And next, the French movie "Puppies"
Where the filmmakers break a leg from every puppy in the litter to show the horrors of animal abuse.
shareHahaha, this is a perfect analogy!
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MovieChat Forums > Mignonnes (2020) Discussion > And next, the French movie "Puppies"
Stupid comparison and completely not applicable. None of the girls were harmed making this film.
share*facepalm*
shareThe comparison works just fine, bud.
shareIt's a stupid comparison and doesn't work, so go facepalm yourself.
shareYour brain doesn't work, bud.
shareMy brain works fine. It's a ridiculous comparison. The girls in Cuties are acting and did so willingly. They are not being exploited, abused, or harmed. It is not strange for me to defend a movie I liked from ignorant criticism. I think it is strange for you and others to criticize the film.
share"My brain works fine."
Agree to disagree, I guess.
"None of the girls were harmed making this film."
TBD. Give it a few years.
it's not funny. hollywood has a history of animal abuse in their blockbusters. e.g. 27 animals died on the set of 'the hobbit' in 2012, 100 horses were killed during the production of 'ben-hur' (1959), etc.
and these animals didn't even die for a film that has a valuable message - they died for your mere entertainment.
also, unlike the actors in 'cuties', none of these animals applied for their "roles" of their own will.
Do I sound like I am laughing at animal abuse, bud?
shareNo you don't, people are just too stupid to get your point.
Probably the same kind of people going to see some stand-up comedy and then being appalled someone made a joke about the holocaust or 911.
well, it's a fake analogy. since unlike the actors in 'cuties', the puppies in your movie didn't agree to play their "roles". so there are only two possibities:
a) you were trying to make a bad joke.
b) you weren't aware of your own fallacy, which makes you look pretty stupid.
your rethorical question suggests b)
How do you know the actresses were fully aware of what they were signing up for? How are you so sure they didn't think this would be another version of 'Bring It On' until the cameras started rolling? Because they didn't leave mid-production? Because they didn't ruin it by walking out?
shareif you really believe what you've just written, then it's confirmed that you are indeed pretty stupid (or naive, to put it less harshly).
but to answer your question: i know because i have something called common sense... besides some insights on how professional film making works, what applicable contracts look like, what requirements have to be met when working with actors in general, and with minors in particular (cue: child protection laws), etc.
before signing up, not only did the actors (alongside their parents) have to read the script, they had to discuss it with a child psychologist to preempt any possible harm.
You're resorting to insults because you can't sufficiently defend your disagreement. That's also why you brought up the non sequitur of actors' consent.
The analogy pertains to one film that does the thing it's trying to say is appalling but takes it further in the next. Consent does not matter because the thing Cuties is "supposedly" complaining about, such as twerking competitions, can also have parental consent.
If you're saying the production gets a pass because they had consent, but you're against underage twerking competitions which also have consent, then you're a fool.
And if you're saying the production gets a pass because they had consent, and you support underage twerking competitions because they also have consent, then you are a disgusting human being.
So which is it?
child actors playing roles and children twerking because they'd like to identify themselves with the "sexy" image, is two different things. if you can't distinguish between a role and a real person, you're a fool.
film characters don't need to reflect the actors' or filmmakers' personal morals - otherwise all films with evil or criminal characters would have to be forbidden. that would be a boring movie landscape for sure!
if you think "consent does not matter" - wow - tell that to a judge, especially after you've raped a woman because you thought you can have sex and consent didn't matter.
and btw, the film doesn't "complain about twerking competitions" (that's only implied). the characters twerk at a normal dance contest - not a twerk contest - because they like to provoke adults. the film is a coming-of-age story in the first place, and trying out extremes is part of the coming-of-age process. where does your puppy analogy reflect that?
I'm saying your consent caveat does not apply to the Puppies analogy (more taking it to the next level than apples to apples comparison). Not sure what you'd call that, but analogy is close enough. Nobody would be stupid enough to think I'm saying consent does not matter anywhere. Not sure why you went there. Desperate for a win, even if its a strawman?
Cuties film:
Has consent to show underage girls being sexualized.
Mimics a society that consents to underage girls being sexualized.
Puppies film:
Has no consent to break puppies' legs.
Mimics animal abuse that has no consent to break puppies' legs.
