Cuties

Chances are if you have a Facebook account, you've heard of the recent French film directed by Maïmouna Doucouré called Cuties which is on Netflix.  It has generated a lot of negative publicity for its portrayal of young teenage girls who compete in a dance competition inappropriately dressed by most standards of modesty.

I was initially shocked seeing the poster for the movie with girls aged 12-14 (who play as eleven-year olds in the film) in their dance uniforms that resemble what you might see from the Dallas Cheerleaders. Surely the vitriol this movie created was justified as I watched a clip from the movie of this dance scene which showed the girls dancing provocatively.  I was further mortified by reports that there was child nudity in the film. I felt the outrage for this horrible film.  

I also came across the director's statement on the film. I was curious as to how she could possibly justify such an obviously immoral film.  But I read her statement anyways (link here). It's not very long - takes perhaps three minutes to read.  I was surprised that some of the assumptions I had made did not seem to actually be true.  She claimed, for example, that there was no actual child nudity in the film and that the intent of the film was to oppose the hypersexualization young teenage girls face from Western influences and the challenges of being a teenage girl and trying to fit in. She also talked about how age considerations were carefully considered and trained counselors were made available to the actresses, and that the French government's child protection authorities approved of the project.

So, after reading the statement I was still largely opposed to the film - even if the intent may have been good, the means of accomplishing it were not appropriate - and I still stand by this argument.  Someone posted on Facebook that they assumed that anyone defending the movie was themselves a pedophile.  Against my better judgement, I responded with a simple comment that while I was not personally defending the movie, I thought it was worthwhile to read the director's statement on the film to understand her perspective.  This resulted in backlash from another commenter from my local ward who described the director as a "depraved and disgusting animal" who he compared to Hitler, Stalin and Satan. My response was simply to ask if he had actually read all of the director's comments. He hadn't and to my knowledge still has not. But the conversation ended on a rather bizarre accusation: "You've convinced me. Celebrating and defending the sexualization of children and pedophilia is awesome. You've chosen an interesting hill to defend."  Keep in mind that my only assertion I ever made in this thread was that it was worth reading the director's perspective in her short opinion piece. I even stated "I'm not defending the movie" and I certainly did not ever make any implications that I support or "celebrate" pedophilia and child sexualization by any stretch of the imagination. But rather than simply taking a few minutes to honestly read the director's comments, it resulted in a personal attack on my character that I was defending pedophilia.  This personal attack on me was "liked" by the original poster.

Somewhere between comments with this individual and after reading the comments from the director, I decided that if I was actually going to have an informed opinion on this movie beyond my initial concerns that I needed to watch the film. And so I did.  

Film Synopsis

Here's my synopsis of the film having watched it in its entirety. (Massive spoilers ahead if for whatever reason you intend to watch the film).

The film tells the story of an eleven-year old girl named "Amy" (portrayed by 14-year old actress Fathia Youssouf) who comes from a strict Muslim family.  Amy overhears at the beginning of the film a phone conversation with her mom that her father is going to take a second wife and Amy quietly observes the deep emotional pain and tears that her mother goes through trying to come to terms with this news.  Yet her mother, at the advice of her grandmother, goes along with preparing for the upcoming wedding for her husband and is strongly discouraged from voicing her concerns.  Amy sees this incredible pain and is conflicted on how she can support her traditional Muslim culture and roots.  

Meanwhile at school, she struggles to fit in and sees some girls who she sees as the "popular girls" who have formed a dance crew and wear halter tops, short-shorts, etc.  Amy works her way into this group in a desperate attempt to fit in and be accepted. The girls prepare for a dance competition, all the while Amy continues to hide how she now dresses at school from her very traditional religious family.  The group of girls convince Amy to do terrible things she felt incredibly uncomfortable with such as walking into a boy's restroom to try to film a boy peeing.  The girls obviously are incredibly naïve themselves but curious about sexuality - at one point, one of the girls picks up a condom in the park and doesn't know what it is and the other girls scream and tell her to put it down because condoms are used by "AIDS people."

