people who play LPs backward and find Satanism in Chris De Burgh's "Lady in Red" or Harry Potter clearly have too much time on their hands to be outraged by what is clearly, in this case, nothing more than fiction inspired by contemporary culture
Cuties is clearly a film about widespread cultural nymphomania driving little girls into being sexualized from a young age in the same way it pressurizes women into being oversexualized past the age of consent. which is to say that film is every bit about pedophilia by way of societal norms as it is about gender biased chauvinism by way of societal norms; societal norms laid bare and discovered by young people who merely mimic behavior in order to seek attention and find acceptance in a continuing and self-perpetuated cycle
and the movie is hardly subtle on this topic. it really hammers the audience over the head with the theme. to the point where it becomes utterly unenjoyable as a drama about a character. i struggled to finish it; i only didn't assume presentation morality lesson déjà vu because of controversy surrounding it so i watched till the bitter fucking Hollywood end - where the protagonist inexplicably abandons all behavioral momentum, and, for reasons yet to be determined, mid Act III climax, does a complete 180 reversal and gives the audience the proverbial "happy ending"
the movie is more akin to an after-school TV special; a moral lesson with clear-cut, black/white message. there's virtually no theatrical nuance, no sub-themes, no character development, no suspense or drama to speak of all reflected in the film's cinematographic style, ham-fistedly made to look to be documentary-like; observational, not dramatic
it is a single-perspective film, with all other characters made to look as either 2-dimensional cardboard cutouts or, in the case of father figure, absent altogether (the protagonist's father, a major plot device is spoken of frequently but is only ever spoken of and makes an appearance as a phone voice for a sum total of 10 seconds of "screen-time")
on a personal note - compromising the material in order to have moral alibi on the publicity tour is not an approach i particularly value artistically. im more inclined to applaud thematic subtlety and direct, confrontational publicity rather than the other way around (it is in my view, if nothing else, braver to chose to defend oneself from accusations of sensationalizing a topic over offending the religiously extreme but that's just me)
in spite the production team's effort to make their case that this movie should and could never be interpreted pornographically even more obvious than it could possibly be by hit-you-over-the-head plot constructs, those who are most guilty of sexualizing minors with actual sex abuse, deliberately chose to ignore these material compromises (presumably made in order to avoid the very politicizing of media to fabricate public concern by feigning it) and the filmmakers now appear to be in the midst of discovering that, as the saying goes, those who trade liberty in exchange for a little bit of security receive, in kind, ample amounts of neither of those; a most unfortunate and foreseeable set of circumstances
be that as it may, to set aside the interpretation of Cuties as something other than a critique of the very hypocrites whose scrutiny it was inevitably to fall under and to interpret the backlash against it by deliberately ignoring the painstaking effort ...
people who play LPs backward and find Satanism in Chris De Burgh's "Lady in Red" or Harry Potter clearly have too much time on their hands to be outraged by what is clearly, in this case, nothing more than fiction inspired by contemporary culture
Cuties is clearly a film about widespread cultural nymphomania driving little girls into being sexualized from a young age in the same way it pressurizes women into being oversexualized past the age of consent. which is to say that film is every bit about pedophilia by way of societal norms as it is about gender biased chauvinism by way of societal norms; societal norms laid bare and discovered by young people who merely mimic behavior in order to seek attention and find acceptance in a continuing and self-perpetuated cycle
and the movie is hardly subtle on this topic. it really hammers the audience over the head with the theme. to the point where it becomes utterly unenjoyable as a drama about a character. i struggled to finish it; i only didn't assume presentation morality lesson déjà vu because of controversy surrounding it so i watched till the bitter fucking Hollywood end - where the protagonist inexplicably abandons all behavioral momentum, and, for reasons yet to be determined, mid Act III climax, does a complete 180 reversal and gives the audience the proverbial "happy ending"
the movie is more akin to an after-school TV special; a moral lesson with clear-cut, black/white message. there's virtually no theatrical nuance, no sub-themes, no character development, no suspense or drama to speak of all reflected in the film's cinematographic style, ham-fistedly made to look to be documentary-like; observational, not dramatic
it is a single-perspective film, with all other characters made to look as either 2-dimensional cardboard cutouts or, in the case of father figure, absent altogether (the protagonist's father, a major plot device is spoken of frequently but is only ever spoken of and makes an appearance as a phone voice for a sum total of 10 seconds of "screen-time")
on a personal note - compromising the material in order to have moral alibi on the publicity tour is not an approach i particularly value artistically. im more inclined to applaud thematic subtlety and direct, confrontational publicity rather than the other way around (it is in my view, if nothing else, braver to chose to defend oneself from accusations of sensationalizing a topic over offending the religiously extreme but that's just me)
in spite the production team's effort to make their case that this movie should and could never be interpreted pornographically even more obvious than it could possibly be by hit-you-over-the-head plot constructs, those who are most guilty of sexualizing minors with actual sex abuse, deliberately chose to ignore these material compromises (presumably made in order to avoid the very politicizing of media to fabricate public concern by feigning it) and the filmmakers now appear to be in the midst of discovering that, as the saying goes, those who trade liberty in exchange for a little bit of security receive, in kind, ample amounts of neither of those; a most unfortunate and foreseeable set of circumstances
be that as it may, to set aside the interpretation of Cuties as something other than a critique of the very hypocrites whose scrutiny it was inevitably to fall under and to interpret the backlash against it by deliberately ignoring the painstaking effort with which producers smeared politically correct ethos all over the production - as anything other than retribution for a perceived insult is more than puritan prudishness; more than misinterpretation; even more than mere denial of complicity
a response which ignores that a film - a caricature on the brink of absurdity in artistic terms though it may be, that, nonetheless, such a film - by the very nature of its cartoonish criticism of a culture of oversexualizing women must also necessarily be critical of sexualizing minors....
