In a totally unexpected turn of events
that absolutely nobody saw coming, everyone on the internet is mad about something
again, except this time there might actually be a reason because people in the United
States government are also mad. So... Cuties.
Yeah, so Netflix has a bit of a problem on their hands, they added one movie and now people
are canceling their subscriptions left and right, signing petitions to get it removed, and
even United States lawmakers have stepped up and they're trying to get the Department
of Justice involved. It's kind of a lot. So before we get into that, I'd like to get into
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what's going on with this movie? First of all, Netflix dropped the ball before it
even came out. Earlier this month, they announced that they would be adding Cuties.
The issue is that between this gross poster they used, this even grosser movie description and the
fact that it was rated TV mature, Netflix marketed this film as an adult dance movie starring
twerking 11 year olds. So literally everyone hated it, thankfully. The trailer has 1.8 million
dislikes. #CancelNetflix was trending on Twitter and petitions to stop the film from releasing
had reached over half a million signatures at the time, and nobody outside of France had
even seen the film. That's when the damage control started. Netflix issued a [inaudible
00:02:03] Twitter apology explaining that they actually misrepresented the film. American actor
Tessa Thompson tweeted that she saw the film at Sundance and it's actually directed by a woman
who wanted to make a criticism of how little girls are objectified. And the director herself,
Maïmouna Doucouré said in a statement to Deadline, that she hopes people will watch the film and
see "That we're actually on the same side of this battle." So after that, things were up in
the air and people's opinions on this unseen film were split all the way up until the
fateful day that it came out on Netflix. And boy, was it worse than everyone expected.
Here's my super brief rundown of what goes on in this film. Amy is a little girl who feels
unhappy growing up in the religion that she feels stifles women. This feeling pushes her to
join a dance troupe called The Cuties that represent the opposite of everything trapping
her. They wear tight clothes, they dance freely, they don't listen to the grownups. The Cuties
use peer pressure to drag Amy down into so much depravity and inappropriate behavior that
her mom, the school, and even The Cuties themselves get mad at it. In the film's climax she
finally makes a decision during their big dance off. She stops giving into peer pressure,
leaves The Cuties behind and tries to be a normal girl. And yeah, that's pretty much
the entire movie. On paper it's exactly what everyone claimed it is. A cautionary tale about
how kids feel like they're not being heard, so they turn to social media, which prematurely
exposes them to objectifying themselves. So what is the big issue, you might ask? Well,
it's the fact that they showed it all on camera. The objectification was the film. These girls were
onscreen, twerking, humping the ground, grabbing each other's behinds, and they didn't just show
this stuff, they zoomed in. There is almost two minutes worth of close-up shots of these goals
crotches and backsides, and none of these scenes play into the story. Not even one. You can't even
see their face in most of them. The final straw for me was when our 11 year old protagonist gets
her pants pulled down by the bullies and we just fully see her in her underwear. That's the entire
shot. Just her body. I actually jumped out of my chair when that happened. Not just because it was
so uncomfortable, but because it was so random and didn't fit what was happening whatsoever.
But yeah, that ladies and gentlemen is Cuties. Obviously everyone has some pretty strong opinions
about that film, and my strong opinion is that literally none of those opinions matter because
this is child exploitation. This movie may have been filmed in France, but Netflix is very much
American and they are knowingly distributing a film that fits the legal statutes of being
commercial exploitation of a minor down to a T. It's exploitation because these are not
just fictional 11 year old characters in a film, they were played by real 13 year old girls who
were being filmed in a way that they're not even old enough to consent to. To be clear, this is
a story made for the profit of adults who paid children's parents to have them perform adult
moves so they could be recorded and objectified. So my question is this, how does it matter
if they intended to make a commentary on it or not? They exploited those children. The
director claimed that there was a psychologist on set for the children, which is almost like
a slap in the face considering that she and the production team are the ones putting the
children through it. Psychologists or not, being made to dance like that as a kid when you don't
understand why it's wrong, has a harmful effect. Just listen to what Megan Fox had to say about
her own experience with the exact same thing. They said, "Michael, she's 15, so you can't sit
her at the bar and she can't have a drink in her hand." So his solution to that problem was to
then have me dancing underneath the waterfall, getting soaking wet. That's sort of
a microcosm of how Bay's mind works. Yeah, well, that's really a microcosm
of how all our minds work, but some of us have the decency to repress those things.
