Thirteen VS Cuties (the battle of "coming of age" movies)

okay let's do this what's up internet i am currently balancing my microphone on an old avocado holder i am wearing a shirt that says 2020 stuck in someone else's dream so let's talk about cuties a european movie that is so european that no american possibly could understand it at least that's what they say yet i am a european and i still for the love of me cannot grasp the concept of this movie first i want to heavily point out that i was extremely hesitant to jump on the hate wagon when it began and then the movie came out some european movies tend to be a little bit different than us movies but there is still a big collection of american movies that also kind of you know punch you in several ways in places that you didn't think you could be punched at but kinda in a good way i told you i was here how'd you do that and for that reason most of my favorite movies are my favorite because of that insanity absurdity bizarre shock value etc etc you could say i am a fan of weird and bizarre movies and movies with a strong message conveyed in in some sort of metaphor and then i saw cuties it is extremely ironic that this is a french movie france is a country where antichrist and the texas chainsaw massacre are banned just in case you are still confused what cuties is which i doubt you are because pretty much the whole planet is talking about it i'm gonna read you a synopsis of what this movie was supposed to be the film follows an 11 year old girl as she tries to find her place growing up in a poor suburb of paris at home emmy has to please her family who are observant muslims from senegal but she eventually falls in with a group of friends who have their own dance troupe in defiance of her family's strict rules so the backlash actually started on august 20th when netflix released this poster compared to the original french poster to promote this movie was that the worst part oh no no no no no no no the first thing i usually do after i watch a movie is to research main actors and i found out that the main actresses are between ages 14 to 15 the youngest being 12. in my own humble opinion i fully believe that humans are capable of a lot more than they give themselves credit for we're able to sustain immense pain and pressure and trauma and sadness that is inflicted upon us however we do that as adults and pushing adults over the limits uh for the sake of art for the sake of movie i have no problem with that i do it to myself as well but when you take children and treat them as as you would adult actors and push them outside of their limits and guide them to perform things that 99 of this planet is disgusted by already then then that's just a big no no no no no no no no no making a coming-of-age film is a very slippery slope you want to do it in a matter where the moral of the story doesn't get lost but if your movie is so provocative it cannot be seen by children under 18 despite the fact that mainly all of your cast is under 18 that's where things get twisted so here is where i want to bring up another coming of age movie from 2003 called 13. that movie is about a 13 year old girl's relationship with her mother falling into a bad crowd starting to explore sex drugs walk and roll and all of that happens is because she gets involved with this other girl who's also 13 who is kind of a badass and kind of sucks her into doing all of that so evan rachel wood and nikki reed were the main two actors in this movie they were both 14 when that film was filmed i will get more into why i picked this movie as a comparison later on but i just wanted to give you a bit of a heads up so you keep in mind that that's another movie that we're discussing today now let's move on to cuties it is almost as if this movie is a poster child no pun intended for what it looks like when the end justifies the means the key thing is that this movie is trying to inform the society about hypersexualization of young girls unfortunately we don't need movies for that we have tick-tock i already made a video on kids being wildly out of control on tick tock and how that is pretty much derailing the society there is no need to address that in a matter of making more young girls under the age of 14 dress up and dance provocatively because that's the beauty of movies nothing is as it seems so for example i played a 15 year old girl when i was kristen bell played a 17 year old girl when she was 27 and this is where you cast young adults or adults to play these type of characters which was mistake number one the mistake number two was that the story was supposed to bring light to what hypersexualization of young girls does to their mind but it kinda didn't do that i think if this movie could talk it would say the society is spiraling out of control and kids are the end and that's it that's that's all that's that's all it managed to do because there's even this scene where the girls are twerking for these guards that caught them breaking in you could see it on the guard's face that he's a he's a dirty pig he's a not a good person but it's that's all that there is to this scene there's no repercussions to his actions there's no repercussions to what they're doing it's just there here is where i want to move back to the movie 13 that had kind of the same [Music] kind of the same message because the main basis of the movie 13 is that one of the girls tracy who has dealt with her mother's alcoholism and is still kind of suffering trauma from that falls in a bad crowd with evie who lives in an abusive household full of trauma