Netflix may not be the sure thing in streaming entertainment any longer, having missed its third-quarter subscription target.
What has received little attention, likely because Netflix wanted to sweep it under the rug, was a potential cause for its subscriber miss: The company faces a criminal indictment from a Texas grand jury for its sexually exploitative film, Cuties.
Netflix has faced significant international scrutiny over Cuties, with the company even removing it from its platform at the request of Turkey, and potentially thousands of subscription cancellations (#CancelNetflix) when the film was released. More than 30 members of Congress have now spoken out against Cuties, and many have called for congressional hearings or an investigation. Both of our organizations have called for Cuties’s removal from the platform and for a federal investigation to determine if sexual exploitation laws were broken.
In a digital society already overrun with child sex abuse images, pornography, sexual predators, and traffickers, Cuties is an irresponsible, gross display of sexual exploitation on Netflix’s part, which it has shockingly excused as merely “social commentary.”
Cuties features scenes of 11-year-old girls performing highly eroticized dance routines. The film exploits the young pre-adolescent actresses in skimpy attire who twerk, hump, gyrate, and perform stripper-esque dance moves with crotch grabs and leg spreads, while production cameras zoom in and slowly pan up and down the girls’ bodies.
The film normalizes child sexual exploitation and sexualized behaviors by youth — a disturbing move, given that children often imitate what they see on the screen.
In one scene, a rival dance member exposes her bare breast at the end of the group’s dance routine; in others, crude sexual comments are made in the hopes of attracting the attention of boys. While in school, girls’ reactions are shown after watching a graphic sex act on a cellphone, contemplating whether or not it was rape.
Later in the film, after the main character, Amy (Fathia Youssouf), an 11-year-old Senegalese immigrant living in Paris, is accepted to the “Cuties” group, she is pressured to film the penis of a fellow classmate while he urinates in the boy’s bathroom. Closer to the film’s end, she is shown removing her pants and underwear to photograph between her legs and then uploads the image to social media.
This is a particularly serious matter. In January 2020, the Internet Watch Foundation reported that self-generated imagery now accounts for almost a third of the web pages featuring sexual images of children that it takes down, and more than a third of those images feature children between the ages of 11 to 13, of which the girls are the majority. Sexually explicit photos and videos (“sexts”) are being created and shared within children’s social networks and are often used to bully and harass the victims who are in the videos.
At best, Cuties is grossly negligent on the part of its producers and Netflix. At worst, it’s possibly criminal. The dance moves alone by these young actresses may meet the legal standard of child pornography. Child pornography, under federal law, is defined as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor. Visual depictions include photographs, videos, digital or computer-generated images indistinguishable from an actual minor and images created, adapted, or modified, but appear to depict an identifiable, actual minor. In 2018, tech companies reported over 45 million online photos and videos of children, as young as infants and toddlers, being sexually abused.
Furthermore, the film whets the appetites of sexual predators and sexually exploits the young girls that the film’s producers purport to care about.
And the problem with sexualizing children on Netflix runs deeper than just Cuties. There is a strong link between sexualized media and the victimization and exploitation of children, and Netflix is no stranger to hosting content of this nature.
For instance, the Netflix original series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina featured an orgy scene with half a dozen scantily clad teens. Netflix streamed an Argentinian film called Desire, which included a scene of a nine- or 10-year-old girl self-stimulating to climax. Netflix acquired a series called Baby about 16-year-old prostitutes. Netflix airs Sex Education, which contains explicit depictions of sex and nudity, including male genitalia, mostly involving high school-aged characters.
And the Netflix original animated series Big Mouth is particularly vile in its attempts to sexualize pubescent children. According to the show’s IMDB page, episodes have contained a “full screen closeup of a 13-year-old’s penis and testicles; a girl talking to her vagina about her life — the vulva and clitoris and labia are shown in graphic close up for extended periods of time; a middle-school student’s bare breasts are drawn; two 12-year-old and two high schoolers play a game where they face each other in competition to see who can ejaculate on a cracker the fastest.”
These shocking examples provide evidence that Netflix has a clear practice of sexualizing children for entertainment. This practice must cease. Otherwise, Netflix executives will be held to account for potentially criminal conduct. We urge Netflix shareholders to speak out about this and urge change. If Netflix doesn’t address this now, state action may become federal action. And we will do everything in our power to make that happen, unless Netflix stops this practice immediately.
Tim Winter is the president of the Parents Television Council. Donna Rice Hughes is the president of Enough Is Enough.
