Cuties Movie QAnon Controversy Explains Our Current Moment

The moral panic around the film Cuties explains why so many right wing extremists are using the “groomer” “child predator” attack to smear their enemies today

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of Internet Hey Machine. I am
so excited to be joined my producer Sophie. Sophie, thank
you for being here. How are you. I'm well, Bridget
I am always happy to be here. How are you?
I am doing well? And I am super excited to
get into this topic because it's a topic that I
It's one of those things that I talk at my
friends about and they're like, we get it. You have

(00:21):
big feelings about this, so I'm excited to actually do
a podcast about it. It's been a long time coming.
That's my That's honestly my favorite type of things where
you have like a dinner party or you're with your
friends and you go on a random tangents about something
in you and then you make it. You make it
work exactly. I'm very guilty of that. Oh my god,

(00:43):
so many things. My friends are like, why don't you
don't do have anybody else who could talk to about this?
We get it? You're like, yeah, all the people that
subscribe to listen to me talk um ever heard of
a podcast? Cool bro. So if you were on the
internet at all in a you probably remember the backlash
against the film Cutie's It was all over social media

(01:05):
and the Internet, in part because it kind of got
glamed in with the whole save the children thing and
the whole quan On conspiracy thing that, as you'll probably know,
have really plagued our online discourse and are still with
us today, like they really haven't gone anywhere, even though
they might be out of the headlines. Yeah, the whole

(01:26):
other a whole couple of shows about that. Yeah, you
know all about it, the way that the ways that
it can be so insidious, and the ways that things
can really be taken out of context to become evidence
of this grand conspiracy around Quanan and child predators. So
I really think the situation around the movie Cutis is

(01:47):
kind of a case study of all the different ways
that online rhetoric can become weaponized because it has so
many of the textbook hallmarks of bad actors hijacking a conversation,
and I think it reveals a lot about how messed
up our online discourse has gotten and the ways that
it can be weaponized against marginalized people, specifically to undermine
and exploit the very thing that it is supposedly championing,

(02:11):
in this case, protecting children. Something to keep in mind
is that a common tactic of bad actors is to
hijack a sensitive conversation, you know, one that takes a
little bit of nuance or thoughtfulness to discuss properly, and
create an uproar around it that conveniently aligns with some
kind of preconceived political grievance. And that is exactly what

(02:32):
happened with the movie Cuties. I also think it's one
of those things where, you know, I guess I would
be willing to bet that the majority of people raising
an issue about the film have not actually even sat
down and watched it to know exactly what they're raising
an objection over. Well, yeah, I mean, bad actors never

(02:53):
do their research, oh never, And I think they rely
on other people like not doing their research or like
being a cat like low information folks. Where's like, I
don't I've not seen the movie, but you're telling me
that this movie is, you know, the work of a
child predator. So I guess I'll believe that. You know,
I think that they're counting on people doing that. Do

(03:13):
you remember do you remember that phase of Twitter when
they were like do you want to read the article
before you share it? I will say I remember when
Twitter rolled that out and it did get me a
few times where I'm like, damn, I probably should read
it right, Like I'm even as somebody who makes content
about missing disinformation, I am not immune to sharing something

(03:35):
quickly before I've really given it a read through. And
so it's a good reminder that we could we could
all be a little bit better about the source material
before commenting on the source material that we're that we're
responding to. Absolutely, that's exactly what our own I'm like,
did you did you? Did you read that? Do you
want to read that before your shirt? And it's like,
you know, like fair enough, robot. Um, I'll get right

(03:58):
on that, thank you, fair enough robot. So the movie
Cutie's is, I should say, very much in line with
my own personal interests. I am a movie person. I
love movies. I love French cinema specifically and specifically French
Senegalese cinema. I have a thing for I am a
sucker for any kind of coming of age film about girlhood.

(04:22):
You know your Crooklands, your fish tanks, your thirteen love
them all. If that's a if it's a movie about
a young girl becoming like figuring out girlhood or like
young adulthood. I am in and I also grew up
doing dance squads and like dance teams, which I have
to say, like growing up in the South, sometimes those
dance squads were a little bit questionable, I can I

(04:44):
can admit that. And so when Cutie's premiered, which is
a movie about a young French Senegalese girl coming of
age who was involved in dance, I was super super
excited to see it. I saw it immediately, like before
it was on Netflix. I had already seen it um
And so this is not men to be like a
review of the movie. There are some spoilers. I will

(05:04):
try to warn folks beforehand if you're planning on watching Cutie's,
which I think that you should because I do think
it's a worth bold movie. But I want to get
into the conversation about what exactly happened with the uproar
and backlash around this film. Cutie's is a French film
by director Mimona do Say. It tells the story of
a coming of age story of Amy, a Muslim Senegalese

(05:26):
eleven year old in France. It opened at the Sundance
Festival to rave reviews, accolades, and awards before being acquired
by Netflix. The plot revolves around an eleven year old
girl named Amy. Amy's mom and aunt want her to
be sort of chased and modest and girlish, but she
ends up meeting this group of cool girls who are
all on a dance team together. So Amy finds herself

