There Are No Girls on the Internet - Cuties Movie QAnon Controversy Explains Our Current Moment

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

The moral panic around the film Cuties explains why so many right wing extremists are using the “groomer” “child predator” attack to smear their enemies todaySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. Welcome to another episode of Internet Hate Machine. I am so excited to be joined with my producer, Sophie. Sophie, thank you for being here. How are you? I'm well, Bridget. I am always happy to be here. How are you? I am doing well, and I am super excited to get into this topic because it's a topic that I, it's one of those things that I talk at my friends about and they're like, we get it. You have big feelings about this. So I'm excited to actually do a podcast about it. It's been a long time coming.

That's honestly my favorite type of thing is where you have like a dinner party or you're with your friends and you go on any random tango about something. And then you make it, you make it work. Exactly. I'm very guilty of that. Oh my God. So many things my friends are like, why don't you, don't do have anybody else who could talk to about this? Like, we get it. You're like, yeah, all the people that subscribe to listen to me talk, ever heard of a podcast? Cool, bro. So if you were on the internet at all in 2020, you probably remember the backlash against the film, cuties. It was all over social media and the internet in part because it kind of. kind of got glommed in with the whole Save the Children thing and the whole Cuban-on conspiracy thing that, as you all probably know, have really plagued our online discourse and are still with us today. They really haven't gone anywhere, even though they might be out of the headlines.

Yeah, I've done a whole couple of shows about that. Yeah, you know all about it, the ways that it can be so insidious. And the ways that things can really be taken out of context to become evidence of this grand conspiracy around Cuban on and child predators. So I really think the situation around the movie Quties is kind of a case study of all the different ways that online rhetoric can become weaponized because it has so many of the textbook hallmarks of bad actors hijacking a conversation. And I think it reveals a lot about how messed up our online discourse has gotten and the ways that it can be weaponized against marginalized people, to undermine and exploit the very thing that it is supposedly championing, in this case, protecting children. Something to keep in mind is that a common tactic of bad actors is to hijack a sensitive conversation, you know, one that takes a little bit of nuance or thoughtfulness to discuss properly

and create an uproar around it that conveniently aligns with some kind of preconceived political grievance. And that is exactly what happened with the movie cuties. I also think it's one of those things where, you know, I guess I would be willing to bet that the majority of people raising an issue about the film have not actually even sat down and watched it to know exactly what they're raising an objection over. Well, yeah. I mean, bad actors never do their research. Oh, never. And I think they rely on other people like not doing their research or like being a cat, like low information folks where it's like I don't, I've not seen the movie, but you're telling me that this movie is, you know, the work of a child predator. So I guess I'll believe that. You know, I think that they're counting on people doing that.

Do you remember that phase of Twitter when they were like, do you want to read the article before you share it? I will say, I remember when Twitter rolled that out. And it did get me a few times where I'm like, damn, I probably should read it, right? Like, even as somebody who makes content about mis and disinformation, I am not immune to, to sharing something quickly before I've really given it a read-through. And so it's a good reminder that we could all be a little bit better about the source material before commenting on the source material that we're responding to. Absolutely.

But that is exactly what that wrong do. I'm like, did you, did you read that? Do you want to read that before you share it? And it's like, you know, like, fair enough, robot. I'll get right on that. Thank you. Fair enough, robot. So the movie cuties is, I should say, very much in line with my own personal interests.

I am a movie person. I love movies. I love French cinema specifically and specifically French Senegalese cinema. I have a thing for, I am a sucker for any kind of coming of age film about girlhood. You know, your Crooklands, your fish tanks, you're 13. Love them all. If it's a movie about a young girl becoming, like figuring out girlhood. or like young adulthood I am in.

And I also grew up doing dance squads and like dance teams, which I have to say like growing up in the South, sometimes those dance squads were a little bit questionable. I can admit that. And so when QD's premiered, which is a movie about a young French Senegalese girl coming of age who was involved in dance, I was super, super excited to see it.

I saw it immediately. Like before it was on Netflix, I had already seen it. And so this is not meant to be like a review of the movie. there are some spoilers. I will try to warn folks beforehand if you're planning on watching Cutie's, which I think that you should because I do think it's a worthwhile movie.

But I want to get into the conversation about what exactly happened with the uproar and backlash around this film. Cudies is a French film by director Mimona du Couture. It tells the story of a coming-of-age story of Amy, a Muslim Senegalese 11-year-old in France.

