The Politics of Cuties: What Was Really Going On
Cuties, the controversial movie about dancing tweens, received shock and awe from the conservative Right and the progressive Left when shown on Netflix. The Trumplicans attacked the film for sexualizing underage girls; the Berniecrats claimed it dehumanized women through sexual exploitation instead of empowering them. Both pointed the finger at the French production with a yelping “Je vous accuse de pornographie des enfants!
Sen. Cruz, the pride of Texas, took charge. Yes, the Trump buttwhipping boy turned die-on-the-sword defender of the president, has become the born-again conscience of our moral rectitude. Cruz wrote a letter urging Cotton Mather-like vengeance to rain down investigations and child pornography charges on the depraved perverts who threaten the United States of America’s very security with a barrage of Exocet obscenities bombing Netflix, inflicting untold casualties of shattered innocence upon American youth.
Joining the fray from the Left, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard swooshed in like the huntress Artemis, Greek goddess of young girls and chastity. Tulsi summoned her inner archer and aimed at the helpless and hapless Gaullic moviemakers and their collaborators. Fire One: “Child pornographers!” Fire two: “gasoline for child sex trafficking”. Fire three: “pedophile buffet!” Fire 4: “Complicit Netflix!” All that’s missing in the politically ambidextrous indignation is Septe Unelia ringing the bell and crying “SHAME!” as creator Maimouna Doucoure marches naked on the Walk of Shame.
We thinks thou protesteth too much.
When these two guardians reached their epiphanous come-to-Jesus moment is rather uncertain. Whatever complaints levied by The Huntress and the Texas Bull against Cuties, they have never seemed perturbed by the limitless availability of similar material for years on the internet. Young girls in typically skimpy outfits dance and gyrate and contort on myriad videos. Many of the female performers are the same age as the stars in Cuties--or younger. Cast calls must ring out for females ranging in age from under 10 to 30 for all kinds of performances, competitions, and peek-a-boo opportunities. A caveat: guessing the age of You Tube vedettes seems part of the allure. Many of these YT screen stoppers seem ambiguously aged, slotting in at one of three groups: fully adult, barely legal and don’t even go there.
Our youthful mermaids lounge around pools, beaches, or anyplace conducive to showing their bikini-clad tails and shiny, sun-soaked midriffs, all with fresh-faced yet sultry expressions. For the more active, warmup with long-legged nymphs before they steal your oxygen in a breathless cardio workout. Or just peek in on Brazil’s finest, 14 year old Thiassa Marvila, 2014 Bikini Fitness champ--one million have in the last three years. It is a universe filled with young, nubile stars contorting and twisting in yoga elasticity, spreadeagling in sexy gym routines, ballet exercises (Russians specialize in those), horizontal-bar stretching—all in such obtuse angles that it will change your concept of Euclidean geometry.
If you are more Calvin Klein than Richard Simmons, take a front row seat at the fashion shows from around the world by sashaying to YT. Behold the beauties working the runway. Swimwear is particularly popular; however, one finds participants in a range of events wearing all sorts of sartorial splendor.
And, if you are more Steve Harvey or Bert Parks than Calvin Klein, an array of beauty pageants are a click away. Young girls enter in their age category: toddlers, pre-pubescents, teens and 20-somethings. The starlets parade in haute couture pulchritude—from elegant gowns to two piece outfits with more skin showing than an 18th hole hustle. They may gyrate, shoulder roll, hip thrust as if dancers in a Bob Fosse musical, all to wear the beauty queen’s crown —even if some are just old enough to be babysitters—or need one.
Actually, the Bible Belt beauty pageants for the underage seem like a pretty popular pastime. Contests in the former republic such as the Texas Glits Stars and Stripes Pageant, Little Miss Texas in Austin, Texas Walk of Fame, and All Ages Pageant in Dallas are common throughout the region. Regardless of years, the young and less young do their own razzle-dazzle in two piece unis, leotards, or themed outfits on a sufficient number of channels to keep fans wholly occupied and quarantined through the entire COVID19 crisis.
A huge company producing such events is headquartered deep in the heart of…Texas. Beauty pageantry is a multi-billion dollar industry, most popular in the Senator’s political wheelhouse. Elizabeth Blumer Thompson, who wrote Girlhood, Beauty Pageants, and Power: Trailer Park Royalty called these kiddie pageants “a phenomenon in rural Georgia”. Rita Cordero, author of Children’s Beauty Pageants: Growing Up On Stage labeled it “a subculture”; faithful to family values and shared community, an authentic expression of Americana.
