« Moral Order » [ Marianne likes to punctuate their articles with a nifty expression, that summarize their opinion of a matter, before getting their headlines and the article itself. ]
“Mignonnes” and Netflix : The Internationale of Puritanism is Unleashed
By Olivier De Bruyn
Published on the 9th of October, 2020.
The subject of many violent controversies in the USA, the streaming on Netflix of the movie « Cuties », by filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré continues to unleash passionate responses. The latest event to date: The announcement by the State of Texas of a legal procedure against the platform, which isn’t that provocative. A saddening state of affairs.
The controversy is certainly not at all « Mignonne » and it now takes place in the courtrooms...A quick summary : Last August, on the silver screens of Continental France, came out « Mignonnes », a movie made by Maïmouna Doucouré, which follows the adventures of a 11 years old preteen, Amy, who joins a young girls’ dance group that favors suggestive and lascivious coreographies, to seduce the entertainment industry.
Preceded by a flattering reputation and having received awards in major international film festivals – Jury’s award at the Sundance Festival, special mention in the Berlin Festival –, the movie, although it has awkwardnesses, gives a sensible account of the identity issues of a contemporary kid that is trapped by the contradictory demands of her Senegalese family. On the “societal” level, the films also strongly denounces the early sexualization of preteens and the commercialization of it.
“My characters are torn between between two female oppressions” explained the filmmaker last August. “The one that her mother inflicts upon herself by accepting polygamy and another, found while searching for a new freedom, in which she loses herself”
Nothing to get worked over, then, and the movie’s opening day in France goes without trouble or rows.
“An erotic interest for sex”
The same cannot be said outside of Continental France’s borders. The film had been bought by the plateform Netflix for international distribution – renamed “Cuties”, and had been promoted with a different poster and far more provocative than in France – causes dissension in the United States. In the most conservative fringes of the Republican side, “they” denounce without having seen a single frame, an “obscene” movie and “they” call upon the courts to investigate possible violations of the laws of child pornography ( Nothing less ) and to demand the withdrawal of Cuties from the platform. On the front lines of this puritan fight: the extremely reactionary senator from Texas: Ted Cruz.
This week, a sudden reversal happened, since we are learning that the platform has been indicted by a Grand Jury in Texas, Tyler County, to the east of Houston. According to the plantiff, Netflix has "knowingly promoted” images that would present “obscene exhibition” of minor genitals”, causing an “erotic interest for sex”, a crime that be punished by jail time in this conservative State. We are waiting for what will follow, given that no date of hearing has been fixed at the time we write these lines.
A not so provocative Netflix
A plot from the most retrograde Republicans against Netflix, this emblem of freedom of expression and of the right to be provocative? Reality is less black-and-white than that…
The platform, although it has streamed several documentaries made by the Obama couple, has never distinguished itself by its ideological commitment. Except in an involuntary way when, in 2019, Netflix was the target of controversy and accused of censorship for having pulled out of its catalog a few episodes of South Park, so as to not vex certain communities that could have felt “insulted” by said series. Or last June, when they had erased from their same catalog an episode from the sitcom Community that had the “misfortune” to show a white character disguised as a black person.
An intolerable “blackface” according to the new norms defended by all kinds of identitarians that don’t all belong to the side of the zealous Republicans, far from it.
In the kingdom of new correctness, Netflix also does not ever try to vest itself into the virtues of resistance. And if the platform today ends up on the defenders’ bench, it is only one of many consequences of the steamroller that is the new forms of puritanism, highly prized and defended by the most “hardcore” fans of Trump, a few weeks from the US’ presidential elections.
A phenomena which, furthermore, does not only affect the Unites States. Early september, “Mignonnes” has been forbidden from being broadcasted in Turkey, after a legal action from the Ministry of Family and Social Matters of Erdogan’s gouvernment, that judged that the movie risked “to expose children to abuse and compromise their psychological development. From the United States to Turkey, from new forms of correctness “boosted” by the electoral dates to the leaden weight of censorship, “Mignonnes” has found itself under the spotlights of the worst projectors of this era...Until the next episode, alas….