It opened at the 2020 Sundance Festival to rave reviews, accolades and awards before being acquired by Netflix. The plot revolves around an 11-year-old girl named Amy. Amy's mom and aunt want her to be sort of chaste and modest and girlish, but she ends up meeting this group of cool girls who are all on a dance team together. So Amy finds herself kind of caught between these two worlds. The traditional chaste world represented by her mother and aunt and Islam,

and this cool, secular grown-up world represented by these cool girls on the dance team at her new school. So QD's explores these common themes that most coming-of-age films deal with, you know, family drama, feeling alienated from your family, wanting to fit in and be cool and grown up, your first period vying for likes on social media and sexuality. This was the director Ducey's first film, and she said that she saw a bunch of young girls dancing on stage in Paris, scantily clad and revealing clothing who were dancing in front of a crowd, and it got her curious about the way that society confronts and deals with the budding sexuality of girls. So she spent a year researching and interviewing preteen girls about their experiences and how they

felt in society, and that became the movie Cuties. She wrote a version of herself as an 11-year-old to be a kind of stand-in for the main character, Amy. The film premiered at Sundance in 2020 with zero controversy, until it was acquired by Netflix. Before Cuties was even released for, American streaming audiences on Netflix, Qudy's first generated controversy when Netflix put out a poster for the film. So something to keep in mind is that it is a textbook staple of things like conspiracy theories or malinformation where it will be based on an actual nugget of truth. And so what is absolutely true here is that Netflix made a very, very bad decision about the poster for the film

cuties. The poster that they released shows the girls who were all like 11 or 12 posing provocatively in their very skimpy dance team outfits. And honestly, like, that image is not even really representative of the entirety of what the film is about. And it needs to be said that the poster that Netflix used is very different from the one that was used when it first premiered at Sundance before being bought by Netflix. So Bridget has a screenshot of the two different film posters. I thought you were showing me two different movies. Like I thought they were two different films.

They look, they're not even, there's no correlation. Exactly, right? And so the French version that they used when the movie first came out on Sundance has these girls, they're shopping, they're like wearing age-appropriate regular clothes

and they're like, they look like little girls, right? Like, it's like an age-appropriate cover. One reads like fun coming of age And one reads like Dance moms, toddlers and tiaras Yes. And I think like The Netflix poster The girls who are quite young

Are in these provocative poses It's very dance moms Like as I said I mean For whatever it's worth Growing up doing Dance team and dance groups these are outfits that we would have worn.

Right. Like I'm not going to act like this is like beyond the pale for what little girls will sometimes wear in dance teams or pageants. Whether or on it's like good or bad or right or wrong, like that it's fairly common.

It's not something that is totally beyond the pale in our culture. No, absolutely not. But the freeze frame of the dance moves that I think they're doing, they're like their mid-move, the poses are very mature. is what I'll say.

Yeah, very mature. And so right away, people had the exact same response that you just had, and they seized on this film that wasn't even out yet because of this pretty gross poster that was not really representative of the film. I believe that had Netflix not made such a big error in how they promoted and marketed this movie, we wouldn't even be making this episode, I don't think. Like, I don't think that if they had used the original French movie that's like, girls coming of age, like totally normal, that we would even have seen the kind of controversy

that accompanied the film. So Netflix apologized for the poster and, importantly, to the filmmaker. And I actually have to give Netflix the tiniest bit of credit here amidst the backlash around the poster, Netflix made it clear that that poster was entirely their bad. You know, they could have made a big show of cutting ties with the filmmaker publicly and, like, blaming her. We've certainly seen brands do that before where they're just like, oh, controversy, better blame this black woman. But they didn't do that. I will give them that. Shout out, bare minimum.

Bare minimum, like way to like do a little. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sardonas, I'm probably saying that wrong. Ted's okay. Okay. Netflix co-Ceo Ted Sardonis was said to have personally called Duceret to apologize and to talk to her about, you know, potential new projects on Netflix that she could do. And the filmmaker said that she felt like that was genuine. Like she responded very gracefully and she was like,

I think that they genuinely felt bad and that they were giving me like a genuine apology. But the damage was already done. Yeah, too little too late. So Cuties is a film that I believe is trying to present like a complex portrait of the pressures that young girls feel around. facing their own kind of budding sexuality. But because of that poster,

the internet hate machine fueled by a combination of right-wing grifters, shitty elected officials, and Instagram-Qaeda influencers that target women, that whole thing that Doucere was trying to do was completely lost. And instead, the film was branded as Netflix's attempt to groom children,

normalized pedophilia, and in some cases said that the film was actually child sexual abuse, material or like child pornography. And people weren't just saying that Netflix was harming children. They blamed the filmmaker personally. Like if you Google the filmmaker's name, some of the first things that like auto-complete are like, did she go to jail?