Consent does not apply to the analogy. Consent is a non sequitur. The analogy is about a film doing the thing it says is wrong and uses the audience's reaction to the film's scenes as the film's commentary on why it's wrong.
because they like to provoke adults.The acceptance by the adults greatly overshadowed the adults being provoked. The most I saw was a mild annoyance, except for the religious disagreement. Therein lies the problem. It's not the people in the movie being provoked. It's the people watching at home. share
it's fallacy:
cuties film:
fictional characters are being sexualized, not the actors.
puppies film:
the actual dogs are being harmed physically (unless they use special fx to show their legs being broken).
"being sexualized" is a moral trait, it can only be projected onto the fictional character, it doesn't represent the actors' morals.
just like someone playing a criminal in a movie doesn't mean the actor is being "criminalized".
physical harm, on the other hand, is not an abstract moral trait.
it's not exploitative either, as long as it's an integral part of the story. that's the difference between the sexualization in cuties and the casual sexualization in hollywood movies.
the male gaze shots featuring megan fox in transformers, for example, are only there for the enjoyment of the male viewers, they're not integral to the story. hence this kind of sexualization exploits the actor, even though megan fox gave her consent to play that role.
cuties film:
fictional characters are being sexualized, not the actors.
You can't fake sexualization just like you can't fake nudity when actors take their clothes off. You can fake sexual penetration with simulation, because they don't actually show the act except in rare situations like The Brown Bunny.
To simulate the sexuality of underage girls in Cuties, it would've required body doubles of girls over 18. If Cuties did that, there would be no problem.
But they didn't fake anything. They sexualized underage girls to somehow prove a point that sexualizing underage girls was wrong. share
you can fake anything, especially an abstract concept like sexualization.
an actor is only sexualized as a person, if they get repeatedly cast for sexy roles. then the role becomes the actor's image.
anything else is just masquerade. a hetereosexual male can play a gay, a righteous man can play a criminal, an innocent child can play a seductive lolita, etc.
it's only unethical, if you demand something from actors against their will. you can't force a straight guy to play a gay and kiss another man, but if the actor is fine with it, then there shouldn't be a reason for a moral debate.
Why would you assume all French film are like this? Way to generalize things. Do you know how many graphic rape scenes of young girls you find in American films? Have you watched Kids or any of the Larry Clark film? An American director who made a career of making films about kids having sex! So yeah ..no need to start acting like a bigot over this!
share"Why would you assume all French film are like this? Way to generalize things."
That's quite the generalization you made there, bud.
ANSWER THE REST OF HIS COMMENT...HE IS RIGHT...A POINT NONE OF YOU CUTIES PSYCHOS HAS ADDRESSED YET...KIDS CAME OUT LIKE 25 YEARS AGO,IT IS WAY WORSE ON THE LEVEL YOU GUYS KEEP ATTACKING CUTIES FOR...BROOKE SHIELDS WAS FULLY NUDE AS A CHILD IN PRETTY BABY LIKE 40 YEARS AGO NOW...CUTIES HAS A MESSAGE AND DOESNT EXPLOIT ITS ACTORS IN THE LEAST...IVE HEARD THE EXPRESSION WHITE KNIGHT APPLIED TO MANY PEOPLE...YOU EARN IT MORE THAN MOST.
shareSure, bud.
shareDANCING...IT SHOWS DANCING DUDE...KIDS HAS SEX,VIOLENCE,DRUG USE...ALL ENGAGED IN BY CHILDREN ON CAMERA...RIGHT UNTIL THE GETTING AIDS VIA RAPE AT THE END...TELLY'S DEEP THOUGHTS ON DEFLOWERING VIRGINS AND THE SCENE OF HIM DOING SUCH...BUT YEAH...BAD DANCING MOVIE.
shareEverything in Kids was simulated, bud.
shareDANCING...ITS DANCING...NOT VIOLENCE OR RAPE...YOUR ANALOGY IS FLAWED AND KIND OF STUPID...YOU OBVIOUSLY ENJOY YOUR OPINIONS.THE LENGTHS YOURE WILLING TO GO TO JUST TO PROVE YOUR SUPERIOR KNOWLEDGE OF PEDOPHILIA AND ITS RELATION TO TORTURED DOGS...YIKES.
shareI know this comment wasn't directed at me but I want to point out the differences here, I watched "Kids" a long time ago and it's really a different animal than "Cuties."
I know what I say here might get me in trouble but "Kids" didn't quite cross the line that "Cuties" did because "Kids" is an edgy but accurate representation of how some trashy 11-13-year-olds live, and what happens when you're a not-so-trashy kid who decides to get involved with them. AND -- just as importantly -- their situation is sordid and depressing and scary, like any group of feral young people below the poverty line who do what they have to do to survive and get their kicks.
