Why are Cuties (Netflix film) receiving negative reviews?

Because it’s not the first film or the best film to tackle this subject matter. And it made mistakes films have largely moved away from in recent years.

Movies such as Lolita and American Beauty also stepped into a similar theme when they portrayed the sexualization of underage girls by unreliable narrators and protagonists. They were critically acclaimed for the same type of material as Cuties.

However, one thing they did correctly was that they hired adult actresses who looked younger. Mena Suvari (above) was 20 when she played her role in American Beauty. So while the actual subject matter may have been uncomfortable, no actual children were sexualized to fulfill the role.

Cuties hired kids and had them twerk and wear skimpy clothing, and generally filmed creepshots of them with the intent of making the audience uncomfortable. While this certainly worked, it also broke a rather established rule that you don’t actually hire kids to be exploited in the film — you hire adults who look like kids. That’s problem number one.

Problem number two, as mentioned earlier, is that this type of thing has been done before and better by the aforementioned titles. It’s not a new subject matter or message. I’d also go as far as to say it’s not a controversial one. Be it, liberal feminists or conservative traditionalists, pretty much everyone is in agreement that sexualizing young girls is bad. This is not a revolutionary statement.

Problem three is that while I can appreciate that Maïmouna Doucouré had an admirable goal, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Having a good message does not mean that the film had a good delivery. The way they intended to deliver this message was to overly sexualize actual children and show scandalous shots to the audience with the intention of making them uncomfortable. It is intended to be a hyperbolic, in-your-face delivery that shows people how wrong this behavior is.

The problem with this style is simply that most normal people who agree that the sexualization of young girls is bad don’t actually want to watch a film where they look at creepshots of kids. Shocking, I know. I’m not sure who Maïmouna Doucouré intended her target audience to be, but few people think “Oh! A movie about 11-year-olds twerking, sign me up!”

There is, however, a subgroup of people who likely think such a film is great and those are the exact type of people we don’t want to cater to. They are the people who enjoy watching the sexualization of children and are more than happy to watch the creepshots without caring one whit about the message the director wants to provide.

Making a film like this relies on the audience to do something that is rather unlikely at best. It requires that a large portion of people pay money to sit through an extremely uncomfortable experience, where actual kids are being exploited in order to receive a message everyone is already unanimously agreed upon.

Lolita

I also think we can look back at the legacy that critically acclaimed films like Lolita have left behind. Lolita is still regarded as a literary and film classic. The intention of the film was not to justify the sexualization of underage girls but rather to portray an unreliable narrator. The narrator convinced himself that Dolores was the one coming onto him, “asking for it” and leading the relationship. Rather than the book or film being in agreement with these beliefs, they were intended to expose them for what they were — the delusions of a sick man.

However, the legacy of Lolita we see in mainstream media is quite the opposite. Loli girls in games and anime have had the opposite impact. An entire culture has sprung up around the idea of underage thirst traps. Cute, innocent, naive but undeniably sexy girls bounce and giggle their way through video games and TV. It seems over the years many people actually missed the critical analysis behind the work and instead just have a weird obsession with barely legal cartoon girls.

Sue Lyon was notably only 14 years old at the time that Lolita was filmed. However, this was because they had to age the actress up. They knew they couldn’t hire an actual 12-year-old to star in the role. The director significantly toned down much of the material and it was still one of the most controversial films upon its release.

So while Lolita was intended to have the same type of critical analysis as Cuties claims to, we can actually view how that message has become twisted over time and within popular culture. Why would Cuties fare any better?

Almost every reviewer of Cuties has explicitly acknowledged that the director was attempting to create a critical narrative around the sexualization of kids. They simply found that the method of delivery was inexcusable. It sexualizes actual children, it takes creepshots of them and excuses it away as “art.”

What other situations can you think of where in order to prove that something is wrong, you would simply film yourself doing that exact thing for real? It’s an absurd idea when applied to anything else.

This director takes actual children, exploits them, and then says “It’s fine, I’m doing it to show people it’s wrong.”

No shit — people already know it’s wrong and that’s why they know what you are doing isn’t okay. That’s why Cuties is getting backlash.