because ... the entire plot... of the movie in question... the entire plot... with no deviations... revolves around...
demonstrating how a woman from a very young age, before being able to reason as an adult, undergoes immense pressures from every conceivable person in their vicinity - community, peers, authority figures, family and media - to exhibit sexual behavior in order to be acknowledged and validated as a human being WHILE STILL UNDER AGE
Q.E. fucking D.
a response refusing to acknowledge that a movie about... *ahem* a thing that it is about... can somehow be interpreted as something else is not a "misunderstanding"
a misunderstanding is coincidental. and it can only be coincidental when there is room left for interpretation. in this case, poorly executed artistically though it may be, the filmmakers left no room for interpretation
and a response as though it is otherwise is clearly either deliberately misinterpreted or idiotic. these people organize and finance class lawsuits so we can safely assume they are not idiots
a response like that is also undeniably very deceptive (on an obvious abstract level it distorts public's perception to portray as illegally pornographic something which is at worst a clumsy piece of theater about societal virtues; no actual pornographic imagery is seen anywhere in the movie; interpreting it as such only serves to make the movie's point more stronger so i suppose it's great as a piece of political commentary but only when talked about outside of itself )
and a deliberately deceptive response in a consistent pattern with a cynical fearmongering agenda is called propaganda
and this particular propaganda agenda serves to indoctrinate young people into fundamentalist cults such that evangelical recruiters can easily coerce impressionable minds into joining megachurches with ever increasing (and tax-exempt) turnover; that very group of people who consistently perpetrate systemic sexual abuse of minors with more rape cases than any other group in history under pretense of outrage for accusations of others (more often than not made by themselves or one of their mouthpieces)
so to see this moral outrage at an art film as something else other than cynical, malevolent cash-grab via corruption of youth in every imaginable way is either ignorance or hypocrisy and more than being sick of anything else i am sick of nobody saying that
moral panic hysteria
people who play LPs backward and find Satanism in Chris De Burgh's "Lady in Red" or Harry Potter clearly have too much time on their hands to be outraged by what is clearly, in this case, nothing more than fiction inspired by contemporary culture
Cuties is clearly a film about widespread cultural nymphomania driving little girls into being sexualized from a young age in the same way it pressurizes women into being oversexualized past the age of consent. which is to say that film is every bit about pedophilia by way of societal norms as it is about gender biased chauvinism by way of societal norms; societal norms laid bare and discovered by young people who merely mimic behavior in order to seek attention and find acceptance in a continuing and self-perpetuated cycle
and the movie is hardly subtle on this topic. it really hammers the audience over the head with the theme. to the point where it becomes utterly unenjoyable as a drama about a character. i struggled to finish it; i only didn't assume presentation morality lesson déjà vu because of controversy surrounding it so i watched till the bitter fucking Hollywood end - where the protagonist inexplicably abandons all behavioral momentum, and, for reasons yet to be determined, mid Act III climax, does a complete 180 reversal and gives the audience the proverbial "happy ending"
the movie is more akin to an after-school TV special; a moral lesson with clear-cut, black/white message. there's virtually no theatrical nuance, no sub-themes, no character development, no suspense or drama to speak of all reflected in the film's cinematographic style, ham-fistedly made to look to be documentary-like; observational, not dramatic
it is a single-perspective film, with all other characters made to look as either 2-dimensional cardboard cutouts or, in the case of father figure, absent altogether (the protagonist's father, a major plot device is spoken of frequently but is only ever spoken of and makes an appearance as a phone voice for a sum total of 10 seconds of "screen-time")
on a personal note - compromising the material in order to have moral alibi on the publicity tour is not an approach i particularly value artistically. im more inclined to applaud thematic subtlety and direct, confrontational publicity rather than the other way around (it is in my view, if nothing else, braver to chose to defend oneself from accusations of sensationalizing a topic over offending the religiously extreme but that's just me)
in spite the production team's effort to make their case that this movie should and could never be interpreted pornographically even more obvious than it could possibly be by hit-you-over-the-head plot constructs, those who are most guilty of sexualizing minors with actual sex abuse, deliberately chose to ignore these material compromises (presumably made in order to avoid the very politicizing of media to fabricate public concern by feigning it) and the filmmakers now appear to be in the midst of discovering that, as the saying goes, those who trade liberty in exchange for a little bit of security receive, in kind, ample amounts of neither of those; a most unfortunate and foreseeable set of circumstances
be that as it may, to set aside the interpretation of Cuties as something other than a critique of the very hypocrites whose scrutiny it was inevitably to fall under and to interpret the backlash against it by deliberately ignoring the painstaking effort ...
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