There's plenty of ways to show that something is terrible without having people recreate that thing
on camera in real life. You could film it like the movie Precious, which has a scene where we see
that an adult is mistreating a child, but somehow they managed to film the entire scene without ever
putting a single child in an adult position. It's still one of the most heartbreaking and impactful
scenes I've ever seen in a movie. I guess that's just a perk of when the directors have actual
talent. You could also hire adult actors to play the children. Gabourey Sidibe was 26 when she was
playing 16 year old Precious, and at no point when you're watching the movie do you think, "Oh, this
isn't real, so I don't care about these issues that are being presented to me because this is
not a real child." Instead, you just cry. Forever. You could also adapt the story into a different
medium. I think Cuties would work perfectly as a book or even a documentary. How about we ask
these girls about their experience, instead of paying them to recreate that experience for our
own entertainment. Turning this into an art debate about freedom of expression is ridiculous to
me. On the one hand, freedom of expression is pretty great. Seeing as that's my actual job,
literally all I do is express things, freely and phenomenally. But on the other hand, we have child
exploitation. So I'm just going to have to say, please go to jail immediately, but also forever.
You know what I mean? Basically. Did this film get taken out of context? Yes. But will there
ever be enough context for someone to justify recording and distributing closeups of gyrating
13 year olds on camera? No. Never. Not on my life. So everyone involved in this production,
including Netflix, Sundance and the director are disgusting. Literally the only people
who did nothing wrong in the situation are those little girls, and so above all, I hope
that they're doing okay. People trying to use this movie to further their political agenda are
disgusting, and I'm talking about people on both sides. We have people on the right, like Ian Miles
Cheong claiming that Cuties is what people on the left want. Or we have people on the left, like The
New Yorker claiming that Cuties is only getting hate because it's a far right smear campaign.
They're all pathetic. If you see children being mistreated and your first thought is, how can I
use this situation to make my political opponents look bad, then you're just honest and your
priorities are clearly in the wrong place. If your worldview is so narrow that you have
to label everybody who thinks one thing under one word, then let me help you out with that one.
There actually is a word for the only people who will be binge watching Cuties long after all this
controversy dies down, and here's a hint. It's not left or right, it's MAPs. But thankfully
for the most part, I saw people of all sides coming together and agreeing that regardless of
your stance, this is an issue that we all need to work together to stop. And I saw people come
together, not just on Twitter, but in the United States government. One Senator, Tom Cotton said in
his statement to The Daily Caller that promoting the film was "disgusting at best and a serious
crime at worst." While saying that he believes the Department of Justice should get involved.
Another, Tulsi Gabbard claimed on Twitter that publishing the film now makes Netflix complicit
and that the movie benefits child traffickers. Senator Josh Hawley published an official senate
letter to the CEO of Netflix demanding a response by the end of the following week. Netflix hasn't
decided anything yet. I don't personally support, endorse, or even like any of the politicians
I just mentioned, but in this case, they're exactly right. Those are politicians
from all sides of the debate, but I can set my political biases aside and acknowledge that
everything they said in those statements are 100% true because that's a very serious topic.
Lastly, I just want to say this. It's okay to have an opinion on this film without watching it. I
chose not to talk about it on my platform until I saw it because I just wanted to make sure that
I didn't use my platform to spread misinformation. But yeah, now I have the information and I'm
giving it to you. If you want to watch this film, you will see 13 year old girls gyrating
their bottoms in tight leather pants. So if you want to criticize that without watching it,
you're allowed to, and probably should. Sometimes things really are black and white, and I feel
like child exploitation is one of those times. Anyway, I tried to keep this video
clean despite the subject matter, because I didn't want it to be too disturbing
and I do want to make money from it. But I will be donating the sponsorship money. I'm just going
to go ahead and slide that money over to RAINN. And I'll put the receipts of that transaction
over on my Twitter. But if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch something that's not
traumatizing. Anyway, it looks like I've gotten 10 minutes of content out of this. So leave a
like, comment what you think and subscribe if you haven't already. Thank you for watching, and a big
thank you to my 734,000 subscribers. Okay, bye.