(05:48):
kind of caught between these two worlds, the traditional chaste
world represented by her mother and aunt and Islam, and
this cool, secular, grown up world represented by these cool
girls on the dance team at her new school. So
Cute's Explorers. These common themes that most coming of age
films deal with, you know, family and drama, feeling alienated

(06:10):
from your family, wanting to fit in and be cool
and grown up your first period, vying for likes on
social media, and sexuality. This was the director Deuceray's first film,
and she said that she saw a bunch of young
girls dancing on stage in Paris, scantily clad and revealing clothing,
who were dancing in front of a crowd, and it
got her curious about the way that society confronts and

(06:33):
deals with the budding sexuality of girls. So she spent
a year researching and interviewing preteen girls about their experiences
and how they felt in society, and that became the
movie Cuties. She wrote a version of herself as an
eleven year old um to be the kind of stand
in for the main character Amy. The film premiered at
Sundance with zero controversy until it was acquired by Netflix.

(06:58):
Before A Cutie's was even least for American streaming audiences
on Netflix, Cutie's first generated controversy when Netflix put out
a poster for the film. So I'm going to keep
in mind is that it is a textbook staple of
things like conspiracy theories or mal information, where it will
be based on an actual nugget of truth. And so

(07:20):
what it's absolutely true here is that Netflix made a
very very bad decision about the poster for the film Cutis.
The poster that they released shows the girls who were
all like eleven or twelve, posing provocatively in their very
skimpy dance team outfits, and honestly, like that image is

(07:41):
not even really representative of the entirety of like what
the film is about. And it needs to be said
that the poster that Netflix used is very different from
the one that was used when it first premiered at
Sundance before being bought by Netflix. Um So Bridget has
a screenshot of the two different film post. I thought
you were showing me two different movies, Like I thought

(08:03):
there were two different films. Um they look you, they're
not even there's no correlation exactly right. And so the
French version that that they used when the movie first
came out on Sundance has these girls they're shopping. They're
like wearing age appropriate regular clothes and they're like they

(08:23):
look like little girls right, Like it's like it's like
an age appropriate cover. One one reads like fun coming
of age, and one reads like dance moms toddlers in trs. Yes,
and I think like the Netflix poster, the girls who
are quite young are in these provocative poses. It's very

(08:46):
dance moms. Like as I said, I mean for better,
for for whatever it's worth. Growing up doing dance team
and dance groups. These are outfits that we would have
worn like like I'm I'm not going to act like
this is like beyond the pale for what little girls
will will sometimes where in dance teams or pageants, whether

(09:07):
or not, it's like good or bad or right or
wrong like that. It's it's fairly common. It's not something
that is totally beyond the pale in our culture. No,
absolutely not. But the freeze frame of the dance moves
that I think they're doing there, like like their mid
move the poses are are are very matures, what I'll say, yeah,

(09:28):
very mature. And so right away people had the exact
same response that you just had, and they seized on
this film that wasn't even out yet because of this
pretty gross poster that was not really representative of the film.
I believe that had Netflix not made such a big
error in how they promoted and marketed this movie, we

(09:49):
wouldn't even be making this episode. I don't think, like
I don't think that if they had used the original
French movie that's like Girls Coming of Age, like totally normal,
that we would even have seen the kind of controversy
that accompanied the film. So Netflix apologized for the poster
and importantly to the filmmaker, and I actually have to
give Netflix the tiniest bit of credit here. Amidst the

(10:12):
backlash around the poster, Netflix made it clear that that
poster was entirely They're bad, you know, they could have
made a big show of cutting ties with the filmmaker
publicly and like blaming her. We've seen we've certainly seen
brands do that before where they're just like, oh, controversy,
better blame this black woman. But they didn't do that.

(10:32):
I will. I will give them that Netflix bare minimum,
bare minimum like way to like do a little Netflix
co ceo Ted Sara donuts. I'm probably saying that wrong, Ted, okay, Uh.
Netflix co CEO Ted Saradonus was said to personally called
Docerae to apologize and to talk to her about, you know,

(10:55):
potential new projects on Netflix that she could do um
and the filmmaker said that she felt like that was
genuine like she she responded very gracefully, and she was like,
I think that they genuinely felt bad and that they
were giving me like a genuine apology, but the damage
was already done. Yeah, too little, too late. So Cuti's

(11:17):
is a film that I believe is trying to present
like a complex portrait of the pressures that young girls
feel around facing their own kind of budding sexuality. But
because of that poster, the internet hate machine, fueled by
a combination of right wing grifters, shitty elected officials, and
Instagram quan on influencers that target women. That whole thing

(11:41):
that do say was trying to do was completely lost,
and instead the film was branded as a Netflix's attempt
to groom children, normalized pedophilia, and in some cases said
that the film was actually child sexual abuse material or
like child pornography, and people were just saying that Netflix
was harming children. They blamed the filmmaker personally, like if

