denouncing the sexualization of children, without sexualizing children in the process
But using film as a medium, can you though? Showing the thing you’re actually denouncing seems a pretty natural way to do it…
Haven’t seen the movie yet though (that’s why I was genuinely asking), but I guess the question extends beyond this particular movie
I think a lot of topics fall into the same trap as war movies: even films like Saving Private Ryan that try to horrify you with the brutality of combat still make that combat viscerally gripping and exciting to watch.
The director of grave of the fireflies actually held the same view! Here’s a video covering his unproduced film about japanese occupation of Manchuria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXdthnmhD4g&list=LL&index=16
I dunno, man. You just told on yourself by saying you haven’t seen it. You really need the full context. (Or maybe you don’t. I feel like I’m on a list after watching it.)
You can communicate how girls are over sexualized with dialogue and acting as opposed to closeups of an eleven-year-old girl’s crotch as she does a vertical split or a lingering shot of her butt as she twerks right into the camera. Some of those shots are so intense and lean in so strongly that it feels like the camera operator is about to penetrate those girls with the lens There is something to be said for the way girls are taught that their value is in their sex appeal, that a lot of girls are forced to grow up too soon, that social media has a toxic effect on our development, and so on.
The director just goes about it in the worst possible way. Maybe don’t try to call out creeps by giving them something to jack off to.
It is the war movie problem of saying “war bad” and then splashing war across the screen like it’s this glamorous thing, but there are standout movies like Come and See, which gets across the ‘war bad’ message without accidentally slipping into jingoistic popcorn fodder territory.
Under a more competent director, Cuties could have been great. But it wasn’t, so it’s not.
I think a lot of the controversy is over how it was shot.
Yeah it’s hard to make a movie about children being sexualized without how some sexualized children in it. But from what I read a lot of the people shocked by it were talking about the camera work specifically and how it really focused in on the girls bodies in ways that really put the sex front and center in a glamours way.
