TRIGGER WARNING - TALKING ABOUT SEXUAL CONTENT WITH MINORS
I wanted to see if it was really as bad as the trailer and holy shit it's actually the worst thing on Netflix. Yes, even worse than that Space Force blatant propaganda. It's Islamophobic(I was pissed when I wrote this, Islamaphobic is a huge stretch and I can admit when I'm wrong) sexist, and the most disgusting piece of somehow legal pedo bait I've ever had the misfortune of watching. Before watching I thought that since it was French that it might just be an artistic movie that went too far, but no, the writing and editing are awful too. All of the characters besides the protagonist are mean spirited for no good reason. There's not a single likeable character in the movie. I think the movie tries to justify the sexualization as female empowerment (at least the trailer did), but the main character spends the entire movie being pushed around by other girls and women in a desperate attempt to be accepted by others. Only in the actual last two minutes of the movie does the protagonist seem happy to do her own thing.
The girls in the movie are all 11 years old and yet they're half naked for the majority of the movie. At three points in the movie the main protagonist's underwear is shown: once while other teenage girls strip her in a fight and take photos of her panties (the movie zooms in on her butt during this), once while she takes off her pants and panties to take a vag selfie and post it online (no private parts shown thankfully, but much of her bare thighs are), and lastly while her mom and grandma strip her down to a shirt and panties in what I think was supposed to be an exorcism... and they couldn't even do the last one without sexualizing AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD GIRL by having her twerk for two minutes in her panties while the grandma tosses water on her, essentially making it a wet t shirt twerk. I could go on about this but the more I write the angrier I get
I went on Youtube expecting to see a ton of leftists shitting on it, but all I found were right wing reactionaries. Am I missing something here? It's been out for weeks, why aren't they calling this movie out? EDIT: I was wrong about the release date. While the trailer came out weeks ago, the movie has only been out since Sept 9th. It's completely fine that some creators would need time to write a fleshed out script with in-depth criticism of the movie instead of just yelling into a mic for half an hour generating quick and easy content.
EDIT: According to this article the protagonist actress is 14, and last time I fucking checked that's still a literal child. Also one of the supporting actresses is 12 so.... what the actual fuck.
I mean, I guess I’ve seen a lot of lip service paid to the idea that it’s supposed to be casting a critical eye on the sexualization and socialization of young girls. But just watching the trailer makes me sad for the wringer that young girls get put through as they try to grow up.
So despite the poor writing choices they originally tried to make a movie about how sexualizing kids is bad... and in the process sexualized actual children for pedos to gawk at.
There were plenty of times they could have turned the camera away or blurred the shot, but instead they centered it and zoomed in. I feel terrible for the underage actresses, this is going to be online for the rest of their lives even if Netflix removes it.
I've read about other Netflix shows that covered teenage puberty that went out of their way to make everyone ugly specifically so that no one would get off to it. This one bolted in the opposite direction.
It's become more and more apparent to me that movie critics just write what they write based off how they think it'll affect their social standing in the cinematic world rather than actually critiquing the art. Most of the time they're so vague in their criticism I don't understand what they even are. Clout sharks, man.
There’s no way I’m going to watch the whole thing, but I can admit that I can see why the premise seems like something worth exploring. The push-and-pull between the expectations of a conservative religious culture and a modern hypersexualized youth culture... I mean, it’s a very rich topic and also very grim. In the trailer, these girls look desperately awkward to me as they try to imitate adult movements. But, troublingly, it just feels like voyeurism, more like watching a car accident than watching social commentary. They look like children rehearsing not only adult sexuality, but also adult conflicts and socialization.
It just makes me sad.
The Muslims in the movie are very stereotyped and the exorcism stuff near the end was cringe at best. The girls who the trailer implies are her friends are some of the nastiest, mean spirited characters I've ever seen.
And like, yeah, I remember middle school and trying to fit in a group of girls that outwardly hated each other, but the extremes the protagonists goes to (eventually posting a CP selfie of herself on her dad's phone, as well as stabbing a kid in the hand for insulting her) to fit in are incredibly unrealistic. In America you'd get put on a sex offender list for the selfie and go to juvie for the stabbing.
I felt gross the entire time watching the movie, but I think a lot of pedos watching would feel more like the background teenage boys and men in the movie that are seen multiple times oogling the 11 year old girls without consequence.
This is a far different situation from like Big Mouth, where yeah the kids are ugly cartoons and they're voiced by adults.
Big Mouth wasn't my cup of tea, but I appreciated that they went with an ugly aesthetic.
I enjoy it. It's definitely got some crude juvenile humor in it but I appreciate how well it portrays how strange, awkward, and unnerving it can be to grow up.
As I put in one of the edits, while the trailer came out weeks ago the Netflix movie release was only a few days ago.
Since a lot of the popular leftists I watch prefer video essays over webcam rants, they probably need more time to prep.
Sorry about that, I was still seething when I wrote about Youtubers.
I got nightmares for a week straight after I heard about it, read the synopsis and saw the posters. It was so triggering and I have no idea why. I hope you're safe. Sexualizing kids is... bad. (Thank you for the gold, kind stranger)
afaik, the director was mainly using this as a vehicle to tell her own story of her upbringing and whatnot so i feel as though calling it islamophobic is ridiculous. i still think it's use of actual child actors is repulsive however, obviously, and should be called out respectively and tbh thoroughly investigated. i've never seen anyone actually support this movie and have only seen outrage for it on both the left (mainly actual survivors, such as myself, criticizing it) and people on the right (qanon dorks).