(12:03):
you google the filmmaker's name, some of the first things
that like auto complete are like did she go to jail?
Was she arrested? And I think that gives you a
sense of how personalized this particular smear that she harmed
children with this movie became. What's really said is that
this director had nothing to do with that poster. She

(12:26):
told Deadline. I discovered the poster at the same time
as the American public. I didn't understand what was going on.
That was when I went and saw what the poster
looked like. I received numerous attacks on my character from
people who had not seen the film, who thought I
was actually making a film that was apologetic about hyper
sexualization of children. I received numerous death threats, and so

(12:48):
you know, I've seen this film. I actually like enjoyed it.
But whether or not you like this film, or whether
or not you think it accomplishes its goals of exploring
the dangers of the hyper sexualization of children and girl else,
I think it's pretty clear what she was trying to
do with this film. Maybe you think she didn't accomplish that,
maybe you think it didn't meet his schools. Fine, but

(13:08):
like to say that she was making this film to
exploit and harm girls, it's just not correct. No, it's
just another example of like the worst people on the
internet pulling the finger and putting blame on a black
woman exactly, Like I don't I guess we'll never know,

(13:29):
But I don't think had she been a white woman
from Ohio that there would have been the same level
of scrutiny and controversy from this movie. Like, I think
that something about her was inherently other and made it
really easy for folks to jump on the bandwagon of,
you know, attacking her for being somebody who puts children

(13:50):
at risks. So she published a piece in The Washington
Post about the film, and she writes the stories that
the girls that I spoke to that they shared with
me were remarkably similar. They saw that the sexier woman
is on Instagram or TikTok, the more like she gets.
They try to imitate that sexuality in the beliefs that
it would make them more popular. Spend an hour on
social media and you'll see preteens, often in makeup, pouting

(14:12):
their lips, shrutting their stuff as if they were grown women.
The problem, of course, is they are not grown women,
and they don't realize what they're doing. They construct their
self esteem based on social media likes and the number
of followers they have. Some people have found certain scenes
in my film uncomfortable to watch, but if one really
listens to eleven year old girls, their lives are uncomfortable.

(14:34):
Here's the director of talking about it for a segment
called Why I Made Cuties from Netflix. Our girls see
that the more a woman is overly sexualized on social media,
the more she's successful. And the children't just imitate what
the c trying to achieve the same result without on
this term the meaning and yeah, it's zangerus. Can I

(14:58):
just say this woman is it? She's gorgeous. She's gorgeous,
and like the she just oh, such a cool person.
I'll get into this in the end. But luckily this
did not like her career is going to be fine,
Like this is not. We we have not heard the
last of her. She's fantastic. So I think there is

(15:19):
definitely a conversation to be had about whether or not
the film accomplishes the goal of really showing the pitfalls
and dangers of sexualizing young girls. I love the film.
I think it does a great job and think it
hits close to home. However, we didn't really get to
have the conversation about the film it's merits whether or
not in it, she's its goals. What actually happened instead

(15:41):
is where it was like a voltron of bad actors
from various backgrounds coming together for one goal. You know.
It was your typical right wing drifters, save the children,
influencers and elected officials all coming together to say that
this film was evidence of the elite in quotes, grooming
kids and support ing pedophilia. This then turned into the

(16:03):
claim that the film itself was child pornography made by
a French black pervert, lifestyle influencer and Q and on
conspiracy theorist Rebecca Peiper or better known as love Beck,
who at the time had a hundred and sixty Instagram
followers before her account was deleted, posted don't believe pedophilia
is a rampant problem and don't believe the elite support it.

(16:26):
How the hell does a show like this and make
it to a major streaming network. Formerly one of the
biggest q and on accounts on Instagram, a little miss
Patriot posted that cuties proves that Netflix promotes pedophilia, and
she posted this in like that kind of pretty pastel
instagrammy kind of carousel grid post, and I have to say,

(16:48):
as a side note, it really calls into question those
Instagram accounts that will use like a pretty carousel grid
posts on Instagram to educate you, because let's keep it real,
like anybody can get a canvas subscription and say whatever
they want just because it's a pastel, pretty Instagram carousel
post doesn't mean they're actually saying something that is correct

(17:09):
and true. So conspiracy theory started pushing the hashtag cancel
quti's campaign, telling their followers to boycott Netflix by pulling
their subscriptions, and it seems like it actually had an impact. Antenna,
which is a data analytics firm that tracks Netflix subscribers
reported a quote meaningful spike in the rate of people
cutting subscriptions shortly after the hashtag cancel Netflix went viral,

(17:33):
and another analytics firm, yipp it Data, also reported that
in mid September, the churn rate, which is this the
rate of people who cancel subscriptions in the United States,
rose materially as the result of the Cuties backlash. Days
after the hashtag went viral. Yippit Data said that unsubscribes
are running at nearly eight times the daily levels observed

