So What's the Deal with "Cuties" Anyway?

Alright. In the interest of being able to have my own informed opinion, I bit the bullet and watched Netflix’s latest controversy piece, Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties. Since I’m seeing a lot of emotionally-charged reactions to the film (and reactions to reactions to the film), I’m going to make a particular effort to be as dispassionate and objective as possible in my analysis.

My conclusion is dual. First, the film’s message is an important one that we haven’t seen in a mainstream film before; it’s difficult to swallow, but successfully conveyed. Second, the execution of the intended message is severely problematic. Or, in short: what the film does is very good, but how it does it is very bad.

Before I break that down in more detail, let me highlight some important story context that you might not have picked up if you’ve been reading critiques but haven’t seen it yourself. A lot of the critics I read neglected to make clear is that at its core, this story isn’t about dancing; it’s about little girls coping with the pain of broken homes. The film’s main character is Amy, played by Fathia Youssouf - she’s 11 years old, as I will remind you several times in the next few minutes. Amy suffers silently as she watches her mother Mariam, played by Doucouré herself, being put through the gauntlet by her disloyal husband (also Amy’s starkly absent father). Being told by her religious community that women should be obedient to their husbands, in conjunction with witnessing the pain Mariam’s husband is causing her, is the nail in the coffin that pushes Amy in the direction of rebellion. Mbissine Therese Diop’s “Auntie” (the primary representative of Amy’s Muslim community) preaches piety and modesty; in response, Amy gravitates to a group of wildly irreverent girls who strive to be as sexual as a much older group of competitors. With every worsening development in the state of things at home, Amy makes another move deeper into chaotic rebellion, until she goes too far for even the girls she started out imitating.

We’re not done talking about Amy’s home life and its role in the story. Real quick, though, before this next bit, I want to point out just how young 11-year-old girls are. Most of them haven’t been through puberty. Your typical 11-year-old is in 6th grade. For visual context, here are some well-known actors when they were around that age:

Joey King, Storm Reid, Iain Armitage, Selena Gomez, Emma Watson, Dakota Fanning

(I will note that it’s difficult to be sure of exactly how old the actors are when these photos are taken, but I tried to make sure they’re as accurate as possible).

Don’t forget, we’re still on the subject of Amy’s parents and how that motivates her actions throughout the film. Bear with me.

Throughout the film, the girls learn to dance as sexually as possible: there’s a lot of crotch-touching, butt-smacking, putting fingers in mouths, twerking, etc - the kind of dancing you might expect to see performed in a misogynist rapper’s music video by, you know, adults. And it’s not just the dancing; notably influenced by the popularity of sexualized women on social media and the internet at large, the girls flippantly discuss sex and rape, make advances at older boys and even adult men, and dress on the daily like 20-something models going clubbing.

The preoccupation of Amy’s mother Mariam is acutely felt, and it’s that preoccupation that results in Amy, unsupervised and - more importantly - unsupported by her parents, being led down the rabbit hole to all the places where little girls are fed the idea that they need to hurry to be women, and that a woman is defined by her sexuality (read: her sex appeal).

Doucouré allows the film to present all of this without taking a definitive stance, until the climax, which I think is the most crucial factor in determining whether the film is ultimately good or bad. The day of the girls’ climactic dance scene is the same day that Amy’s father is marrying his new wife (and by the way, the wedding is happening IN Amy’s home and then this colossal asshole and his new bride are coming to LIVE in poor, faithful Mariam’s house, all because Mariam is under continuing pressure from the community to do her duty as a faithful wife despite her husband’s flagrant disloyalty). Amy flees the wedding preparations and races to make it to the dance competition. Then, midway through the girls’ most self-objectifying routine yet, Amy is struck dumb as the music of the dance competition is replaced by the thought of what’s going on back home. Amy is hit all at once with all the pain she’s been carrying and accumulating throughout the film. She stands right there in the middle of the stage with tears streaming down her face as the team twerks around her.

Then she bolts - off the stage, out of the competition, all the way home and into her house sobbing for her mother. It’s Auntie who intercepts her and begins to berate her for her scandalous outfit, but Mariam comes swiftly and firmly to her daughter’s defense. The mother and daughter, who have become more and more disconnected throughout the film, have a moment of heart-wrenching closeness before Mariam puts on a brave face and heads to the wedding.

As the film wraps up, with crystal clear visual imagery, Doucouré presents the two paths Amy faces: on her bed, she lays out her dance uniform - the path of reckless insubordination and rebellious self-objectification - and the dress she is to wear for her father’s wedding - the path of consolidation with her community and surrender to the traditional ways. Amy chooses neither.

To me, this conclusion makes all the difference. Amy’s breakdown at the dance competition removes any doubt that all her misled rebellion, epitomized in her desperate need to dance in the competition, has been a reaction to what she is going through at home. Without the emotional tools or the support system she needs to process her pain, she attempts to cope by pursuing the furthest thing from her community values and broken home life she can find. And, after holding back her own opinion for the duration of the film, Doucouré finally makes a decisive statement when Amy rejects both the oppressive and the overreactive - and therefore, by extension, chooses to make her own way.