Michel Houllabeuqe’
I had to look up that writer and goddamn, this is like an unhinged boomerpost in novel form lmao
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submission_(novel)
I actually read that book when it came out and it honestly is as terrible as it sounds, and thats not even accounting for the islamophobia
Damn it's rated a 1.8/10 on IMDb so at least some people hated it. I don't intend on watching, probably would be one if those things that sticks in my brain for weeks after
The 1.7 million dislikes of the trailer on Youtube did help me feel better.
But yeah, I wouldn't recommend watching this unless you wanted to do a full academic analysis of it.
I agree with a lot of things people said, but i also have thoughts
Firstly, while the film is semi-autobiographical, the worst/creepiest scene was NOT autobiographical. She literally just saw some girls doing this and that was the actual inspiration for the movie
Doucouré’s initial inspiration came from seeing a group of young girl dancers perform onstage at a neighborhood gathering in the suburbs of Paris. In the audience were several African mothers and mothers wearing the veil, and on the stage were young girls dancing sensually and wearing revealing clothing. “It was a real culture shock,” says. “It’s why I thought about myself, my childhood.”
So the most upsetting scene was not based on her childhood, it was just based on the culture shock she experienced growing up. Which definitely frames things differently than if it was her story from being a young dancer. Source
Secondly, while it seems the director did hire a psychologist to help these girls deal with doing these scenes, uhhh these girls are literally 12-14. Can they really even consent? Child labor is pretty unethical even in the best of times, and now we have adults paying and filming children to act sexually in front of them, then putting it online for millions of people to watch. Even if they're also saying "look this is bad, this is to show how bad it is", does that make it okay? Can we ensure every single person who worked on this production wasn't a pedo? The film industry is pretty bad, even Sundance.
And yes, kids do act like this, and that's a problem. But there's a big difference between kids doing this stuff around each other and initiating it themselves vs adults literally paying and filming them doing it and a major media company promoting it.
Overall, i think the director really tried to tell a story and the message that girls get oversexualized is worth discussing (tho i really don't think this is going to convince anyone who isn't already convinced of that), but even the people who liked the film said they could have knocked down the sexual content x10 and still get the exact same message across. I'm not gonna say she's a pedo, but uh, best case she just caught up making An Art and didn't really care about the actual literal children she just exploited.
Secondly, while it seems the director did hire a psychologist to help these girls deal with doing these scenes, uhhh these girls are literally 12-14. Can they really even consent?
Wow. If you have to hire a psychologist to do damage control because you're making children act out sexual situations, maybe you need to rethink the content of your movie. This shows the director's awareness of how she could be traumatizing these kids, and she still went ahead with it anyway. You really don't need to show things in graphic detail to get your point across about how bad they are. Like I feel like one could convey murder is wrong without making a gory movie.
I'm agreeing with you btw, just... reacting because I didn't know as much about the film before...
fucking exactly this.
Its frustrating because the right wing is doing some weird Q thing with it. so libs are now defending it. But its ummmm actually its just bad to make children do those things in general, why the fuck is this politicized??
It's Islamaphobic...
I'm very interested how this is Islamaphobic (I believe you, there's just no other mention in the body of the post). Since I won't watch this garbage shit, can you expand on this point?
In the beginning of the movie the girl goes to an all female prayer group with her family, and the speaker talks about how women specifically must be pious because there will be far more women in hell than men.
That evil shows itself in the eyes of scantily women, so they must remain modest and never put any sexual responsibility on men. That they must obey their husbands no matter what.
Later in the movie the daughter peeks in on her mother crying because her dad is marrying a second wife, and throughout the rest of movie the mom bottles up her feelings on the marriage and even has to help with the wedding. It's never explained why she closes herself off, so we're left to assume that she's doing it to obey her husband. Or at least I did, I dunno.
I'm not going to pretend to be Muslim here, but I was raised Christian (I'm not any longer) and lemme just say, sexism is not exclusive to a single religion.
The only thing that gives me pause is that the writer is Senegalese herself, and although the wiki doesn't mention it I've seen others say she is muslim, at least culturally
I went to sleep on it, calmed down, and yeah, I was really pushing it calling this movie Islamaphobic.
I will say that it's odd the director decided to only put in negatives about Islam. But the editing was incredibly rushed when there wasn't skin showing, so I might have missed it. The family characters don't get much screen time.
Okay so before this I had only seen a poster for the show, I just watched the trailer and learned that 1.) this is a scripted series and not some reality show about child pageants and 2.) it involves some islamic french people. So this whole thread makes waaaaay more sense.
But yeah like without the headscarf all of this what you said is true of a lot of christians. I was born catholic (now atheist) but there was a scandal in my family when my cousin remarried.
I was better off never watching this movie.
Oh, and even though whatever moral they're attempting to pull out of their ass is supposedly aimed at little girls, Netflix gave this a rating of TV-MA to make sure only grown adults watch little girls twerk.
Yeah I'm still mad.
It should be noted that 11 years olds have been getting sexualising messages and experimenting with crass behavior for a long time now. ESPECIALLY kids who learn dancing. This is nothing new. Its been going on for decades and capitalism is the reason why.
Nah, stuff like that has been happening for centuries. Capitalism is just one more way to create unequal power relations that enable this shit.
