The Long Take: Remember Cuties?
Why the controversial French indie quickly faded away. Plus a preview of Sopranotember.
This newsletter is about culture, but it’s mainly about film. It also looks at all things controversial relating to film. So there is this narrowing window in taking advantage of attracting dopamine addicts to your product. As the medium of cinema stretches towards streaming, and with the state of theatrical releases remaining middling, there is an incentive to comment on its immediacy. This mirage of insight is perfectly simple: express strong anger, regardless of accuracy, the reader mediates with you sharing that emotion, and finally, you profit.
I think that represents the discourse surrounding Cuties, a French film that inspired polarized outrage, among those who haven’t watch the movie and who had. It’s been less than a year since the Sundance-acclaimed debut from Maïmouna Doucouré was released on Netflix. In the aftermath, it provoked the funnybone of Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, and Ted Cruz, along with many other conservative circles, to the point where a Texas Grand Jury attempt to indict Netflix over the movie. Any defense of the film is met with huge efforts to ratio the person saying it.
I won’t bother you with all the details, because I have already covered them. Twice1. But to give you an outline, I assessed the legitimacy of the outrage, and then I wrote why it wasn’t a good movie. The short version is this:
That is why no one buys the idea that to deplore child sexualization you have to show the sexualization as gratuitously as possible. It defeats the purpose of your movie and leaves little possible alternatives to how to depict such acts. I have watched movies that make my skin crawl and it’s usually to good or bad use. But if I was being honest, films, where children are being sexualized, do make me uncomfortable for the wrong reasons. As someone with a deep interest in cinema and holds right-of-center views, my philosophy of approaching film is that I believe that art certainly has the privilege to challenge and provoke, but the level of decency being utilized should be addressed as well. That comprises tasteful aesthetics, and a lot of people, not just culture critics, should understand why these critical faculties exist. As I wrote in my Reaction Shot of Ben Shapiro, who felt disgusted by the song WAP, we still have a fair share of sanctity possessed to assess art, and often critics who are more forgiving towards it can drive their disdain, to exaggerated grounds.
The interesting thing about this saga is that many have completely forgotten about it. The last time anyone has heard about Cuties was when it got indicted by a Texas grand jury for child pornography charges, which is honestly a bit silly. In the year 2020, when the West is stricken with a pandemic, intense political polarization, with trickling entertainment to keep us accommodated, it’s weird that everyone moved on. So why has the movie become a cultural footnote?
Technology is the most salient factor in this controversy and how it accelerated the evolution of culture wars. I mentioned this the last time I wrote about Cuties and I’ll say it again: if this was not released on Netflix, but on another platform more interested in curation like MUBI, it would not have inspired a lot of outrage. Conservatives and conspiracy theorists would have left it alone, even though there’s a ton of content from there that will drive them nuts. But they didn’t, because it’s a small niche.
Netflix is the Walmart of streaming services. They have original and non-original content, like TV shows from the 90s and onwards, movies you haven’t seen or are planning to rewatch. But I would also think no one will pay attention to Cuties, even if it was on Netflix. Lots of smaller, edgier films are passed on by the company’s recommendation algorithm. The issue was with the marketing. Liked or loath the movie, it is undeniable that the company was being irresponsible in dressing the movie up as if the poster was of pre-teen girls auditioning for a new Cardi B video.
Cuties opponents would celebrate the number of users unsubscribing from Netflix upon its arrival. Right-wingers have their go-to slogan, which is “Get woke, go broke” and it’s pretty hollow. That denotes the moment an organization seeks to flirt with progressivism, they see a decline in sales or profits, or subscribers. Yet Netflix continues to experience subscriber growth to this day, even though it’s slower than expected. It’s far more complicated because Netflix does not disclose its analytics and it’s harder to correlate the events of #CancelNetflix to the mild downturn.
Another factor is how this was tailor-made for a conflict-driven algorithm. Both sides2 brought in ideological signaling and were very angry at each other. Film critics claimed that it was ‘nuanced’, pointed out these were girls of color involved, whereas its loudest detractors accused anyone of being complicit in pedophilia, not hiding their disdain towards the hyper-sexualization of the West, particularly in young children. Overall, looking at Rotten Tomatoes, Cuties received the same phenomenon that The Last Jedi, Lady Ghostbusters, or any A24 movie have experienced. Intellectuals look at these as bots, trolls, conspiracy theorists, or rubes towards anyone who didn’t enjoy it. And they may be right, but that ignores the valuable critiques that attempt to avoid the icky aspects of the controversy.
Good ragebait over this one was made easy and it seemed to be very hard to change people’s minds and in fact, embolden them not to engage with one another. Leighton Woodhouse has a valuable piece about the Wi Spa protests, which was met with a battle between ANTIFA activists and Proud Boys. The interesting part was that no one went on the ground to cover it, and instead relying on loyal subscribers to buy a certain spin that would certainly complement them. Covering Cuties was easier, as it relies on a platform and a device you can watch it on. There is no cost an institution can afford, besides the individual monthly rate. But some of their detractors refuse to watch it, little faith to be had at that point, so it’s even more cheaper. It ultimately served an economic model less reliant on advertising than the metered paywall that you’re trying to bypass.
But people moved on from Cuties, because there wasn’t a lot at stake, compared to other battles. It wasn’t like Tina Fey cynically removing episodes of 30 Rock featuring blackface, because she doesn’t want to get caught with another racism accusation. This was perhaps the equivalent of Donald Trump tweeting about some celebrity not liking him, and churning that out for days3. It was a small film, misjudged by a large and bland institution and misjudged by all. When I first wrote about it, it came about a week after the film caught steam, and no one cared. This is what happens when you put aside integrity so that being a keyboard warrior comes first.
Introducing Sopranotember
I haven’t given an update to the newsletter in quite a while, but I would like to let you know that for next month, everything published in this newsletter will be nothing but content focused on The Sopranos, as we anticipate the release of its film spinoff The Many Saints of Newark, which is coming out by the end of the month. Anyone living over a rock should know how much the HBO drama about a mafia boss’s psyche has shaped television forever. While it is more than twenty years old, its popularity has never faded away, renewed with a younger fanbase, several podcasts from cast members, and a couple of three books recapping each episode in vivid detail. In Lack of Taste, I’m gonna write content about The Sopranos that you won’t find anywhere on the Internet. Not in the solipsistic “this show wouldn’t be made today” position or “Tony died at the end”. But in the fashion of Lack of Taste, if you have been reading this from the beginning. Sopranotember will be a mixture of essays and lists (yes, lists) on the undercovered and underappreciated aspects of the show. I’m also going to experiment with subscriber-only posts, but specifically for Sopranotember posts. If that seems to be working, I’ll consider whether or not I should continue. This will be more than my typical workload for the newsletter, but I hope it would be all worth it.
Here’s a preview of what’s in store, not in any particular order of posting:
The 10 Best Shots in The Sopranos
The Many Fans of The Sopranos
The 10 Greatest Minor characters of The Sopranos
My favorite character in The Sopranos (hint: he compromised).
Christopher and the Culture Wars
The 10 Greatest Malopropisms of The Sopranos
The 10 Overlooked Episodes of The Sopranos
The only movie that David Chase has directed
Yes, I used the phrase. Deal with it.
I’m surprised that Donald Trump did not tweet it out.