In Doucouré’s own words, “This film tries to show that our children should have the time to be children, and we as adults should protect their innocence and keep them innocent as long as possible.” I would say that the film succeeds in making this statement. And I, for one, am very glad that the film goes so far as to definitively make a statement, and doesn’t stop at merely illustrating the tragic loss of innocence that it’s about. It would have been all too easy for Doucouré to leave Amy in the mire rather than giving her the chance to choose an upward path at the end.

Another important element that the critics seem to overlook, and Netflix’s marketing team feeds the flames of controversy by misrepresenting, is that this is not a heartwarming friendship story. Amy and Angelica (the most significant member of the dance team, played by Médina El Aidi-Azouni) do genuinely bond over the common ground of both coming from broken homes. But even taking that into consideration, no one can look at the relationship between Amy and the others as a positive thing. When sweet, childish Amy is in awe of them at the beginning, the girls are cruel to her - they throw rocks at her, shove her around, rip off her bag and scatter her books, threaten and insult her. Obsessed with presenting themselves as sexually mature, they mock her “flat ass” and loose jeans. They’re cruel to her, stripping away her innocence piece by piece, until she makes herself like them - and then she turns around and becomes cruel to them, and goes further than any of them to present herself as a sexual object.

It is made abundantly clear that throughout the film that Amy is starving for the approval of these girls who are the antithesis of everything inherent to her family and community. Whenever they dance, whenever they pull their obnoxious stunts, whenever they watch porny videos, Amy is stealing looks at the other girls, trying to do as they do, to fit in, to do whatever she thinks will make them accept and love her. It makes the audience ache a bit, to see her eating so hungrily out of the hand of people who bully and mock her, hoping they’ll give her the love and attention she’s not getting from her parents.

One dislikeable question this film pushed me to reflect on is where the delineation lies between empowerment and objectification when it comes to clothing. These little girls objectify themselves, tailoring their appearances to be as sexually appealing as possible; but they’re doing it in clothes that I might think looked cute if I were to see them on girls my age. The film offers no answer to this question, and far be it from me to offer one myself, but my musings so far have led me in the direction of believing that the delineation is determined in large part by intentions - intentions coupled, importantly, with a certain degree of understanding and awareness that is thoroughly beyond the grasp of Amy and her dance team.

That’s my take on the film’s message: why it’s good, important, necessary and new to the screen. Now get ready for some very strong opinions on the film’s failure in its methods.

Any filmmaker or gender politics apologist is familiar with “the male gaze,” but for the more casual reader, allow me to elaborate. From its inception, the entertainment industry - like many others - has been a notorious boys’ club. Strides are finally being made in the direction of equilibrium, but the body of contemporary mainstream cinema - let’s say anything this side of 1980 - is the handiwork of male directors and cinematographers. Film is a visual medium, and art conveys profound unspoken truths about the artist; keep these two things in mind when I tell you that the way male filmmakers have presented and captured women throughout the decades has so commonly tended to be objectifying that we’ve coined a term for it. And I’m not talking about the objectifying way women are written - that’s a whole other article. I’m talking about the more literal, visual way women are captured on camera.

My favorite example of the male gaze, simply because it’s one of the most egregious, is the Fast and Furious franchise, especially the first few films. It’s not a Fast and Furious movie if there aren’t innumerable closeup shots on women’s backsides and panning shots that traverse the full, gleaming, long-legged, curvaceous lengths of women’s sparingly-clothed bodies (don’t come at me, film people; I know a vertical pan is a tilt, and I’m calling it a pan anyway). There are many more subtle forms of objectification that fall under the umbrella of the male gaze, but the Fast and Furious example will suffice for the purposes of this article.

Back to the point. Cuties is as full of closeups on female body parts as the raunchiest Fast and Furious film - but in the case of Cuties, the females in question are eleven-year-olds, not adults. Every time the girls dance, there are closeup shots of their booty-short-and-miniskirt-wearing butts and crotches grinding, twerking, writhing and touching their way through sexual dance moves. In my opinion, this is where the film really went wrong and got in way too deep.

The girls are objectified and exploited by the camera far too constantly for it to be excusable. The shooting style reeks of the male gaze so strongly that it tarnishes the positive thematic impetus driving the entire piece, leaving the viewer with something deeply profound, but deeply tainted.

Had the film reserved itself to more objective, wider shots for the dance scenes, and/or focused on closeups of the girls’ faces to capture the emotional beats of the story, the end result would have been a far more appropriate and effective vessel to convey Doucouré’s weighty message - and might well have been received warmly by many of those who have instead responded with livid backlash. I don’t believe exploiting or objectifying the girls with this shooting style was the director’s intent, but it’s far too egregious to be pardoned on the grounds of good intentions.

I find validity on both sides of the Cuties controversy. One one hand, there are those who feel strongly that the film’s failings outweigh its message and that its existence is an outrage. Frankly, I 100% see where they’re coming from, and am deeply troubled by the same elements they condemn. Objectification and sexualization of children, even if done in service of the message that doing so is wrong, is nothing to be taken lightly. On the other hand, there are those who feel the message is strong enough and important enough to outweigh the problems with execution along the way. I can’t censure them, either. There is an unpleasant but deeply relevant and true message here, and it’s not one that we have seen in this medium before - nor that we should see in this medium often, lest we become desensitized to it.