Ted Cruz calls for DOJ investigation into 'Cuties' filmmakers and Netflix

The issue isn't the topic itself but rather the way it was presented. There is no valid reason whatsoever to where the story being told in this film requires the close up shots of the private parts of 11 year old children in skin tight clothing while dancing promiscuously. The story and the message could have easily been presented without scenes like that. Plus this wasn't a documentary using previously recorded footage, this was a movie to where children had to audition for these roles with over 600 of them auditioning in front of grown men while dancing like this. In layman's terms, they hired kids and made them do this on camera in order to show the audience that this is "messed up". In what world does that make any sense?

Sorry but no, as stated this DOES happen in real life, therefore there are endless hours of footage already available for this stuff that could have been used to create a documentary condemning these practices. Instead they chose to create a movie about the exploitation of children by literally hiring child actors and exploiting them on camera. That is a terrible way to bring attention to the "evils" of such a thing.

When animal rights activists want to bring attention to the immoral ivory trade do they make a movie to where the actors literally walk onto the African plains and saw off the horn of a live Rhino in order to provide shock value and show you "just how bad this is?". No. This "formula" makes zero sense in ANY OTHER CAPACITY that anyone can logically think of.

Supposedly at the end of this film the lead actor girl breaks down crying and realizes just how messed up all of this. This is based on the real life story of the director. Alright, so then if the director herself did these things and then in real life and woke up one day realizing just how horrific it is then what might happen to the children who this woman hired and told them to do these things in real life? Is the child who portrayed the director in this film going to wake up one day balling her eyes out realizing just how horrific it is that she too did this in REAL LIFE? Are her or any of her co-star 11 year old children going to wake up one day and realize that they have been immortalized on HD film shaking their private parts in skin tight clothing for the world to see? Will they wake up one day and be horrified at the fact that scenes of their 11 year old selves dancing half naked has become the top 10 most searched for scenes on adult porn sites? How will that effect these CHILDREN as they grow up and the realization of that reality starts to sink in? Did anybody think of that before subjecting them to this? And no lets not even pretend that pre-pubescent little kids have any concept of the long term implications of their actions. Sure they weren't forced on stage with guns to their heads but lets no pretend that "the kids agreed to do it" is anywhere near an acceptable response, 11 year olds can't "agree" to do anything.

Based on the logic used by the director and producers of this film I REALLY hope they don't get any bright ideas about making a film tackling the problem of actual child molestation....

 

Yes, and since the supposed message behind this film was to show just how horrific those things are then why didn't they use footage of those thousands of dance competitions instead of hiring children and telling them to perform this stuff on camera? Why add more professionally shot film style content of said immoral practices instead of using readily available footage?

Again, if I want to send out a message condemning the practice of something immoral then I'm not going to make a film doing the immoral thing on camera, adding to the content pool, to tell everybody that it's "bad".

Even fanatical animal rights groups like PETA don't make a movie and have actors inhumanely slaughter a real cow on camera and say "see how messed up this is!?"

If we want to bring attention to children doing drugs and alcohol and the negative effects that has on them would it be acceptable to hire child actors and have them injecting real heroin into their arms on camera and see the effects of it? If we want to bring attention to children in abusive homes would it be acceptable to hire child actors and literally torture them physically and mentally and film it for "shock value" so that the audience and "feel" just "how bad it is"? Absolutely not. Yet based on the logic used by the director of this film and it's defenders such things would be perfectly fine because "it's supposed to make you uncomfortable that's the point".

News flash, in movies and TV shows where children are subjected to terrible things they aren't ACTUALLY subjected to terrible things....In shows like Law and Order SVU on the episodes dealing with child sexual abuse they aren't actually abusing the child. Through dialogue and directing they can pretty accurately IMPLY what has happened to the child to gain that "shock value", they don't actually subject the child to abuse on camera to show you that.

