Netflix’s upcoming film Cuties has found plenty of negative attention since its promotional campaign began. The film is intended to be something of a commentary on the United States entertainment industry, and how young girls are constantly being overly-sexualized by it. As a bit of an ironic result, however, the film has so far been promoted with overly-sexualized imagery of young girls. Thus the backlash, and now actress Tessa Thompson is attempting to defend Cuties against it.
Moviegoers may recognize Tessa Thompson for her work on films like Thor: Ragnarok and Men in Black: International. The actress, who praised the film’s director, insisted that haters are simply misinterpreting the film’s message. According to her, via Twitter:
“”#CUTIES is a beautiful film. It gutted me at the @sundancefest. It introduces a fresh voice at the helm. She’s a French Senegalese Black Woman mining her experiences. The film comments on the hyper-sexualization of preadolescent girls. Disappointed to see the current discourse.”
#CUTIES is a beautiful film. It gutted me at @sundancefest. It introduces a fresh voice at the helm. She’s a French Senegalese Black woman mining her experiences. The film comments on the hyper-sexualization of preadolescent girls. Disappointed to see the current discourse. 😞
— Tessa Thompson (@TessaThompson_x) August 20, 2020
Netflix didn’t make this film y’all.
— Tessa Thompson (@TessaThompson_x) August 20, 2020
Obviously this is when backlash against Tessa Thompson herself started.
https://twitter.com/agntjohnscn/status/1296565616489496580?s=20
https://twitter.com/gotosleepidiott/status/1296567135569928193?s=20
tessa ily but what
— MOVED! (@kth630) August 20, 2020
@TessaThompson_x so youre saying that the islamaphobic scenes and comments in the trailer arent in the movie? we’re obv mad because of how awful the trailer is
— reeda (@SAPPHICTAHANl) August 20, 2020
All respect I had for you just went out the window. The co founder of sundance was jailed for child sex crimes and they had to apparently interview over 600 young 11 year old girls for the part, it’s a disgusting to be putting on any TV, it’s things like this that encourage pedos
— Loki (@LokiElis) August 22, 2020
Her response was again to point out whether or not her haters had even seen the film.
Have you seen the film?
— Tessa Thompson (@TessaThompson_x) August 20, 2020
While that may be a valid point in arguing the film’s story, the controversial visuals in question are clearly on display in the film’s marketing. And these visuals happen to consist of overly-sexualized young girls with not a single hint of commentary against it. Clearly, it looks like Netflix’s marketing team might’ve been the ones that haven’t actually seen the movie. And now, due to the backlash, they’ve already updated the film’s images and description.
We're deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.
— Netflix (@netflix) August 20, 2020
With that said, although the film isn’t yet available on Netflix, the backlash against Cuties has already spawned a massive petition to see the movie removed from the streaming service. While Netflix will likely still release Cuties, it goes to show just how disgusted audiences are with their choice of marketing – and that they don’t care if Tessa Thompson or anyone else would like to defend it.