It's been a few days since my first post and the people defending this movie have not stopped coming up with new attempts to argue against the valid criticism that this movie exploited the child actresses involved in making it. Strangely enough, we have not had to come up with any new arguments to explain why this movie contains child exploitation, since pointing vaguely to said parts of the movie and gesturing exhaustedly is the only necessary action. Still, the new attempts to justify the evils perpetrated by the people who made this film keep pouring in, and so I will explain why each of the ones I have seen are flimsy at best. At worst, these same arguments could be applied without any changes to defending the production of explicit child pornography without false pretenses. The following are presented in no particular order.
"The producer created trust between herself and the actresses, so she was being responsible to not exploit them." (source)
This argument is one of those that would translate perfectly to child exploitation in general. "Trust" is the main avenue adults who seek to harm children use to get those children to do what they want. Children are, unfortunately, easy to exploit because they often trust adults and anyone who acts confident without question. The argument here that the producer created trust between herself and the child actresses does nothing to alleviate the concerns that these children have been exploited. I am not saying that the producer was explicitly behaving maliciously, but it is very easy for a sociopathic person who seeks to harm someone to feign a caring relationship with a child in order to exploit them. Saying "forming this trust is a sign that she was not exploiting the children" is not a valid argument, since forming trust with victims is a basic child exploitation action.
This is not even an argument, but people who say this will behave as if they are making some brave point, so I will address it. First and foremost, I have not seen a single person who has actually been asked if they were okay with these productions say that they don't hate them. It is entirely - aside from merely grossly irresponsible - a baseless assumption that the same people who disapprove of Cuties are somehow over here cheering on movies like Good Boys. When Good Boys was being advertised and I happened to see some of the previews, I assure you I was thoroughly disgusted. I have found child beauty pageants and all manners of glorifying bad behavior in children and young teenagers to be despicable and I all but guarantee anyone mad about Cuties does too.
If your criticism is actually that there wasn't a similar outrage back then, then I agree with you. These disgusting shows and movies have been a blight on our society and if it took Cuties as our collective last straw to realize this is a real problem that shouldn't be tolerated, then I'll accept that - at least we finally realized there was a problem. However, "Cuties is okay because people didn't get outraged about child exploitation sooner" is not a valid argument. If you are simply mad that people didn't get outraged about child exploitation sooner, we are on the same side.
"The people who think the children were exploited are likely pedophiles for finding those scenes arousing." (source)
The argument here fails in two places. First and foremost, the argument here is that no normal person would find the scenes where the children rub themselves and hump the floor to be "sexy dancing" because they are children. This is something we obviously agree on - the problem is that there are non-normal people out there who think it is. That's literally the entire problem that we have with the movie. The movie's defenders will say that the scenes are supposed to be shocking and disturbing because they are children attempting to dance provocatively. This is entirely true for most people - but people who are capable of thinking about things other than themselves have realized that there are disturbed, sick people in the world who actively seek out things like this to rub one out to. We capable-of-thinking-for-five-extra-minutes people recognize that while we are properly disturbed by these scenes as intended, there are other disgusting people out there who will utilize this movie for their spank bank, and we subsequently get very upset about that because we actually care about children and don't want them to be sexualized and exploited this way.
Secondly, this argument fails in a more philosophical way. The argument here is that if you are not a pedophile, you will literally not even be able to recognize that the children are attempting to behave sexually. What happens is someone against the movie says the children are behaving sexually, and someone will say "you must be a pedophile if you thought the dancing was sexy". This would require that someone who is not a pedophile will be unable to recognize the sexual nature of the behavior. It will be so bewildering that you literally won't even understand the purpose of what's happening on the screen, because as a non-pedophile, you're unable to recognize when someone is attempting to behave sexually if you don't find them personally attractive. If this is the case, the entire point of the movie is lost, because the point of the movie is to shock the viewer in regards to child oversexualization.
This poster
points out that they "couldn't imagine there could be a context where
it wasn't creepy and cringey". This, supposedly, seemed like a smart
thing to say for them, but I have trouble imagining that this person
genuinely is unaware there are people who are aroused by children. If
this is a genuine statement and not a hard cope, I can only say that it
makes things much worse to know there are adults walking around unaware
that children need to be protected from disturbed, perverted adults. It does seem easier to walk around pretending that society has evolved past harming vulnerable populations of people, but that is simply not the reality we live in.
As a bonus, by making this argument, you agree there are sick people in the world who would see these scenes and find them arousing. You should then, if you were being sincere, be as outraged as everyone else, if you truly recognized this. But you are not, for some reason. Probably because you are being insincere and don't actually believe the people who are mad about the explicit scenes in this movie are pedophiles, but are trying to "no u" them.
"You can't talk about the movie if you didn't watch it." (source (also basically every article about it))
I already touched on this but I will do so again as I have an additional bit to add. Most importantly, I've read countless testimonies from people who watched it and said it was disturbing. I actually do not enjoy being disturbed. I have often taken advice from people who said to not watch things that are disturbing and I have actually avoided many internet phenomena this way. I don't watch things if people who have watched them say that they are disturbing. I have absolutely no obligation to watch something that will negatively affect my mental health. Now, the point remains, am I then allowed to talk about the movie if I haven't watched it? Because I've taken the advice of people who have stated that this film is disturbing, and I subsequently do not wish to subject myself to something disturbing, must I then forfeit my ability to comment on the movie?
Yes, if I were writing a review of the movie or commenting on the plot or something in that vein. However, I'm not commenting on the plot or the message it attempts to convey. I have seen enough to know that the movie utilized exploitation of children to be created. My issue with the movie lies there - to argue that I must watch the movie in entirety to know whether or not this piece of information is true is disingenuous. The only argument that could possibly be made would be that the clips are not present in the movie, and I would find this out by watching the movie. This is, however, not a true statement and the fact is no one has attempted to make this claim. They know that the clips people have seen are present in the movie. I do not need to know about the plot or the character building of the main characters to know that the movie exploited its child actresses. The argument that people are attempting to make it essentially "yes those clips are there but when viewed within the context of the movie as a whole, they aren't child porn". It seems very disingenuous to say that something that, out of context, would look like child porn, is magically not child porn in context, as if someone who desired to utilize those clips for nefarious purposes doesn't know how the fast forward and rewind buttons work on their remote.
"The parents signed off on it, so no one was exploited." (source)
This is one of those "could be used unaltered to defend actual explicit child pornography" arguments. If anything a child does is magically fine if the parents sign off on it, then you can have a child do anything - anything at all - as long as you have the parent's permission. It doesn't matter that we were all absolutely horrified about the testimony of the 9 year old who said her mother's boyfriend was abusing her while her mother watched, I assume, since the mother signed off on it?
No, obviously not. It turns out it's possible for parents to put their children into dangerous situations. The parents of the children in this movie are irresponsible and have put their children into a situation where they were exploited. This argument insists that parents have full license to harm their children under the pretext that they are the parents. We as a society have decided that's actually not okay and have taken steps to remove children from households which we believe are causing them harm. While Child Protective Services is a corrupt organization that has used the threat of removing people's children on unjustifiable pretexts as political stunts, the concept remains that we believe parents do not have unrestrained rights to harm their children just because they are their children. To make this argument is disingenuous, though I suppose if the person making this argument really did think it was okay for parents to abuse their children, then at least they would be consistent - however, they would still be wrong.
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