The juxtaposition of Amy's traditional Muslim culture at home and desire to fit in at school becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.  Eventually, she is caught by her mother and grandmother who punish her and then force her to chop up a massive amount of onions to prepare for the upcoming wedding celebration for her father's second wife. Her hatred for her father continues to grow.  Shortly before the wedding, she sneaks out of the house, puts on her "Cuties" dance crew uniform and goes to compete in big competition they've been rehearsing for, which they have increasingly sexualized based on videos they have watched of other girls who seemed to get attention - even when the young girls themselves do not fully understand the implications of the moves they perform. The audience and judges largely reacts coldly to their dance as it is seen as inappropriate. There are several looks of disgust from the audience and adults covering their kids' eyes.  

In the middle of the routine, Amy freezes up, starts to cry and has a mental breakdown as she realizes some of the terrible things she has done and become in order to fit in at school.  She runs off stage while the song is still playing, and goes to her mom, now dressed in traditional ceremonial clothing for the wedding. He grandmother tries to scold her, but her mother protects her, embraces her for an extended period and then tells her that she will not force her to attend her father's wedding.  She goes up to her room and it shows the traditional Muslim ceremonial dress on her bed and then her Cuties outfit next to it, suggesting the critical decision she must make between her traditional fundamentalist religious upbringing and the influences of modern sexualized culture - both of which have caused her immense pain.  It then shows her come downstairs dressed in a very modest, normal outfit with a long-sleeve shirt and jeans - not the ceremonial dress and not the Cuties outfit. The movie ends with her quietly walking past the wedding celebrations and playing jump rope with some local girls who had come to the wedding celebration, and for perhaps the first time in the movie, seems to be genuinely happy and free to be herself.

Controversial scenes

So what about the critical claims resulting in #CancelNetflix?  Consistent with the director's explanation, there was no child nudity in the film.  The director mentions that the only nudity in the film is a brief 1-second clip on a small, grainy cell phone were the girls in the group see a dance video from an actress above 18 years old where a breast is briefly exposed. I trust that is accurate, but I must have blinked during that part as I missed it (and no, I'm not going to rewind to try to locate).  The girls in the dance group do wear tight-fitting clothing similar to that which you might expect to see from a cheerleader in professional sports in the United States.  In an effort to be perceived as older, they mimic dance routines they see on their phones, dancing in ways that are provocative and inappropriate for any age. Their dance routine makes the audience in the film visibly uncomfortable and invoked a similar reaction from me. There is also one scene where Amy gets into a fight in school and as humiliated during the fight as her underwear is exposed. I don't think anyone who actually watches the film could honestly come away from it thinking the overall message was one promoting or encouraging sexualization of children and there is no reference to pedophilia other than perhaps the grandmother referencing being married by Amy's age.  The message was more that these disturbing experiences are happening in real life both in fundamentalist religious groups and western cultural influences, and that they need to be talked about and addressed.

My personal experiences

I will never fully understand what it is like to grow up as a girl in today's society. I never worried about wearing makeup to make myself look sexier, wearing a push-up bra or trying to compare myself to unrealistic models in the likes of teenage girl magazines like Cosmopolitan (I have never so much as opened any such magazine).  I do worry about such influences on my three young daughters as well as my son. I've seen some claims that the average age for first exposure to pornography is 11 years old which is both terrifying and disturbing.