(17:53):
in August and reached a multi year high. And I
had to say, like, even though Netflix publicly did stick
by Doucerae when this was all happening, there are reports
that they suppressed the film on their own platform as
a result of this controversy. According to an interesting report
by The Verge, Netflix removed Cuties from its Coming Soon

(18:14):
and popular searches categories, and that it was excluded from
searches that include the words cute. This is actually probably
a responsible tweak that they made to their algorithm. The
Verge report also says that Netflix adjusted its algorithm so
that search queries such as steamy or sexual movies did
not surface any children's films, and that Netflix also made

(18:35):
sure that problematic search terms such as petto did not
surface Cuti's because their algorithm actually takes into account behavioral data.
So if you're somebody who was like, I want to
watch this movie that everyone is saying is like a
pedophile movie, if you type in petto, ordinarily it would
have brought up the movie that everyone is typing in
petal then clicking cutis for. But that they tweaked their

(18:57):
algorithms so that wasn't the case, so and that in
that instance, I actually feel like that might have been
a responsible choice. But it does seem clear from this
report though, that Netflix did seek to suppress promotion and
related search queries for Cuties, And I just feel like
it's pretty shitty for this first time filmmaker that her
debut film was suppressed on the platform that acquired it

(19:20):
for reasons that were entirely not her fault, like a
whole campaign around her film that she had nothing to
do with. And I think that this that her and
this project seemed like they both personally took the fall
for Netflix as bad marketing with that poster and this
completely disingenuous campaign built on a lot of lies and

(19:42):
half truth was about her and her film. So I
actually have a really hard time believing that anybody who
was making claims about the film being you know, exploitative
to children actually watched it all the way through because

(20:03):
much of what is floating around the Internet about the
film or either outright just lies or completely out of context.
So I want to talk about what actually does go
down in this movie versus how that was represented online.
So there's gonna be a spoiler here. So if you
are planning on watching this movie and you don't want
it spoiled, there's a spoiler here. So social media accounts

(20:28):
is pretty big, followings posted like parents warnings and parents
guides that got a lot of traction online that contain
lies or that takes some of the scenes out of context.
For instance, one viral parents guide that I think denis
to sues every posted says the film contains nudity of
a minor, and that is just not correct. The only

(20:50):
nudity in this film is a very brief scene of
a bare breast, and it's the bare breast of someone
who is meant to be an opposing dance team member
as she's getting changed. Um within the universe of the film,
my senses that the audience is like meant to understand
this particular woman whose bare breast is shown as a
bit older, Like it's not it's not like she is

(21:12):
meant to be a very young like an obviously very
young character. There's a scene where like there someone is
changing and they see part of her bare breast, and
it's meant to be like a cool older girl, not
a child. And the actor herself was eighteen at the
time the movie was filmed, and so it's just a lie.
The actor whose bare breast is shown for a second

(21:34):
in that movie, not only is she in the film
meant to be older, she herself the actor is also
of age. And so there is no child nudity in
this film of any kind. I saw so many viral
posts online suggesting otherwise. Another pretty obvious misrepresentation in the
film is that in a parents guide they say, there's

(21:56):
this salacious scene in the film that an eleven year
old girl all and tight leather pants has her pants
are pulled down and the camera zooms in on her butt.
And so this is a this this is a really
interesting one because it really shows how bad actors will
take this nugget of truth and completely explode it and
take it out of context. What actually happened is my question,

(22:20):
because I just know they're they're out here full cap. Well,
I can tell you bull cap Okay. So again spoiler. So,
in the movie, Amy is shown as being less financially
well off than the rest of her friends, and so
there's a scene where she's trying to look older than
she is by borrowing her friends like very cool leather pants.
While she's wearing these pants, trying to say, like it's

(22:42):
so unbelievably normal, totally like didn't you do that ship
when you were kid? Yeah, I mean everyone everyone. It's
like so infuriating that that's what they're Okay. So, in
the movie, she gets into a fight at school and
her her leather pants are accidentally yanked off of her,

(23:03):
and when the pants are yanked off of her, it
exposes that she's wearing underneath these cool leather pants, she's
wearing these childish, ratty, oversized underpants that have like obvious
signs of wear and tear. And so this the scene
is obviously meant to be embarrassing right, It is not
a sexy scene. It is clear like she leaves the

(23:26):
cafeteria in tears and like doesn't come to school the
next day or whatever because she's so embarrassed. But that
parents guide would have you believe that it's meant to
be like a sexy scene or essential scene that she
takes down her leather pants. But it is a misrepresentation
of a scene that actually does kind of occur in
the movie. But it's clearly made the sound worse than

(23:49):
it is. And that misrepresentation went completely viral, like big
accounts posted it and it got so much traction online,
And I honestly think that here is like people who
haven't seen the movie but like are like, oh, well,
I'm you know, I don't want to see children be
exploited in film, Like that's bad. When you read the

