Netflix has apologized for a provocative promotional poster for the film titled Cuties, which follows a pre-pubescent girl who “becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew.” The poster, featuring four girls in risqué poses, sparked widespread backlash, prompting Netflix to apologize for what it called “inappropriate artwork.”
“We’re deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which premiered at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description,” Netflix said in a statement provided to Deadline. Netflix also posted an apology to Twitter.
The French film is expected to drop on Netflix next month. In anticipation, the streaming platform released a controversial promotional poster, featuring four pre-pubescent girls in suggestive positions. The film, rated TV-MA, follows an 11-year-old Senegalese Muslim girl who joins a provocative dance group. Netflix’s promotional material prompted a Change.org petition to halt the release of the film on Netflix.
“This movie/show is disgusting as it sexualizes an ELEVEN year old for the viewing pleasure of pedophiles and also negatively influences our children!” the organizer wrote. “There is no need for this kind of content in that age group, especially when sex trafficking and pedophilia are so rampant! There is no excuse, this is dangerous content!”
The petition has garnered over 50,000 signatures.
As Breitbart News’s John Nolte reported, Maïmouna Doucouré, the film’s director, claims the movie “is in fact a critique of the sexualization of children, specifically the Internet’s role in it.”
Nolte also observed Netflix’s update to the film’s description, which now describes the 11-year-old as rebelling against her “conservative family’s traditions.”
Worse still, Netflix originally promoted the movie in the same way you would soft-core pornography. Get this: “Amy, 11, becomes fascinate with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions.”
What type of animal wants to watch a movie about an 11-year-old — she’s eleven! — twerking and exploring her femininity?
Apparently, after an online uproar, Netflix changed the description to this — you’ll note how Netflix “owns” all us backwards “conservatives” who oppose child porn: “Eleven-year-old Amy starts to rebel against her conservative family’s traditions when she becomes fascinated with a free-spirited dance crew.”
The widespread backlash comes as Hollywood continues to face mounting accusations for their purported propensity for pedophilia.
Last month, left-wing model and wife of John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, claimed to have blocked over one million Twitter users after they accused her of being linked to the late-sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Additionally, the users pointed to several questionable social media posts from Teigen, including tweets that read, “seeing little girls fo the splits half naked is just…..I want to put myself in jail #toddlersandtiaras,” and “I just saw a baby that looked like a porn star. Like a trashy do-anything porn star Is this wrong to think?” She has since deleted over 60,000 tweets, denying any involvement with Epstein and dismissing the concerns surrounding her tweets.
In 2018, photos surfaced showing Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn attending a pedophilia-themed party. Disney reinstated Gunn’s employe after firing him over social media posts he made about child rape, the Holocaust, and AIDS.