Being anti-child exploitation is neither a left- nor a right-wing issue.
But some in the press apparently would like for it to be, including the critics who claim the controversy surrounding Netflix’s Cuties, which features the explicit sexualization of underage actresses, is ginned-up nonsense pushed by right-wing conspiracy theorists and conservative “pearl-clutchers.”
The New Yorker’s Richard Brody, for example, bemoans that such an “extraordinary Netflix début” has become the “target of a right-wing campaign.” In reference to the French film’s ending, which deals with the idea of broadening a country’s public identity to allow for more inclusion, he adds that it is “enough to give a right-winger a conniption.”
At Rogerebert.com, Monica Castillo dismisses the “conservative outrage,” claiming defensively that the “film actively critiques the very thing pearl-clutchers were mad about—the sexualization of children.”
Decider’s Anna Menta argues elsewhere that the Cuties outrage stems almost entirely from “right-wing QAnon conspiracy theorists, aka people who believe that Democrats and Hollywood celebrities are behind a child sex trafficking ring.”
But the Cuties fiasco, the marketing, the outrage, Netflix’s defiance, and the sustained horror following the film’s eventual release online, is not about politics, left or right. The outrage is not some shadowy, anti-Hollywood conspiracy spearheaded by right-wing trolls. The anger is very real. It is average viewers recoiling in horror at a movie that parades children as sexual objects, which is a thing that Cuties absolutely does with its underage cast. Not even the critics who enjoy the film deny this.
The sequence of events is this:
Netflix released Cuties promotional material in August featuring the film’s underage actresses in highly sexual poses and outfits. This inspired an outcry. Netflix begrudgingly agreed the promotional material was in poor taste, complaining all the while that the stupid plebes who complained probably don’t even know that Cuties is an award-winning coming-of-age movie (you can read more about the plot here).
Netflix and the filmmakers assured audiences that promotional images did not accurately reflect the movie’s core message or aesthetic. They lied. The film is far worse than advertised. When it comes to the sexualization of minors, Cuties is not just suggestive. It is in-your-face aggressive. It explicitly exploits its underage cast, including one scene where a prepubescent actress exposes herself and another scene where she and her similarly young co-stars engage in hypersexual dance routines.
Yet movie critics, for whatever reason, are treating this story as one where art is suffering for the ignorance of “right-wing” scaremongers and conservative prudes.
Esquire’s editors claim the misplaced outrage comes almost entirely from right-wing media outlets, “right-wing names,” and “right-wing detractors.”
“Twitter is so wrong about Cuties,” declares Refinery29’s Anne Cohen, who pinned outrage over the film on “right wing conservative groups, who accused [the director of] condoning what they called ‘child pornography.’”
The Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg writes that “it’s a real shame that so many conservatives are condemning ‘Cuties’ … it’s a shame a movie about an 11-year-old’s moral education has made so many adults act stupid.”
Her reaction is the norm for pro-Cuties critics. Nearly every favorable review argues that the child exploitation depicted in the movie is defensible, noble even, because it is an implicit critique of child exploitation. The film’s sexualizing of children is not as bad as you think because it is a criticism of the sexualization of children is a take, I suppose. Here is another thought: If your attempt to criticize a thing ends up being exactly the thing you criticize, you have failed both personally and professionally.
Cuties engages in exactly that which it claims to oppose. In fact, it presents child sexuality in such a hyperaggressive, highly eroticized manner, with gratuitous close-ups of female curves that don’t yet even exist and astonishingly grotesque dance routines wherein children slither on stage like strippers whose rents are due, that one doubts very much the filmmaker’s stated intent.
The Cuties outrage is not a Right or Left issue. It is simply one where viewers are reacting strongly to what even the film’s defenders admit are shocking and intentionally provocative choices. But, fine. If writers at the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and elsewhere want to characterize opposition to kiddie softcore as being unique to the Right, then that is an honor the Right should eagerly accept.