(24:10):
salacious misrepresentation, it makes it seem like there's gotta be
some truth to that to it, and like I can
see why people share that without like having seen the movie,
but it totally takes the truth out of context to
fit a wider agenda. Yeah, I mean I got panted
in the sixth grade. I was wearing some not greade
Andy's two not not I relate, Like these are again,

(24:32):
these are just like fucking normal things in childhood that happened.
It's just it, come on people. Yeah, And I do
think it's beaks like a larger discomfort that people have
around coming of age stories for women and girls. Yeah,
I think that people are really uncomfortable around that and

(24:55):
like these things, Like there are things in the movie
that rings so true to me. If you have gotten
pants in elementary school or like middle school, someone saying like, oh,
that was like a sexually charged moment, You're like, actually,
it was really embarrassing exactly. You're like, you're no, I was.
Come on people, Like, it's like, no, I was pe class,

(25:16):
I was in the sixth grade. Um, I was wearing
the wrong day of the week underwear and clearly clearly
still still embarrassed by that part. Yeah, like it's Becaure's
another scene in the movie where she finds a condom
on the ground and she doesn't know what it is
and she blows it up like a balloon, and yeah,

(25:41):
describing that as like a sexually charged scene, like I
would argue that, like that's actually the weird thing to
be like, oh, little kids ex imploring these things they
don't totally understand, like that's normal, and showing that on
screen is probably normal and good and fine. Adding some
sort of nefarious intent to it to something that most

(26:01):
little kids go through, that's I think it's a little
bit sucked up. So I think that a lot of
the sharing of inaccurate content about Cut's online really came
from like low information folks who haven't seen the film
but are interested in standing up against material that harms kids.
Something about those posts is that they always make it
seem like no reasonable person would not agree that this

(26:25):
is exploitation of miners, right, and so they say like, obviously,
having showing a child naked in a Netflix movie is
not good, and most people would say like, oh, I agree,
that's not good. But the fact of the matter is
they didn't do that, and so they just traffic in
these inaccurate or misconstrued, out of context statements when that

(26:46):
this isn't the case and in reality. Deu ser Ray
says that a trained counselor was present on set during
the filming in the movie, and that the project was
approved by the French government's child protection authorities, and that
the actors that they had their parents on set to
and the film does contain a few scenes of young
girls like twerking and dancing in skimpy outfits. Another spoiler,

(27:11):
like the scene that probably generated the most conversation and
controversy and the one that has depicted on the poster,
is the movie's big climactic ending. The girls have their
big dance contest. They've been practicing for the whole film,
and they get on stage and they do this very
age inappropriate dance. They're grinding, they're tworking, and they're wearing

(27:32):
their skimpy outfits. But the entire point of the film
is the crowd that is watching them dance in the movie,
and I guess also us as the audience at home
is horrified. The crowd is audibly booing, they're covering their
their kids eyes so they can't see it. Some of
them turn to leave and disgust, and it's clear that
the girls do not have the maturity or the context

(27:54):
to understand why the way they're dancing like isn't okay
and why it's not being well received by the audience
they're dancing for. You know, the main character Amy. When
the audience has this negative reaction, she runs away crying,
and at the end of the movie, she has clearly
decided that this this world of like dancing is not
for her. At the end of the movie, she's living

(28:16):
a much more modest life and like playing age appropriate games.
And it's clear that like, oh, I had this little
interlude with dancing and it was not great for me,
and now I'm not doing it anymore. And so it's
interesting that people say that this movie, like how can
I put this? There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to

(28:36):
be made about this film and the way that it
handles girlhood sexuality. Like I've seen criticisms that say that
the dancing scenes with the girls are gratuitous. I've seen
some arguments that seemed to be suggesting that the film,
which is pretty clearly making an argument against the sexualization
of children, is actually attempting to do that by engaging
in the very thing it is critiquing. Like if you've

(28:56):
seen the movie Kids. When a Kid's First came out,
it was accused of the exact same thing, right that, like, oh,
it's a movie that's supposed to be critiquing child drug
use by showing child drug youse. So this is like
a well worn film criticism. Those are all, you know,
fair arguments, but they're very different than accusing this filmmaker

(29:19):
of breaking the law and being a child pornographer, which
is exactly what happened, and so Cutius became this like
very popular thing to bash online. I saw a few
big name people standing up for the filmmaker, but I
really recall there was a climate that this French black
woman made this racy film involving children, and people just

(29:41):
did not want to take the risk of waiting into
that controversy. This is actually a tactic called a reputational smear,
where people make your personal brand so toxic that other
people don't want to take any kind of risk and
being associated with you. And I think do Sae being
a black woman and also Senegalese and also French, probably

(30:03):
is part of why that can't that kind of attack
was so effective because I think when you're a black
woman and you're visible, I just think it's different. People
are going to be less likely to stick their neck
out and defend you when you're being attacked in this
like very very uh inflammatory way. And it's funny. I