Internationally a fine, wide array of bathing suit pageants or other contrivances displaying half clothed Lolitas abound. Teen contests such as Miss Juniors World and Meninas o Piscina do y Tio (YT had to age restrict the viewing on that one!) will keep popping up on your You Tube page in an endless buffet.
Given the copious amounts of virginal limbs in swaths of textiles masquerading as clothing on You Tube, the silence and embrace of the wildly popular network juxtaposed to the all-out assault on the film beg the question: Just what is so ugly about Cuties?
The movie portrays 11 year-old Amy, a Senegalese immigrant girl living the ageless conflict of new-world acceptance vs old world values. Bound up in a religious community’s isolation and clashing cultural identities, Amy yearns to join a small dance group competing in an upcoming contest. Nothing would stamp “arrived” more than induction into the dance team and a trophy in her room.
For all the sound and fury, Cuties is nothing more than a Karate Kid for girls, expressed in updated 2020 terms. Instead of Cobra Kai delivering knife-hand strikes and round house kicks to Daniel LaRusso, the Cuties verbally punch and socially distance Amy—taunting and isolation being the young female’s universal weapons of choice. La Russo answered his tormentors by becoming part of their world and crowned king with the most famous kick in cinema history.
Instead of the crane technique, the twerk and thrust (and a bit of malevolent sabotage) punched the young Senegalese girl’s ticket to acceptance. Unlike Daniel, who found personal balance in his conquest, Amy rejected her membership, fleeing the dance routine during the contest, returning to her neighborhood, reveling in the virtues of family and faith.
Besides their objections to the overall tone of Cuties, two aspects of the film drew the most ire from its critics. Amy does a twerking practice in her briefs. Decades ago, Brooke Shields’ naked derriere in Pretty Baby created lots of controversy as Hollywood pushed the First Amendment envelope. Compared to Brooke’s Violet and her surroundings, a tween twerker in what looks like the bottom of a girl’s 2-piece should hardly be the stuff of such a massive outcry nowadays. Like Pretty Baby, Cuties received critical acclaim as an objet d’art du cinema. From Violet to Amy, the world transformed in those 40 years, especially for the young.
Amy, frustrated in her quest to be one of the girls and popular at school, sat on the toilet and took an intimate phone photo of herself and texted it, hoping for instant popularity. The plan backfired. Her friends scolded her for making them seem like whores as the whole school snickered in ridicule of Amy and her dance team friends. Well, Senator, Congresswoman, this is the third decade of the 21st Century, and sexting is a serious issue but a common practice, among adults as well as kids. The negative feedback stunned Amy, and her impulsive act cost her dearly.
The movie explores young teens’ sexting, taking a condemnatory view because its consequences are not thought out by socially naive kids hoping explicit images to be their ticket to romance or the crew you wish to call BFFs. Maïmouna Doucouré’s sends a strong warning emanating from the film’s traditional themes to youngsters. In the culture war swirling around Cuties, its fervent enemies, especially right wingers, are blind to the conservative themes its creator espouses.
Just what ulterior motives drove Gabbard and Cruz to lead the righteous opposition against a small, artsy movie compared to the availability of internet material far more risque?
Bludgeoned in the 2016 primaries, rattled by his near loss to Beto, laughed at in Blue America and its media for his Trump obsequity, Senator Cruz became Trump’s Teddy to Ramsey’s Reek. Cruz found redemption and renewal in his charge against Cuties, the perfect opportunity to garner righteous applause of RedNation independent of Trump—and national media attention. Cruz didn’t even have to ask the president for permission (well, maybe he did and we just don’t know about it). Saint Ted got his mojo back. Just as Theon found his manhood without really finding his manhood, Cruz emulated the emasculated - and found a way to flex, well, his muscle.
It also doesn’t hurt that Cuties is a French film (not that kind of French film). American pop culture views France as a prissy nation overindulgent in le vin and l’amour anyway. A Euro culture wholly deficient in martial will and 2AM barroom macho threw a hanging curve to Cruz’s mocked son-of-a bitch image. He knocked it out of the park. A brilliant win-win for the gentleman from the Lone Star State. Well played, Senator Greyjoy.
