. One of the girls is dancing like a girl in a rap video or something, wearing skinny leather pants. The camera deliberately lingers here and there and it adds nothing whatsoever. The movie obviously wants to make an impact by hiding the girls face just long enough so anyone stupidly thinking it is "hot" gets a big reveal. It's a stupid scene and we start to disconnect. From here on, we got both bored and angry with the movie. Yes, there are points to be made about social media, a lack of parenting and a child's mind, but the movie fails to portray this in any meaningful way. The main girl clashes more and more with her culture and starts to lie, steal and run away. The dances and moves become more and more explicit. This just happens and doesn't add anything meaningful. I find myself looking at the edges of our screen more and more, because it's just gross and pointless. The girls watch porn, discuss dicks and try to film a boy's penis in a toilet. It all comes together in their dance competition, where they preform a routine they themselves came up with through their phones and watching older girls. Nowhere in the movie is there any supervision, correction, parenting or guidance when they are together. The dance is awful; the kids twerk, put fingers in their mouth, bounce their butts off the floor, you name it. Probably the scene people see bits of. The audience starts to boo them because of it. A small event triggers the lead to run off back to her family where she slips in a, seemingly, healthy balance. (I like the mother / daughter moment here) Some random thoughts; - We never felt this movie was a critique on pageants, dance-offs or whatever. The last dance off seems to precisely show a crowd boo'ing their overt sexual portrayal. The scene certainly doesn't seem to exist to show pervs lusting at them, unless we missed something. Please do tell if we did! - The complaint that the movie goes too far in their portrayal I def agree on. The camera lingers, the kids are being put in extremely sexual poses and it harms the message. Doing this with 11 y/o actors makes it awful and wrong. - Netflix really didn't market this properly. It's a foreign movie about culture clashes, education, parenting and conflicting morality. They deserve every bit of critique they get for it. - The culture clash from a young girl, combined with social media exposure and peer pressure is fairly interesting. The movie messes it up, ultimately creating a boring, cheap movie. The director deserves critique for that. The sexual issue it tries to tackle would be far more impactful with showing less. I might edit this post and my wording. I found it difficult to write about this in English instead of Dutch.
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Sep 18, 2020 07:57
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Franchescanado posted:Here's another weird wrinkle: Did that movie also have kids flashing their tits at the camera?
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Sep 18, 2020 10:32
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Jack Trades posted:Did that movie also have kids flashing their tits at the camera? "The guide has since been changed to accurately describe the movie, which only briefly shows the bare breast of a woman, who is not underage, dancing in a video, according to a Forbes viewing of the movie. (IMDB did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a Netflix spokesperson confirmed the film does not contain any underage nudity)."
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Sep 18, 2020 16:34
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Horizon Burning posted:"The guide has since been changed to accurately describe the movie, which only briefly shows the bare breast of a woman, who is not underage, dancing in a video, according to a Forbes viewing of the movie. (IMDB did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a Netflix spokesperson confirmed the film does not contain any underage nudity)." What? You mean major aspect of this movie have been deliberately lied about to push a narrative? Shocking.