(30:24):
actually recall when this was all happening. In being nervous
about making a podcast episode about it, I was like,
the climate is so the climate is, the climate was
so like tense and it was I was like, it
wasn't a great time for most people. It absolutely was

(30:45):
not a great time. And you know, I think it
really contributed to this climate of silence where people who
see what's going on and they see like, oh, this
person is being hung out to dry, are also afraid
to speak up. I think part of the way that
these attacks work, and I recall a lot of bad
actors making and spreading content based on lies and misrepresentations

(31:10):
that made it seem like calling this movie a crime,
calling this movie child pornography was reasonable even for folks
who had not seen it for themselves, and it created
the condition for a climate where elected officials were condemning
this movie and also urging for the government to take
action against it. Here's a brief roundup of all the

(31:30):
different electeds that came out against this movie. U S.
Senator Mike Lee sent a letter directly to Netflix's CEO
Read Hastings, asking for quote an explanation on hastings As
views as to whether or not the potential exploitation of
miners in the film constitutes criminal behavior. Uh cool, Mr
Anti Democracy himself got it? Cool? Cool? Who's next, mailed

(31:57):
presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. Yeah, Oh, I would love to
never think about her again. I She exceplicitly called the
movie quote child porn and said that it would whet
the appetite of pedophiles and help fuel the child sex
trafficking trade. Like oh girl on yeah, like come on,

(32:23):
Ted Crew coming. You knew he was coming. He sent
a letter to the Department of Justice to quote investigate
whether Netflix, It's executive or the filmmakers violated any federal
laws against the production and distribution of chop pornography. Tom
Cotton and Representative Jim Banks also called to the d

(32:43):
o J to take legal action against Netflix. Cotton excemplicitly
accused Netflix and Do Surray of a crime, saying, quote,
there's no excuse for the sexualization of children, and Netflix's
decision to promote the film Cuties is disgusting at best
and a serious crime at worst. On these people watch
the movie continue? Oh absolutely, fucking you think fucking Ted

(33:04):
Crew is sitting through a two hour movie about sucking
French Senegalese girlhood. Absolutely, it's probably on a plane to Camcoon.
Representatives Ken Buck and Andy Biggs of Arizona called for
the d O jay to investigate, and the state attorneys general,
by the way, I didn't know that the pluralization of

(33:26):
attorney general is attorneys general, so that is it's gonna
it sounds incorrect, but it is correct. The good you
know noted um cool. Yeah, if you ever have to
pluralize attorney general, it's an attorney general. State attors general stated,
I don't like it, very ghoulish. Continue found it sounds

(33:47):
like I'm like, I support you, um, don't don't like it.
I don't like it. But the attorney's general of Ohio, Florida, Louisiana,
and Texas also asked for Netflix to remove the film. Also,
isn't it funny how nobody talked about like free speech,
cancel culture, These things that people on the right are
supposed to be so aggrieved by didn't even come up.

(34:09):
Government officials asking for Netflix to take down a film
didn't need free speech, didn't even free speech. Who we
don't know her didn't even come up. In true truly
incredible what they what they think is important exactly. So,
like you said, I would be willing to bet my
entire life savings that at that whole list that I

(34:31):
read of alexid officials responding did not watch the film,
single one bet my fucking life savings on it. And eventually, this,
you know, went from I guess like grandstanding and puffery
to a grand jury in Tyler, Texas, indicting Netflix on
the charge of promoting lewd visual material depicting a child.

(34:56):
The indictment claims that Cuties holds no serious literary, artistic, political,
or scientific value. And what is wild is that this
attempt of an indictment is still going on. In November,
a federal judge issued an injunction that blocks that Texas
prosecutor from bringing child pornography charges against Netflix for distributing

(35:18):
the film. And just two days ago, December five, the prosecutor,
Tyler County District Attorney Lucas Babin, filed a notice indicating
that he will appeal the rule the ruling to the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. And so this guy is like, no,
I'm not dropping this. I Am going to continue to
pursue pursue charges against this film. And what's interesting to

(35:41):
me is that most of the elected officials who you know,
had a problem with this film and and tried to
pursue the Department of Justice to to look into it,
they've mostly all dropped this right, like, and I part
of me wonders, why is it that some one like
Ted Cruz can be so loud and vocal about attacking

(36:05):
a film that I bet he hasn't seen, but then
it can just be quietly dropped, right, Like, I think
it's a it's a it's a mark against the way
that like right wing elected officials use these cultural flashpoints
as like little stunts where they want to like speak
up about them, and I may just drop it, like

(36:26):
I would be curious to know, like, do you still
think that this movie is child pornography? Do you still
think the d o J should investigate? Do you still
believe that was an effective use of your time in
terms of you know, your duty to your represent your
your the people that got you in office, Like the
way I'm confident in saying they forgot they tweeted about
it and have moved on to bullying some other marginalized

