Yet this was not the trajectory of the Cuties debacle. It was the kind of wild-eyed, hysterical allegation that, in previous years, would have primarily been promoted on fringe message boards and in Facebook posts authored by crackpot aunts, only to quietly wither on the vine.
How True Is 'Respect'? Fact-Checking the Aretha Franklin Biopic Many more people still, incorrectly, suggested that Cuties and its accompanying marketing materials were evidence of an underage child sex trafficking cabal in Hollywood. Many correctly pointed out that the poster was inappropriate those who had seen the film also correctly pointed out that it was a misleading and offensive image to market what was actually a sensitive portrait of female adolescence by a gifted woman of color. At its essence, Cuties is a coming-of-age narrative and a commentary on social media’s role in sexualizing children, but that was not what the film’s poster - a luridly hued image of made-up prepubescent girls, pouting at the camera and crouching in various suggestive poses - suggested. Directed by French-Senegalese filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré, Cuties, which was a hit when it premiered at Sundance last year, tells the story of an 11-year-old girl, Amy, who strays from her strict conservative and religious Muslim upbringing to join a hip-hop dance troupe. No foreign film in recent memory has attracted quite as much scrutiny as Netflix’s Cuties.