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Sep 18, 2020 19:53
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Just finished watching it and I can't say I would've stuck it out if it weren't for the controversy. Fathia Youssuf acted well, I thought. She was believable as Amy even if Amy as a character sometimes beggars belief. Then again, when I was eleven, a lot of the things I did made no drat sense either. The message is there: Young girls are pressured on all sides to become someone else's idea of 'grown-up', they don't figure it out all at once, and not every step they take on that journey is forward. Be skinnier, sexier, tougher, more revealing, more traditional, more pious, all at the same time and all for the sake of fitting in to what's modeled to them as ideal, oh and by the way somewhere in the middle is a forming personality with her own thoughts and hopes. Those bases get covered. You know straight away who the main characters are, because they're the ones dressed for school like they want to be sent home before they're done taking attendance. They're believable as tweens because they are, but they're no great shakes as a dance crew because they're eleven and learning their stuff from the internet (this comes up later). Conveniently-to-the-plot, the one heavy girl in the group gets kicked out, the protagonist discovers sexy dancing on the internet and imports it to her crew, and they all instantly decide yes, these are the moves we need to learn to compete with much older dancers who mock us for being little girls. Double-spoiler: They stink. Acht posted:One of the girls is dancing like a girl in a rap video or something, wearing skinny leather pants. The camera deliberately lingers here and there and it adds nothing whatsoever. The movie obviously wants to make an impact by hiding the girls face just long enough so anyone stupidly thinking it is "hot" gets a big reveal. It's a stupid scene and we start to disconnect. Very well-said. The stairs dancing montage about an hour in seemed gratuitous to me, and the two or three minutes that followed is time I want back. Ick. It evoked memories of a comedian who was trying way too hard to get laughs by throwing out every filthy word he could think of. We get it. They're kids and this isn't appropriate. And then there's the crotch selfie scene which is random as gently caress. She's caught with her cousin's stolen phone, and her reaction's to barricade herself in the bathroom with it, which is plausible, then outta nowhere she instagrams her genitals? The fuckin' what? And then it's retconned later with some talk about how she wanted everyone to think they were mature, which I have a really hard time accepting as her though process in that moment. Everything that happens after that point though, that's totally believable. Water splashing scene: Okay she's been caught, and mom's reaction is believable, and then it gets weird. What even was that? The dance show itself: Pre-dance, the characters looked genuinely lost, very much like little girls in women's places. This was shot well. Music starts, strike a pose, they did the adult twerky-floor humpy things just like the music videos taught Amy to teach them, and the result was... well, I'm not sure "inept" is the right word to describe it. They weren't good, but I think it was deliberate; to juxtapose their youth with the behaviour they're trying to imitate and how inappropriate this is, with all the subtlety of a steamshovel rodeo. The part the twitter clips don't show is the mostly-mom-age crowd going from cheering, to booing, to stunned, shocked silence and dismayed head-shaking, with one parent covering her young daughter's eyes and each of the four judges giving it an appalled yikes. There was one Superbad lookin dude who was smiling and clapping, but he was obviously there to make it as plain as they could without explicitly saying so that what we're watching is fuckin' wrong. As the crew carries on ineptly, poor Amy looks increasingly lost up there until she finally cracks, cries and deserts her crew in mid-performance to run home. Supportive Grandma and Oppressive Conservative Mom switch roles as, on the occasion of her husband's first polygamist wedding, Mom figures out that the culture that's sprung up around womanhood is officially bullshit and Amy is free to tell everyone pressuring her to grow up that they can all go to hell; she does exactly that by running outside and skipping rope, fin. I agree with Acht that the film just seems... dull. There's no urgency driving the plot, no consequence for failure, no reward for success, and characters just sort of flit in and out of existence. It's more like a series of vignettes in chronological order with some weird poo poo in the middle, which now that I say it, sounds like being eleven to me. flakeloaf fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Sep 19, 2020 |
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Sep 19, 2020 00:54
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The 'selfie' scene isn't random. Immediately prior to it, Amy is told that she needs to do something really crazy to get everyone talking about something other than that fight. So, she does something crazy.
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Sep 19, 2020 01:02
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https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1313573641716559872
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Oct 6, 2020 22:19
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https://twitter.com/mgrovesensation/status/1313576041764577283?s=20 I’m sure this will go very well
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Oct 6, 2020 22:25
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The idiots are howling for the government to DO SOMETHING, and since this is SOMETHING, the people responsible can claim to have done it when election time rolls around
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Oct 6, 2020 23:13
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 03:16 |
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How did they convince themselves this film has "no serious literary, artistic, political ... value"? You can believe the film made poor choices (I believe it's okay, but I don't have to relitigate that here and now to make my point) but you'd have a hell of a time convincing someone that a Sundance award-winning film about a social/political issue has neither artistic nor political value.
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Oct 6, 2020 23:29
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