(36:49):
group of people. Yeah, I would be. I would totally agree.
And the way that they're able to evoke these things
loudly and just move on doesn't sit right with me,
because there's real people on the other end of them,
Like Do Suray is a real person with our real
career that she's trying to build. That they can just
evoke her name and her work misrepresented and lie about

(37:10):
it and vocally accused her of a crime and then
just move on really does not sit right with me.
Something that I think is kind of interesting here is
like you might be thinking, why would all of these
right wing should heads be interested in attacking Netflix and

(37:33):
this like kind of obscure French film, And I think
it has a lot to do with the fact that
culture is by and large seen as the domain of
the left, and so these right wing extremists they have
to attack purveyors of culture. Right these attacks are highly
politically charged. So on Tucker carlston segment about the film

(37:53):
and the controversy around it, first he framed it as
an attack on what he calls quote the media elite.
Listen to this. I begin this segment with the warning
something we never do, but the footage we're about to
show you comes from a film that was released yesterday
on the streaming service Netflix. It's called Cuties. We've edited
to obscure the most sexual parts because we have no choice,

(38:15):
but it's still over the top and disturbing. As you
watch it, remember that our media class, the gatekeepers of entertainment,
have no problem with it. In fact, they love it.
A sure sign the civilization is in trouble. The New
Yorker magazine, which after almost a hundred years has become
truly a garbage publication, unfortunately, called this film quote extraordinary

(38:36):
and said that only evangelicals don't like it. The Telegraph
newspaper said it's an important film quote in an age
terrified of child sexuality Late Rome for real. We're not
going to show you a portion of what. So it's
interesting how Tucker Carlston frames this film the controversy around it,

(38:59):
as an attack on the New Yorker, the media elite,
the Telegraph right like it's so written. I think it
really reveals how these attacks are just kind of proxy
wars for this larger culture wars, highly politicized thing that
they're trying to wage here. And it doesn't matter that

(39:20):
that the first time filmmaker gets sort of like caught
in the crossfire. Um again, here's later into that segment.
Here's how his guest talks about Uh. The people that
she says are quote staying silent and allowing this film
to exploit children and yet curiously silent Tucker are the

(39:40):
Obama's is Susan Rice who's involved. Also, she's on their
Netflix board. Obama is uh to deal with Harry and
Megan Harry of England and Megan Markel. Uh, they are
They've got it like an over reportedly of one million
dollar deal with Netflix. A word from any of these
people could stop this in it tracks, and they should.

(40:02):
They should say something. People. Okay, you guys have it there.
But the fact is, can I just sit in a
court of law? Fox what a lawsuit? By saying that
they couldn't they couldn't imagine anybody to take Chucker Carlson
seriously as an actual newsperson because clearly he's doing a
character that that for first of all, Second of all, yeah,

(40:24):
these people are such fucking goals. None of you watched
the movie. All of you are just prediculous. Yeah, let's
just that's Harriet Megan. It's like any chance to to
pick on Megan Markel um cool um exactly the way
that they effectively like pull make this an attack on
Megan Markele. Oh my god, another black person. I can

(40:46):
point the finger at um oh cool. Let's like, let's sake,
let's take the opportunity for to blame them for a
movie we have not seen exactly. And so yeah, they
use this film to take a at the Obama's. The
Obamas at the time had a high profile deal with
Netflix to produce documentaries Fox News. As Rachel Campo Stuffy

(41:06):
wrote in a piece for the Federalists called Michelle Obama
is complicit in Netflix child porn film Cuties. She writes,
quote at a time in the left has declared that
silence is violence, Michelle obama silence on the Netflix's controversial
movie Cuties has not gone unnoticed. And again, it's such
a disingenuous way to use this film to attack people

(41:31):
that they clearly already have a pre established grievance against.
And so it's interesting how culture becomes a stand in
for these political grievances that clearly these It's like they're
barely able to mask it when they talk about it.
It's embarrassing for them. It should be embarrassing. And I

(41:53):
guess all of this is to say that, like, the
sad part to me about this is the way that
bad acts are so good at you know, I have
a good part of it is that, like, it all
comes back to this grain of truth and the reality
is is that we actually do live in a world
where far too many young people are survivors and victims

(42:16):
of sexual abuse and violence and things like grooming, and
we don't have a society that offers those folks a
ton of support. And bad actors they seize on this
heartbreaking reality, and in lieu of support, they offer dangerous
conspiracy theories and the smearing of regular people as predators
and threats to children. And my my real question is, like,

(42:38):
because all of those elected officials were too busy drumming
up these attacks on the movie Hughties, that was time
not spent actually scrutinizing the online platforms that we know
our actual purveyors of child sexual abuse material, platforms like Facebook.
Facebook is the number one platform responsible or sexually explicit

(43:01):
material involving the abuse of children. That's just a fact,
And so isn't it interesting that all these elected officials
came out against this movie Cutie's but baxt time they
could have been actually speaking to what we know actually
pose real threats to children. And I think turning something
as important as protecting the survivors of childhood sexual abuse