The REALLY fine line there is that sex is like trauma when you're that young. Some pubescent kids can handle it just like adults would, like the street-hardened little toughs in "Kids." Some kids would be traumatized for life, like the girls in "Cuties." Who, judging from their faces and mannerisms, are totally unprepared for it because their environment didn't force them to grow up early.
That's the line that this film crosses that "Kids" didn't. "Kids" was about the shitty things that happen to everyone, even kids, in a shitty situation. While "Cuties" is this annoyingly misguided abomination that exploits children who don't fully understand that what they're doing is on some level an open invitation to be treated in ways they shouldn't be treated, and it's irritating how it's like the filmmaker has this autistic inability to understand that.
while i liked 'kids' more than 'cuties', i can't agree with your interpetation. we don't get to know much about the other characters, but the main character is pretty much in the same situation as the characters in 'kids' if not worse: poor family, migrant background, torn between two cultures, lack of orientation and proper role models.
she gets her kicks how kids nowadays get their kicks: by social media likes. the characters in 'kids' didn't have social media yet, but if the film took place today and focus on female characters, it certainly would resemble 'cuties' in many ways.
the main character is pretty much in the same situation as the characters in 'kids' if not worse: poor family, migrant background, torn between two cultures, lack of orientation and proper role models.
That's not true. The guy in "Kids" had one person in his family: his mostly-absent single mother, who was almost broke and living in a squalid apartment in a poor neighborhood. The girl in "Cuties" may not have been rich but her family apparently had the money to buy her and her cousin decent clothes and a nicer place to live than the shithole apartment we see in "Kids." AND they make her go to school. They actually really CARE about her.
The single mother in Kids wasn't a migrant, she was just poor and probably flushed her life down the toilet with drugs and partying with idiots.
Torn between two cultures. Nothing like that in "Kids," It was just poverty. In "Cuties" it was the extreme conservativism vs. the toxic hedonism of modern America. Which doesn't make a very interesting conflict IMO. Her family disapproves of her being a hoe. wahhhh.
Lack of orientation and proper role models - yes for Kids, those punks were as bad as they were because they were feral-assed latchkey kids who never really had parents. No for Cuties; I see what you're saying with there being no middle ground between conservatism and hedonism, but -- and it's a big but -- unlike the kid in "Kids," this girl's parents actually provided her with protection and a childhood. That's why she's still innocent. This is a good thing.
Her parents didn't give her "orientation and proper role models" only in the sense that they didn't explain to her WHY they restricted her the way they did. Civilization looks down on sluts for a reason, and it's not because of some patriarchal conspiracy theory. It's because a country is only as strong as the pair-bonding of its citizens, and sluts fuck that up by helping people get addicted to hedonism and to staying in an adolescent stage of emotional development their whole lives, and they tend to reproduce with criminals. share
i have to say i agree, especially with that point:
Torn between two cultures. Nothing like that in "Kids," It was just poverty. In "Cuties" it was the extreme conservativism vs. the toxic hedonism of modern America. Which doesn't make a very interesting conflict IMO.
one of the reasons why i prefer 'kids'.
the other points, however, while not entirely untrue, seem to me a bit of a quibble. which apartment is shittier etc. ... in order for cuties to be dismissed as an "annoyingly misguided abomination" it would take way more substantial differences, imo. share
well, like, taken on its own, sure comparing which apartment is worse is a quibble but not when combined with a caring family and the privilege of a childhood in the case of "Cuties."
"Kids" happened in a bleak, hard-assed world that the protagonist was born into where you almost have to do bad things to survive. The girl in "Cuties" wasn't. The strictness of her upbringing is a really really lame excuse for the writers to throw her down a path to being a crack whore and ending up something like the single mom in "Kids." And for what? To make a point about how child exploitation is bad... By exploiting children. That's why I call it an "annoyingly misguided abomination."
i'd look at it that way: both films take place in a more or less troubled underclass milieu and show the impact on their respective youth. what 'kids' is for 1990s ny slum kids, is 'cuties' for 2010s girls from paris' poor neighborhoods. sure, anything is more extreme in america, and compared to the poor kids in ny, the poor kids in paris may still have relatively sheltered lives, but to portray it any different and artificially up the ante wouldn't be authentic after all.
shareI agree with you because Kids shows the perils of that kind of behavior. Cuties does not. Cuties shows a society being accepting of it and normalizing it.
