He grabbed something that people were eager to give away, that they almost pushed on him It's like David Bowie back in the 70s, where he defended himself re: the "baby groupie" culture of the time, plaintively arguing thousands of girls were throwing themselves at him
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Same thing that happens when Amy's cousin realizes she has his phone and tries to get it back -- she ignorantly tries to come on to him, thinking this is how women get things from men And he freaks out and is disgusted And this makes him ANGRIER AT HER
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Which is why no adult ever helps her or intervenes throughout the course of the film Because she has, tragically accurately, divided the world into people who are into her edgy sex shit and get off on it, and people who are disgusted by it and think it makes her trash
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And the latter group of people -- which is much larger than she realizes, which she doesn't realize the first group is in fact a subset of -- she knows is her enemy, that she has to keep secrets from The group of people who want her to grow up to inherit her mom's shitty life
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The people who are like "Why didn't either of those security guards call the cops? Why didn't the 'good one', who clearly hates his partner and hates creeps, save them?" Well shit, because that's not what guys like that do It's a satire but it's pretty on point in that regard
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(And if you think calling the cops would've solved anything here, like cops aren't just as much divided into these two kinds of guys as the security guards were, you don't understand jack shit)
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The point of the movie -- which I think Doucouré knew would be controversial but didn't realize how controversial -- is that none of the cultures Amy lives in knows how to deal with teen girls, they all view her with some degree of disgust and contempt
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The "conservatives" are *just as bad* as the "liberals" Both "sides" don't actually give a shit, they don't actually care what happens to her One way or another they both agree that "bad girls" deserve the shit that happens to them
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Amy's a hormonal adolescent who, like all of us at that age, wants to be desired and wants attention and wants to grow up There's nothing wrong with that Having sexual desire at that age isn't a sign that you've been warped or corrupted or soiled (it started for me at 10)
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The problem is that *the world* punishes you for it, *the world* exploits you for it, it's NOT YOUR FAULT And neither "side" of this debate cares One side says "Don't fucking do that and you won't get exploited" One side says "Go ahead and do it, exploitation is Good Actually"
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But neither side has an answer, neither side realistically says "Hey how can we make it so that kids can be sexual without getting fucked over and destroyed by adults" The movie doesn't answer this question at all (which is a valid criticism, it doesn't really have an ending)
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But the movie's harshest critics seem to just want to pretend the dilemma the movie is talking about doesn't exist "Girls wouldn't want to do that filthy shit if you creeps in the media didn't put it in their head" Well, even if that's true, that horse left the barn decades ago
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"If Amy's mom had just found that fucking phone and smashed it, or if her cousin had thought to lock it better, this movie wouldn't have happened" Yeah okay whatever Maybe Amy still wouldn't be okay though
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Anyway I didn't exactly plan this thread ahead but sure, this doesn't directly address the question of "Why'd you have to film the dancing for real and film it like it really was a sexy music video and troll everyone into calling you a pedophile for making it"
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Honestly, I don't know if there's a good way around that It may well have just been a mistake, straight up, to make this movie But I think it's pretty clear what Doucouré was going for -- she wanted to show the Cuties' show through their own eyes
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Like it's not so much about what the adult audience thinks when they see it (which is the whole problem, because the adult audience WILL have a very strong reaction to it no matter what) It's about the fact that when they do it they feel sexy, empowered, beautiful
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That's a real desire for them, and in and of itself it's *not a bad thing* If they had better parents they'd know why it's so fucking dangerous to indulge that impulse the way they're doing it but they'd still have it at the age of 20, or 30, or 40
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The problem is that no one else sees it that way, especially adult men What she was aiming for was to trigger that polarized reaction, which she wants to critique -- which she put onscreen in the form of the two security guards
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Either the outraged, shouting "This is TRASH!" from Guard #1 or the leering, drooling "This is traaaash" from Guard #2 But either way it's a dehumanizing reaction, it's letting the "HOLY SHIT TEEN SEX" scandalousness override any feeling of empathy you had for the girls
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(And I guess the controversial thing it's saying, which the people angriest at the film would angrily deny, is that Guard #1 hates/disrespects the girls as much as Guard #2 does That the impulse to "GET THAT SHIT AWAY FROM ME" precludes actually empathizing or helping)
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I dunno It may well be that this movie just shouldn't exist, because inevitably the provocative scenes will be taken out of context and shared as clips (a real and legitimate concern, like I've said repeatedly)
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And it may be that I'm primed to be more sympathetic to Doucouré's choices because of all the people saying the movie is worthless garbage and obviously just "softcore porn" or titillating sexploitation like a true-crime story
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I think there's a good argument this movie shouldn't be on Netflix, that it should be harder to get to -- the kind of movie that in the old days only got released in festivals and small screenings, that today maybe should only be on a niche subscription service for "art films"
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Hell maybe they should just have screenings for women only or whatever, maybe I as an adult man shouldn't be one of the people allowed to see it because it's not for me I'm fine with all of those arguments, honestly, I remain a lot like Guard #1 in my reaction to it
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But I do get Doucouré, I think, as someone who was damaged similarly by a repressive conservative culture, and who's pretty fucking pissed that the religious conservatives are riding this moral panic to another victory in the culture wars I totally get why she did it this way
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One of the reasons the moral guardians came after her for being a degenerate was her saying in early press for this movie that her feelings remained "mixed" about this issue That this movie was partly a response to her mom, who is still the mom in this movie
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That *still* at the age of 35 her mom calls her up and gives her shit about not wearing hijab, about wearing skirts that are too short, about "dressing like a whore" She wouldn't say this, but I do get the feeling this movie is a big "FUCK YOU MOM, THIS IS WHAT IT WAS LIKE"
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Like she's about my age and we didn't have TikTok and smartphones and so forth when we were Amy's age But even so, there was some fucking shit going down among preteens in the 90s You just want to shake them and say "You didn't protect me from jack fucking shit"
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The scene where Amy is fucking practicing twerking when she's supposed to be praying and nobody can tell because her hijab covers her whole body Which people called needless blasphemy and trolling No, it's the whole point of the whole movie in one visual metaphor
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End of conversation
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