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.

  • Gay_Wrath [fae/faer]
    ·
    4 years ago

    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.

    • Mallow [any,comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      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...

      • Gay_Wrath [fae/faer]
        ·
        4 years ago

        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??