shareI see you get it also. I think the thing about this that's so frustrating to me is that I don't understand how people don't just "get" that this is crossing a line, and that disturbs and offends me. It disturbs me that you have to spoon-feed this to people. I mean this isn't rocket science and that makes me wonder what's going on in these people's heads where they on some level condone child erotica.
shareTHESE ARGUEMENTS AGAINST CUTIES AND FOR KIDS ARE ENTIRELY BASED ON OPINION AND PERSONAL TASTE...KIDS IS WORSE BUT SET IN WORSE CIRCUMSTANCES SO ITS BETTER?...CUTIES DOESNT PORTRAY SEX AND DRUGS AND VIOLENCE LIKE KIDS BUT THE ACTORS LOOK MORE DISTURBED?...HORSESHIT🙂
shareYeah It's ridiculous.. One film was made by a Senegalese/French woman based on her own experience trying to fit in in a world that gives a hypersexualize view of what girls should be like, the other was made by an American not based on any of his personal experience, he literally directed fully naked kids asking them to pretend to penetrate girls etc.. But sure Cuties and that dance scene is So much worse lol . I think there is bigotry and hypocrisy there in these comments. There is so much hyper sexualization of girls in American media, it is right in front of our noses but people just feel it is easier to attack a foreign product while pretending that none of the things it depict is happening daily in the real world.
shareIn Kids, the film's commentary against their behavior was the spread of life-threatening HIV.
In Cuties, the film's commentary against their behavior was... it opposed one of their mom's religion?
One of the movies shows the perils of the behavior. The other does not.
Cuties was about a girl arriving to France who by trying to run from her religion get exposed to another extreme by turning to social media and copying what she see there. And most of the things is social media are hypersexualizing women. As a child she does not know these things are wrong and copy them thinking that is how she will became known and make friends. By the end of the movie she breaks down when she see at the dance contest that people seems to be disgusted by what they are doing, she breaks down in tears and run away. At the end you see her jumping on a rope in her room as a symbol of her trying to regain her childhood! There, that is what the movie is about . You can choose to ignore what it is talking about or the message of the movie because you might think it is not clear enough but that is on you. Kids and Cuties both have a message. Kids got kid actors to strip naked and pretend to have sex, there is even a scene with an 12 year old getting pleasured by an older girl, the entire movie has young actor doing sexually explicit stuff but you guys loose your crap about a single scene in cuties that is not far from what we see kids do on reality TV and social media. Truth is, it is easier to attack a foreign film on Netflix than a film that was made in the US over 20 years ago so you choose to attack Cuties because it is more convenient.
shareThe girl did not stop dancing because she saw people disgusted. SHE herself was disgusted. And she was angry at herself for crossing her mother's religion.
Meanwhile, Kids showed the perils of their behavior by having a main character contract life-threatening HIV.
well put, Olivergbyrne. the peril in cuties is that the girl robs herself of her own childhood by not finding a middle ground between the western culture and the conservative religious lifestyle of her mother; she was torn between those two extremes.
shareYes MrFilmJunkie it is clear that is what it is about but yeah they make up their own interpretation so that they can make it easier to hate the film lol I am stopping debating with them now , it is useless.
shareU.S.—Netflix is embroiled in controversy yet again with its new documentary Puppy Murder, a show where the director kills puppies to teach you that murdering puppies is bad.
The movie is just two hours of puppies being brutally murdered onscreen, sending a powerful message to the viewer about just how bad puppy murder is. From getting shot and stabbed to being run over with a steamroller and the inspiring climactic scene where a puppy is dropped into a volcano, the movie unequivocally and powerfully shows the brutal reality of puppy murder.
"I thought about just making a documentary where I didn't actually murder puppies to make the point, but it just wasn't powerful enough," said director Amélie Le'Charpentier (who is, by the way, a woman of color and an immigrant, so think about that before you criticize her). "I drew on my own experiences having observed puppy murder a number of times and decided I would just drop anvils and pianos on them and stuff so you could see how terrible puppy murder is."
Many people spoke up against the film but were labeled "triggered conservatives" and "scandal-mongers" since they obviously just didn't get the message of the film, which very clearly teaches that puppy murder is bad.
The show has been a big success among psychopaths and future mass murderers and will see a sequel called Baby Murder next fall.
https://babylonbee.com/news/new-netflix-movie-actually-murders-puppies-to-teach-that-murdering-puppies-is-bad share
Heh, did not see that one. Interesting.
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