Point is, this is the digital era, whether this movie is yanked from US screens or not it will forever be available for all to see. The very message of this film was supposedly the real life story of the director and the effects this "lifestyle" had on her. Yet she had REAL children doing the EXACT SAME THING she was "negatively effected by" on camera and filmed it, and based on descriptions of these scenes, filmed it up close and personal. Those scenes and this movie are here forever in the digital age. If the director herself was negatively effected by performing these acts in real life then how the hell does she think the children she hired to perform these things in real life on camera are going to feel in a few years?

Luckily for the director I don't think there is professionally shot full HD close ups of private parts while booty dancing footage of her 11 year old self plastered all over the internet for the rest of her life. Luckily for the director I don't think the aforementioned scenes of HER as an 11 year old doing these things has become the top ten most searched for scenes on multiple porn sites. Doing this stuff as a child hurt her, yet she created this content of OTHER CHILDREN and immortalized it all over the internet for the rest of these children's lives. Did she and her film team ever once stop to think that since the director herself was hurt by doing this that MAYBE any of that ^^^^^ might HURT the children in her movie as well?

What the hell was she thinking? Shame on this woman and everybody associated with this movie.

 

Absolutely not, nor will I watch that. What I have done is read detailed descriptions of the scenes in question from those who have seen it and also watched videos of other folks describing the scenes in detail as they are watching the film.

The scenes described in the movie are accurate as described, that isn't debatable. There is no factual evidence out there to support a claim that the hundreds of different people describing these scenes in the exact same detail are all part of some conspiracy to make this movie look bad.

The movie includes multiple scenes of 11 year old children dancing promiscuously in skin tight clothing. It also includes close up shots of 11 year old children's private parts in said clothing. It also includes a scene where one of the child actors pulls her pants down to take a photo of her genitalia (not displayed on screen thankfully).

If you have evidence that those aforementioned scenes are in fact not in the movie then please present it. If those scenes are in the movie then my overall point stands and me not having seen those scenes with my own eyes does not remove them from the movie...

The argument of "you can't judge what you haven't seen" isn't the automatic trump card argument that gets presented so often on the internet. I've never seen the video of the ChristChurch mass shooting in New Zealand either but enough people have and have provided enough graphically detailed descriptions of the video for me to understand what it shows on camera and to understand that it's horrible. I don't need to physically see it with my own eyes to make that conclusion.

 

My apologies, didn't mean to get spun up.

I understand that the movie is not actually pornography, that would be illegal. The problem that folks such as myself have with this movie isn't the message it's trying to portray but rather HOW they went about portraying that problem. Attention should absolutely be brought to the fact that this sort of thing is way more common place in the world than it should be and it needs to be condemned. The issue is that the movie has real actual children doing these things in order to "bring light to it". That's the problem.

An actual documentary about this subject would have been 100x more appropriate. There's already tons of footage of these types of dance competitions out there unfortunately and if the director herself was part of it at one point which messed her up than I'm sure there are plenty of other women out there who have a similar story to tell. She could have interviewed countless women who were once young dancers and bring to light the horrors that they also faced. But she didn't, she decided to make an actual movie to send that message and by choosing to make an actual movie instead of a documentary that means she had to have real children do these things in order to show people what it's like. That means she subjected children to the same things that supposedly she herself regrets having done in the past. Only with the children in this film they are immortalized forever on film and the internet. The scenes of these child actresses doing this horrible things will be available for the rest of their lives, there is no deleting this stuff from the internet even if the movie gets yanked from commercial distribution.

That's a HUGE problem that I simply cannot understand how nobody associated with this movie thought about. I mean seriously...I wonder how the parents of these child actresses feel knowing that their children have become the top 10 most searched for people on porn sites...Think about that for a minute, your 11 year old child dirty dancing on stage half naked has become the top 10 most searched for scenes on porn sites...And those scenes of her doing those things will be here for ever. That's horrifying. How will these little girls feel as they get older and mature enough to understand that concept? The director got screwed up doing this stuff herself yet nobody thought that maybe having kids do this stuff would screw them up too? Maybe they might have some regrets as they get older as the director did?