While I cannot speak to the specific experience of growing up as a girl, I do have personal experience of what it is like to be a pre-teen/teenager in the awkward phases of desperately trying to fit in with others and exploring the concept of sexuality with little to no actual quality sexual education.  Throughout elementary school and even into middle school, I struggled to find good friends and did stupid embarrassing things to try to fit in with certain cliques at school. I was the kid who was used by groups to do stupid things for cheap laughs - like acting out on dares to lick sand or pretend to make out with a pole. I remember that there were teachers and other adults who walked by and saw this behavior, and looking back I wish they had the courage to pull me aside privately and talk some sense into me. In about third or fourth grade, the "cool" thing to do was to use a small toy recording device someone brought to school to go to the back of the playground and record every swear word we knew - and you would be surprised at how many swear words a fourth grader knows despite growing up in a very sheltered conservative Mormon home.  I even recorded some of this in my private journal at the time but later cut out the pages in fear that my parents or siblings would find out. I was the smallest boy in most of my classes, literally pushed around up against a chain fence, bullied and berated - but I tolerated it all as the price for my desperate attempt to fit in. Of course, the last people I wanted to share my concerns with were my parents - surely they wouldn't love me if they found out about some of the stupid things I did.  (This, of course, could not be further from the truth. I have very loving, amazing parents. But such was my mentality at the time).

While I did eventually find the courage to walk away from some of these "friends" of mine, I would still repeatedly overhear middle school and high school boys making jokes about the flatness of a girl's chest, how someone they disliked probably had a "crooked dick" and a plethora of other X-rated comments. I knew very little about sexuality other than conservative teachings from my church that it was wrong to touch myself or do something called "necking" or "petting" - and I of course knew that it was certainly wrong to look at any form of pornography, including girls in swimsuits at the beach. But I also didn't know where to honestly turn to ask "embarrassing" questions about what was "normal" for the crazy wild hormone soup and physical development that we call puberty. As a sophomore in high school, I remember an older boy in a private conversation at an overnight Mock Trial retreat asking me about when I masturbated, how far did it squirt? The honest answer would have been "I honestly didn't know that it could do that" but not wanting to seem so innocent and naïve, I think I responded with something like "a couple feet." I also remember my bishop asking me about whether I masturbated and when I said I did not, he made an off-hand comment that masturbation was a serious problem among the youth in our ward (which was a completely inexcusable betrayal of my friends' confidence even by Church handbook standard and made it so that I was extremely hesitant to share any personal information at all with him going forward - further complicated by the fact that I had an unrequited crush on his daughter).

And so, while I will never fully understand being a teenage girl and being pressured into sexualization, I do understand very well many of the difficulties that are hidden in the quiet hearts of adolescents. I understand desperately wanting to fit in at any cost and not wanting to be seen as a naïve and innocent little boy, even if that is exactly what I was. So on that level, I could relate to the main character acting out in ways that ultimately resulted in disappointment and shame. Many of my personal experiences growing up have contributed to the meaning I attribute to the my favorite phrase from an LDS hymn, "in the quiet heart is hidden sorrow that the eye can't see." I don't think my experiences were unique, and yet even now in discussing them twenty years later I still get emotional and experience deep internalized feelings of shame - deep internal scars from wounds from long ago that never quite healed. It is also these experiences that have led me to not want to judge others because I almost certainly do not understand the causes and conditions beneath the surface of the individual actions of children and grown-ups who act out inappropriately.

Concluding thoughts

I understand that the film took precautions with regards to the age of the actors and the subject matter, and yet I am still uncomfortable with the use of 12-14 year-old girls in the film. I worry deeply about the media that my children will be exposed to and won't feel comfortable enough to talk to me about.  I have tried in earnest to teach my own children openly and honestly about sex in age appropriate manners.  I hope that they will have the confidence to come to me when something is uncomfortable or feels wrong.

I don't have strong opinions that everyone should watch this film and as I've stated I still have serious concerns and reservations about the methods used to convey the message.  I understand parent's honest concerns over the film. I also assume the director's good intentions for creating the film.  Ultimately, there are very few people that honestly would encourage sexualization of women or pedophilia, but if we are unwilling to have these open candid conversations without attacking each other, I'm also not sure how much progress we can make towards common goals and objectives.