Hold on.
Ted Cruz must never have seen You Tube. Otherwise, he would know that the vast spectrum of similar, and often far more titillating, visuals than Cuties abound. Yet, no relentless Cruzade over YT programming, no finger pointing for child exploitation. Gabbard too, put no Tulse on the American pulse to end “fueling the child sex trade.” Surely young teen girls learning pole dancing at the very least alludes to strippers dancing at euphemistically called gentlemen’s clubs. Excuse me, but can anyone point me to the “Pedophile buffet”? Senator? Congresswoman?
All of which brings us to You Tube’s immunity from the top two Cuties critics. The Google-owned social media mega company is firmly established as a US-based business and a global institution. The American Dream of financial success and personal stardom rides a binary boat called You Tube. The entire inventory of nubile Lolitas and mesmerizing sirens in beauty pageants, fashion shows, festivals, sports, parks, homes have millions of viewers clicking their videos. The more viewers, the more subscribers, the higher the sponsored advertising rate for those videos.
YT hauls in billions generated by millions of channels. Top stars can earn seven figures while lesser lights in the firmament still earn a very good living and attain Hollywood-level celebrity. Going after You Tube would be a direct threat to the American entrepreneurship and the Bible Belt’s pageant “subculture”. Ted Cruz knows the holy parameters of Puritan wrath. Asking for Congressional inquiries of You Tube for the very same perceived offenses of Cuties hits way too close to home.
Livelihoods lost, publicity dissipated, a sacred custom stigmatized—a Cruz friendly one at that. His abstention from similar opprobrium for kiddie beauty pageants dismisses issues of child sexuality, eating disorders, body image. Cruz’s combative attack had nothing to do with defending America’s young maidenhoods from a cinematic invitation for pedophiles, sex recruiters, and wide-eyed innocents exclaiming with Miranda-like wonder “Oh brave new world to have such” dancing in it. Senator, hang around a middle school for a day or two and you’ll see more twerks than in 100 Cuties.
Cruz’s ersatz indignation revived his swaggering persona and tough Texas brand. He also managed to keep You Tube off the radar and the word hypocrite suppressed. Thanks to the Senator’s deft tactics, his people could keep their souls pure of heart, and consciences void of sin as the subculture’s 11 year olds strut nascent sexual femininity all dressed to the adult nines.
Exploitation of kids works in mysterious ways.
Tulsi Gabbard’s just a spring chicken by standard congressional measures. The House member has her own self-interest to keep the arrows in the quiver when it comes to the internet in general and You Tube in particular. Namely, she’s all over it. In her bathing suit, hanging ten on her surfboard, evoking physical fitness, sexiness, while still showing her other side as military hero and House member. For someone like Tulsi, a ripped Rep capitalizing on her youth,
You Tube is a match made in Planet Fitness heaven. TGBL awaits as a matter of time her gym workout in her signature red bikini on Waikiki Beach. Already Gabbard stars in a video called Tulsi Shows Off in the Gym, supported by other DC types. The vid proudly boasts 89,000 views in a year.
Just as in Cruz’s case, a campaign against You Tube works against Gabbard’s cyber investment. Her ubiquitous exposure plays perfectly to building her Wonder Woman charisma. Although double standard and politician often seem oxymoronic, it would occur to most people that criticizing any internet site for demeaning women and boosting “sex trafficking” when the critic’s red-bikinied bod is all over cyber world does question credibility. It sure adds some feminine allure to the National Guard officer. Smart. Tough. Sexy. Smart. A shrewd marketing sell in the perfect medium of web sites and videos.
Politically, Gabbard has played both ends against the middle, with liberal and progressive views but enough conservative DNA to draw a following on the right. Attacking Cuties with harsh right-wing language, Major Gabbard re-affirms her nexus to conservative America. At the same time, she draws the admiration of far Left feminists who share the identical position on pornography as the Bible Belt Right, though the reasons may differ. While her critique of Cuties earns points on both sides, the same vitriol aimed at You Tube could adversely affect her standing with the baby beauty subculture. Gabbard has achieved a very unique place politically as an enigmatic centrist Democrat. She’s not risking any of it. Even Artemis knows when to hold up.