I just cannot fathom that NOBODY associated with this movie ever thought about that and thought about what this might do to these children. The person who made the film had regrets about her participating in this stuff as a child and it's even depicted at the end of the movie....yet nobody thought the kids in the movie might feel that way later on themselves? There is no way that nobody thought of that, that many people could not all be that willfully ignorant, somebody thought of that and the movie was greenlit anyway and that's the problem I have with this.

 

Netflix is an American based company. Yes the French made the film but there is no reason why Netflix should have allowed this on their platform. I seriously doubt that Netflix is in the business of purchasing distribution rights to something without actually watching it first.

They knew what was portrayed in this movie and they put it on their platform anyway. That's the problem I have with Netflix. Myself an supposedly thousands of others seeing how their cancellation rate spiked to 800% a few days ago because of this.

 

That isn't true. These children were required to audition for the roles in this film. Over 600 different children auditioned for this film. That means that a casting director or whomever put out a call for children to audition to be a part of this film and the parents of these children had to bring them to the auditions. These are 11 year old little girls we are talking about, they didn't drive themselves to the film studio nor can they "choose" to participate in this film without an adult signing off on it. Not a single one of those children saw the flyer for this movie and then snuck out of the house and ran down to the film studio with their parents or guardians completely unaware...

"We don't know how the work, the filming, was explained to the other girls". That's the problem here. There is no "explanation" that justifies "We are going to film your 11 year old child raunchy dancing half naked". This is the part where the disagreement comes in and the main reason why folks have a problem with this including myself. I simply do not understand how a responsible parent would ever agree to let their child do that. They could have pitched the best argument ever, "We would like to film your 11 year old daughter dirty dancing half naked in order to show how terrible an 11 year old girl dirty dancing half naked is and we will pay you hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars (or whatever they paid these people)".

For me, the door shuts after the opening phrase, "We want to film your 11 year old daughter dirty dancing half naked in order to...."

NO!

"But sir it's not what you think we are trying to bring light to..."

NO!

"But sir we are willing to pay a salary of..."

NO!

We want to film your 11 year old daughter dirty dancing half naked...the answer is no. There is not "but" that can come after that statement in the eyes of millions of parents out here.

I am fully aware that this stuff goes on all over the world on a routine basis and it's even pretty common in the US. For me personally, not to sound harsh, but I believe if you allow your child to participate in this stuff then you are a horrible parent and horrible person in my opinion. That goes for the parents of the children in this movie, the parents of the children who do this stuff in real life, the child beauty pageant parents, etc, all of them.

I just do not see how a responsible parent could be willing to accept ANY amount of compensation that a producer could come up with in exchange for allowing their 11 year old child dancing like this to be filmed. I get it, more than likely the kids who auditioned for this movie were already doing this stuff in real life and they had some of those aforementioned horrible parents that I spoke of before. I doubt that a random normal family saw the flyer for these auditions and said "Hey my little innocent 11 year old daughter who does normal 11 year old girl stuff how about you get on stage and start dancing like a stripper half naked". No, they families who auditioned their kids for this movie more than likely already had their kids doing this stuff. The bigger problem here is that doing this stuff on the local scene doesn't get you immortalized all over the internet for life. So now instead of you being a horrible parent who's 11 year old daughter is stripper dancing at local dance competitions with maybe some cell phone recording or something she is now stripper dancing half naked on a commercially distributed film in front of the whole world...

All to bring light to how "terrible" this is? To bring light to how terrible it is for your child to be acting like this you had your child act like this in a movie distributed throughout the entire world in full HD with multiple scenes of her doing this with the camera zoomed directly into her genitalia.....

The little girls in this movie may very well have been doing this stuff prior to this movie, but nobody saw them doing it outside of the other sick people who attend these things. Nobody knew who these little girls were. Now these little girls are famous and their faces and "dances" are all over the world for all to see...and are trending top 10 on porn site search engines....What the hell sort of producer thought that this would be an acceptable way to show these families that their actions are wrong? They made it WORSE...Even if every single little girl in this movie was "rehabilitated" after participating in this film that still doesn't take away the fact that full HD video of them dancing like this is now immortalized on the internet for eternity and trending on porn sites....

That is an absolutely terribly irresponsible way to conduct "therapy" even if it was successful.