The featured image is a still shot from the Netflix movie Cuties. We have cropped the image because one girl in the scene is acting in a way that we fail to feel comfortable showing on this website.
There’s something rotten in Hollywood and it needs to be flushed out. No, I’m not talking about the casting couch, which already took a beating from the whole Harvey Weinstein public reveal. That, by the way, resulted in a lot of people who likely knew exactly what was going on deciding that they could lead a social movement that would hide their own hypocrisy. For the most part, it worked.
No, this is an out-in-the-open issue that needs to be discussed. Two movies that are currently in the headlines are highlights of what we’re about to discuss. Both Cuties and Turning Red are major players in a cultural issue that needs to stop being part of political discussion and simply be put away as gross and inappropriate.
Dear Hollywood, little girls are off the table when it comes to that three-letter word.
Let’s start off with Turning Red since it is not so obvious, and because it is being lauded by one side of the aisle. Downvoting Turning Red will result in you getting called every “ism” in the book, because like The Last Jedi and the all female Ghostbusters movie, it’s not approved by the orthodoxy that anyone can hate the movie. Don’t believe me? Check out Grace Randolph of Behind the Trailer saying exactly that verbatim:
If you go to the 8:34 mark, Randolph has three reasons someone might dislike the movie. The first is that it is marketed as a children’s movie but is more appropriately a “puberty movie”… whatever the heck that is. The second reason is that Grace suggests people may rightly be hurt that Disney (but not any other studio) didn’t more aggressively come out against the Florida law that prevents schools from having gender theory or sex theory in kindergarten through third grade curriculum. And finally, Grace says the only other option is that you lack empathy and interest in people not like yourself. Take that, any of you who found the sight of a thirteen year-old pointing her butt at her mother and moving it up and down in a sexual manner as inappropriate (especially given that it is how she defeats her mother). Grace says you’re either a bad person or put off by the bad people at Disney if you don’t like this movie. Other movies can be reviewed negatively, but not all can be: and Turning Red is one of those. It is sacred to those of a particular angle.
The problem is that only 65% of audience members liked this movie according to Rotten Tomatoes. I’m sure that number will be inflated over time as we’ve come to learn that Rotten Tomatoes is not at all a reliable website for learning real aggregated opinion. That is started off with such a low audience number is a sign that they didn’t suppress the numbers early on because they failed to recognize it would be unpopular. The audience score at MetaCritic, which I find much more accurate (i.e. less prone to manipulation) is an even lower 6.3. That’s abysmal for a Pixar movie. It also tells you that the 95% critic score is a bunch of baloney.
The Twitter Mob Rages at Negative “Turning Red” Reviews
So let’s talk about some of the things that Turning Red promotes. Remember, this is a movie about a thirteen year-old animated girl. One, thrusting your butt up and down in a sexual manner is a positive as it helps win the final battle in the film. Two, the film promotes one of the most controversial and political phrases of our time: my body my choice (turned into “my panda my choice” in the film). That phrase clearly has sexual ramifications in the culture war. And three, the film promotes the idea of four thirteen year-old girls sneaking into a boy band concert. These are thirteen year-olds, not sixteen, not seventeen, not eighteen. The positive thing that they’re supposed to do (“letting out the Panda”) is sneaking around their parents to go to a boy band concert. Do you know how they get the money to do so? They have people pay money to “cuddle” the main character in her panda form.
These are thirteen year-old characters, and all of that is gross figurative and literal messaging. So no, Grace, while I am certainly no prude and I don’t fit into your three boxes, the movie stinks because it sexualizes characters who in no way should be treated as such.
But it’s not just Pixar that has went down a depravity pit that needs to be buried and done away with. The other big streamer is elbow-deep in a similar situation with the movie Cuties. You may recall that Cuties was the movie on Netflix that was “supposed” to be very critical of hyper-sexualizing prepubescent girls. The only problem is that the movie does exactly that. How in the world do you combat such a thing by hiring young eleven year-old actresses to dance in exactly that manner so that creepy people can watch it over and over on Netflix? Yuck.
Yet Hollywood is protecting it. Check out this quote from the Hollywood Reporter when discussing the Texas Attorney General who is filing charges over Cuties being indecent material featuring children:
“He’s misusing the power of his office to chill free speech.”
Free speech. Hiring little girls to portray something even adult women might find objectifying and objectionable, then producing that content with them forever to be watched by people who may enjoy such material… that’s free speech in Hollywood. And having a little girl in an animated film thrust her bottom at her mother in an emulation of a particular adult act… that’s free speech in Hollywood. They’ll defend it tooth and nail. It’s not just the executives, it’s not just the creepy creators… it’s even the critics who participate in this sort of lucid acceptance.
They’ve cast out the casting couch, creeping on kids instead.
And that needs to stop.
Leave the little girls alone, real and animated.
Turning Red is another demographic play for the Chinese audience that thankfully no one bit. The mother was a stereotypical Chinese tiger mother or dragon lady who is much too busy to pay any attention to her defiant daughter. Her father is a beta male. The dynamic of their relationship is so personal and disturbing at the same time. It’s not a typical fun Pixar movie.
It plays up the K-Pop boy band phenomenon. The panda is like another national animal that’s stereotypical Chinese. Disney’s panda-ering is tiresome.
So true. Disney’s naked attempts to appease the Xi dynasty are really revlting. One can pretend that this isn’t what’s happening, but check out the thank yous in the credits of their Mulan remake.
Disney’s decrying their filmography as racist, and their promotion of sexual-desire-as-superior-identity, is transparently cynical and hypocritical when one looks at their relationship with Beijng.
The bad guy is the mom?
There is always a bad guy, and Disney made it the parent? It’s tough being a parent today. A parent tries to raise their kid. This means sometimes you can’t afford items or time doesn’t permit actions. Now Hollywood tells parents we’re awful.
Disney movies are on the go woke, go broke list. Disney is begging for the whole company to be added, and I think they are getting their wish.
Well, we see that they’ve already artificially pushed up the audience score.
One thing I’m almost relieved about is that this is not on the kids’ option on Disney+…well, I would be, except no one uses the kids’ option on Disney+, because you cannot get half the movies people sign up for there (Peter Pan, Lady &the Tramp, Aristocats, Aladdin, Fantasia, Dumbo, Three Caballeros). There’s zero point to the kids’ option, because you cannot count on anything there to not be too scary for your kids; if you do trust them to regulate for scariness and thematic elements on the kids’ option (the only reason a normal parent would use it), you’ll have a sobbing 2 year old if you let them watch anything you haven’t seen yet (found that out the hard way).
The only thing it has going for it, is that your kid won’t accidentally find Disney’s weird sexual propaganda – but you also won’t get a ton of their other material, so parents will need to switch back and forth for kids. Which they won’t do consistently.