#Netflix stepped on a landmine with botched ‘Cuties’ marketing campaign

Netflix is catching some serious flak on social media today around their upcoming original film Cuties — most of which likely could have been avoided.

Cuties, a film from French-Senegalese director Maïmouna Doucouré, made its debut in January at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Decider was there in Park City for the screening, and our Senior Film Reporter Anna Menta filed a review of Cuties, calling it a “coming-of-age film that will speak volumes to anyone who has lived through the agonizingly confusing time that is girlhood.”

Earlier this week, Netflix announced the premiere date of Cuties (September 9) and released the trailer for the film, which immediately set off a firestorm of criticism from hordes of angry keyboard warriors —most of whom, we assume, have yet to actually see the movie— who found some fresh ammunition for the culture wars. The first part of the problem arose from the language that Netflix used to describe the film on their official movie page, as well as YouTube. That language read:

Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions.

Ever since Miley Cyrus set the world aflame in 2013 by bringing the twerking dance craze into the mainstream — putting “cultural appropriation” directly into the crosshairs of the outrage economy on both sides of the political spectrum — the word “twerking” has been a loaded term. Combining that term with the precocious age of the film’s primary protagonist, an 11-year-old girl, left the rabid (and scarily thriving) QAnon community foaming at the mouth; it was the cultural equivalent of throwing red meat to Joe Exotic’s menagerie of underfed tigers. The movie’s TV-MA rating further incited Twitter users to accuse Netflix of making “child porn,” of being run “by a bunch of pedophiles,” and much worse. (We don’t even want to imagine what’s being said on Parlor.)

Presumably realizing that they were under fire, Netflix tried to compensate by quietly changing the film’s description to something more sanguine:

Amy, 11 years old, tries to escape family dysfunction by joining a free-spirited dance clique named “Cuties,” as they build their self confidence through dance.

This, as you might guess, only exacerbated the issue. A Netflix spokesperson told Metro.co.uk that the language had been changed because “this was not an accurate representation of the film so the image and description has been updated,” but now this very vocal faction of Twitter jockeys —again, we should say, have almost definitely NOT SEEN THE MOVIE— now had “evidence” of a cover-up.

Making matters even worse, Netflix’s official YouTube channel currently has BOTH descriptions of the movie still lingering on their Cuties trailer page.

Making matters even WORSE, somehow, the official page for Cuties on Netflix is accompanied by a “More Like This” section powered by Netflix’s world-famous algorithm:

Yikes. Seeing the inclusion of 365 dni in this section, a movie Decider described as “the closest thing to porn on Netflix,” does NOT help Netflix’s case, either.

Nor does the film’s poster. On the left is the poster being used to promote the film for American audiences, and on the right is the French poster:

Double yikes on the spooky Sparkle Motion vibes that the American version is radiating. Netflix was forced to issue an apology earlier today for the poster you see on the left, which they have now pulled, telling Deadline that “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.”

This is not the first time that Netflix has skirted controversy when it comes to movies that sexualize underage characters and participants. Their Italian dramatic series Baby revolves around teen prostitutes and was denounced by the the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) for allegedly promoting underage sex trafficking, and their 2018 Belgian film Girl drew ire for its inclusion of a full frontal nude scene featuring a 15-year-old.

As a company whose mission is to produce and acquire content for a worldwide audience, these are the kinds of cultural landmines that Netflix will continue to trip on occasionally — particularly as they continue to release and market dozens upon dozens of new shows and movies across the globe each month. You don’t need to be a cultural anthropology major to understand the complex issues of gender and sexuality that arise as “content” gets consumed by global audiences with very different value systems and cultural mores, but Netflix certainly did not do themselves any favors with how they have bungled the marketing for this film’s release thus far.

Cuties will be released on Netflix on September 9, at which point you’ll be able to judge the way this film treated its subject matter for yourself.
Watch Cuties on Netflix on September 9