(43:24):
into just another way of scoring cheap political points is
a symptom of the fact that our society has really
has a problem, Like we're not talking about anything that
can actually be of use to vulnerable people. Were only
interested in partisan attacks and fucking grandstanding and stunts, and
it's it makes MU sick. And I think the same

(43:46):
way that the grooming of children is like a real,
very serious issue. But if you turn that into a
way to attack LGBTQ people or drag queens or whatever,
the people who are act really grooming kids, they can
just go on examined. It's like, Okay, well, please continue
to say that drag queens are the threat to kids,

(44:08):
and I'll just be over here continuing my business of
actually endangering children. And so the reason why this is
such an important thing to me is that we have
to figure out a way to have the real conversation
and not allow extremists and bad actors and grifters to
distract us with you know, the shiny object of this

(44:29):
film is the threat to children when the real threat
to threats to children go unexamined and fifty percent. Please
stop worrying about movies you have not seen. Do not
do not cover what you think they cover. Please stop
worrying about drag queen reading story time at libraries, You
dumb people. I cannot stand to you. I could go

(44:53):
on a rap. I will not feel like disastrous incompetence
and the negligence to do their jobs is baffling and
damaging to so many people, specifically marginalized people. And exactly
I hate you all. I can't believe that you are

(45:14):
allowed to decide things for anybody. Yeah, and I mean
this is like a like a tried and true thing
that we see when it comes to disinformation and conspiracy theories.
They just take all the air and the oxygen out
of the room, and so we don't really have the
space to have our real conversation about the actual threats
to the people and the kids because so much room

(45:37):
is taken out of Like when was the last time
you saw an article that a news article about an
actual threat to children. It's all these days, it's all
completely made up threats, right like, And what's really scary
to me is how baselessly accusing someone of being a
child predator or a pedophile, or a child pornographer or

(45:57):
a groomer or a threat to children, how has made
this real comeback as a solid way to attack somebody
that you don't like, just like what happened to the
filmmaker Douce Array. It is dangerous, It can lead to
real world violence, and in fact, we know it already has.
I would be remiss to not mention the fact that
just last week Elon Musk smeared Yol Roth, Twitter's former

(46:18):
head of trust and Safety, who is gay, baselessly insinuating
that he is a child predator, and of course a
few days later CNN reported that Roth had to flee
his home for his own safety. We should really be
afraid that basically attacking anybody that you don't like is
a child predator is now a go to strategy for extremists.
And so that's my big thing is like when we

(46:40):
have a culture where made up threats based on conspiracy theories,
lies and attacks on people's identity are able to take
up a lot of room. It endangers us all because
we're not able to make room for the conversation about
how we keep people safe that we need to be having.
And so yeah, this is my this is my plea
to to be better. We can't have that, like, like

(47:03):
maybe focus on the sex trafficking of indigenous girls, not
on a movie, not on a movie that you haven't seen. Again,
Like I can't emphasize this enough. They have not seen
the movie, and they have formed opinions off of some
tweet Like I said, do you want to read the
article before you share it? Literally? This is exactly that exactly,

(47:26):
and like I could talk all day about this, but like,
there are so many ways that children and young people
are being endangered and exploited in the United States, and
if you actually gave a ship about that, there are
things that you could do. Some of them are big
systemic things, but some of them are like pretty easy

(47:47):
to accomplish. We don't even have that conversation and instead
we're given a conversation about sucking nonsense. And so I
would like to posit that we need to stop paying
like we cannot allow for the non sense to proliferate
and take all the air out of the room, because
that is exactly what they're counting on. People like Ted
Cruz don't have actual solutions to offer people. All they

(48:09):
have the stunts and grandstanding, and so I think the
more that we can peel back the curtain and show
that that's all they have to offer us, the better
we all will be. I think that's where we ended.
That's all I got, Sophie, thank you so much for
being down to have this conversation with me. I get
a little rag, but there's no because I too love

(48:32):
a dinner party and I too love saying about things
and then making it into a podcast. So I'm glad
that we're on the same page here. If you would
like me to come to your dinner party and scream
about Cutie's, just let me know. I'm happy to, yeah,
And if you don't, what's wrong with you? It's so interesting? Bridget,
thank you so much for having me on Um. Where
can people follow you? Well? You can follow me on

(48:54):
Twitter at Bridget Marie. Yeah I'm still they're tweeting away.
Follow me on Instagram at Bridget Marie. You see, and
as always, check out the whole slate of cool Zone
Media shows because they're looking awesome and you should be listening.
I have no bias there, and I completely agree. I
also think that they are wonderful. Thank you so much

(49:15):
for having me on uh the show that I produce. Um,
we'll be back probably with a with some kind of
a bonus, a bonus there, or another episode. Let's just
look out for it. You're subscribed and if you're not,
why Okay, Bye bye. Internet Hate Machine is a production

(49:37):
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
check out our website cool zone media dot com, or
find us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.