Earlier this week, the trailer for Netflix’s film Cuties arrived. A Sundance award-winner for director Maïmouna Doucouré, it centers on a pre-teen girl who rebels against her conservative Muslim family by joining a group of girls in a dancing troupe. At the time I said there might be met with resistance because of the provocative presentation of such young girls. Well, not only is that what happened, but Netflix is now backpedaling to fix a ridiculous marketing strategy.
So I’m not sure how many people actually watched the trailer for Cuties, but the promotional art and synopsis were enough to get 150,000+ people signing a petition to have the film removed. The poster features the young cast, all girls around the age of 11, in tight tube tops and very suggestive poses. The movies’ TV-MA rating probably didn’t help, and the synopsis about a “twerking” dance crew made things worse.
its interesting to compare the french version of the cuties poster to the american version…
like the French version has more "kids having fun!" vibes, while the American version is just fucking…. gross.
I feel like the #Netflix marketing team has a lot to answer for. pic.twitter.com/c8QrX0EY75— kitti (@yeetdere) August 20, 2020
Netflix has now tweeted an apology for its marketing of Cuties, the “inappropriate artwork” that failed to be representative of the movie. While the film is indeed meant to comment on a society that allows for the sexualization of young girls, Netflix’s approach was to make it look as gross as possible. I’m actually more surprised that poster was produced in the first place. Who okayed it? And did they ask the actresses back to be a part of it? How’d that conversation go?
Anyway, let’s hope Netflix has taken a lesson from this. If there’s a plus side to this, it’s that Cuties will now have a much higher-profile, and maybe those who had never heard of it will seek it out and be surprised by what they get.
Cuties hits Nextflix on September 9th.
We're deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.
— Netflix (@netflix) August 20, 2020
#CUTIES is a beautiful film. It gutted me at @sundancefest. It introduces a fresh voice at the helm. She’s a French Senegalese Black woman mining her experiences. The film comments on the hyper-sexualization of preadolescent girls. Disappointed to see the current discourse. ?
— Tessa Thompson (@TessaThompson_x) August 20, 2020