and there is a clear clear message what first of all parenting and child trauma does to a young girl how they rebel against that by doing adult stuff and in the end what this adult stuff does to a young girl who is not ready to enter the adult life just yet because in the end tracy she's the one who gets stabbed in the back and she's the one who just gets left behind like that like nothing ever happened you know that the message was don't do that this is what will happen um it's not worth it with cuties there's none of that the camera angles and that's what's the most disturbing part or the the lingering shots the long lingering zooming to their body parts i will only insert screenshots the camera travels along these girls bodies when they're trying to show that they are being sexual it literally is doing a body check so the people who are defending the movie saying that it's trying to bring attention to sexualization of children there are other ways to do that this could have been done in so many different ways first of all you don't have to show everything in order for the audience to understand what is happening audience is not stupid here i want to bring up yet another movie for comparison called trade it's from 2007 and it is about bringing light to human trafficking and the girl who is being abducted is 13 and she's played by a girl who was 15 at the time while there are no explicit shots of what is happening to her after she is sold or what is happening to the girls who are held in captivity for longer periods of time [Music] the story the directing and the camera shows it in a vague way you still know what's behind those curtains you still know what's happening and it still shocks you it still hurts you and it's still that's the whole reason why i haven't been able to forget this movie in the past 10 years because it's so powerful and so strong yet it never showed anything explicit in order to shock a person just as any movie involving child actors cuties was supposed to follow some sort of guidelines yes some of the child actors are extremely mature for their age for example evan rachel wood was in the entertainment industry 10 years before she made movie 13. i mean when you watch interviews with her when she was of that age she sounds like a mini adult you can just sense that in a person some people grow up super fast i know that by the age of 11 i was pretty much mentally in a state of a 20 year old i don't ever actually remember being a child or liking childish things um mainly because of the way my home was when i researched these young actresses they had no prior experience in the movie industry whatsoever there was little to no information about them i was able to find only age and even that was vague for all of them so when it comes to that you have to be even more careful than when just picking you know evan rachel wood or dakota fanning or any of the child actresses i cannot imagine what these girls are now going through knowing that they were a part of this movie that they were excited for and i i hope for their own sake that they are not reading any of this and i think that's the worst part for me now the entire world is telling them that they were used and abused the interviews that i have read with this director she said that she was so shocked when she was observing all these 11 year olds on the street being sexual and that it shocked her so much how children on social media some 11 year olds have 400 000 followers on instagram and tick tock and stuff like that but then she went and hired kids to do the exact same thing that she was bothered by and that's where as a filmmaker it is your duty that you find a way to convey a message without actually doing what you were against in the first place and that's also the part that i just don't quite get and also how did she not interfere when the film was being made how did she not see that the lingering shots the the the focus on genitalia of of of young girls is wrong no matter how big of a fan of movies you are how you want to justify things how much you've seen in terms of art when it comes to movies you cannot turn this one around and make it positive and i tried trust me i am a huge movie fan and i understand that a lot of movies are misunderstood but this one holy crap so trust me from one filmmaker and actress you could have done a better job anyway this is it for this video guys i just wanted to express all my thoughts feelings comments and concerns uh in a very calm matter do you understand that inside i am screaming i am burning with rage anyway i'm gonna go now if you want to buy this shirt i'll leave the link in the description box i have a lot of funny t-shirts it's a fun way to support my channel you get something in return i guess three dollars and then we're good so thank you for watching if you enjoyed this can't even say that thumbs up and even if you don't feel like giving it a thumbs up to this video because you feel weird liking something this bad leave a comment down below talking about my aloe plant look at her she has grown so much she was a baby when i brought her in and this is coffee plant i love them bills stay awesome stay positive i love you all and i'll see you in the next video you

Channel: Barbara4u2rlx

Views: 154,849

Rating: 4.9260192 out of 5

Keywords: cuties, Maïmouna Doucouré, director, movie industry, netflix, Mignonnes, sundance, thirteen, evan rachel wood, analysis, comparison, nikki reed, teenage melodrama, coming of age, movies about teenagers

Id: VNZnbLhRV1w

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020