Was she arrested? And I think that gives you a sense of how personalized this particular smear that she harmed children with this movie became. What's really sad is that this director had nothing to do with that postage. She told Deadline, I discovered the poster at the same time as the American public. I didn't understand what was going on. That was when I went and saw what the poster looked like. I received numerous attacks on my character from people who had not seen the film,

who thought I was actually making a film that was apologetic about hypersexualization of children. I received numerous death threats. And so, you know, I've seen this film. I actually enjoyed it, but whether or not you like this film, or whether or not you think it accomplishes its good. goals of exploring the dangers of the hypersexualization of children and girls, I think it's pretty clear what she was trying to do with this film. Maybe you think she didn't accomplish that. Maybe you think it didn't meet its goals. Fine. But like, to say that she was making this film to exploit

and harm girls is just not correct. No, it's just another example of like the worst people on the internet pointing the finger and putting blame on a black woman. Exactly. Like, I don't, I guess we'll never know, but I don't think had she been a white woman from Ohio, that there would have been the same level of scrutiny and controversy from this movie. Like, I think that something about her was inherently other and made it really easy for folks to jump on the bandwagon of, you know, attacking her for being somebody who puts children at risk. So she published a piece in the Washington Post about the film, and she writes, The stories that the girls that I spoke to that they shared with me were remarkably similar. They saw that the sexier woman is on Instagram or TikTok,

the more like she gets. They tried to imitate that sexuality in the beliefs that it would make them more popular. Spend an hour on social media and you'll see preteens, often in makeup, pouting their lips, shredding their stuff as if they were grown women. The problem, of course, is they are not grown women.

And they don't realize what they're doing. They construct their self-esteem based on social media likes and the number of followers they have. Some people have found certain scenes in my film uncomfortable to watch, but if one really listens to 11-year-old girls, their lives are uncomfortable. Here's the director talking about it for a segment called Why I Made Qudies from Netflix. Our girls see that the more a woman is overly sexualized on social media, the more she's successful.

And the children just imitate what they see, trying to achieve the same result without understand the meaning. And yeah, it's dangerous. Can I just say this woman is it? She's gorgeous. She's gorgeous. And like the she's just, oh, such a cool person. I'll get into this in the end, but luckily this did not like her career is going to be fine.

Like this is not, we have not heard the last of her. She's fantastic. So I think there is definitely a conversation to be had about whether or not the film accomplishes the goal of really. of really showing the pitfalls and dangers of sexualizing young girls. I love the film. I think it does a great job and think it hits close to home.

However, we didn't really get to have the conversation about the film, its merits, whether or not it achieves its goals. What actually happened instead is where it was like a Voltron of bad actors from various backgrounds coming together for one goal. You know, it was your typical right-wing grifters,

save the children influencers, and elected officials all coming together to say that this film was evidence of the elite, in quotes, grooming kids and supporting pedophilia. This then turned into the claim that the film itself was child pornography made by a French black pervert. Lifestyle influencer and Q&on conspiracy theorist Rebecca Fiper, or better known as Love Beck, who at the time had 160,000 Instagram followers before her account was deleted, posted, don't believe pedophilia is a rampant problem and don't believe the elite support it?

How the hell does a show like this make it to a major streaming network? Formerly, one of the biggest Q&on accounts on Instagram, a little Miss Patriot, posted that QD's proves that Netflix promotes pedophilia. And she posted this in like that kind of pretty pastel

Instagram-y kind of carousel grid post. And I have to say, as a side note, It really calls into question those Instagram accounts that will use like a pretty carousel grid post on Instagram to educate you. Because let's keep it real. Like anybody can get a canvas subscription and say whatever they want. Just because it's a pastel pretty Instagram carousel post doesn't mean they're actually saying something that is correct and true. So conspiracy theories started pushing the hashtag cancel cuties campaign telling their followers to boycott Netflix by pulling their subscriptions. and it seemed like it actually had an impact. Antenna, which is a data analytics firm that tracks

Netflix subscribers, reported a, quote, meaningful spike in the rate of people cutting subscriptions shortly after the hashtag canceled Netflix went viral. And another analytics firm, Yipit Data, also reported that in mid-September, the churn rate, which is the rate of people who cancel subscriptions in the United States rose materially as the result of the QDY's backlash. Days after the hashtag when viral, Yipit Data said that unsubs were running at nearly eight times the daily levels observed in August and reached a multi-year high. And I gotta say, like, even though Netflix publicly did stick by Doucere when this was all happening, there are reports that they suppressed the film on their own platform as a result of this controversy. According to an

interesting report by The Verge, Netflix removed cuties from its coming soon and popular searches categories, and that it was excluded from searches that include the words cute. This is actually probably a responsible tweak that they made to their algorithm. The Verge report also says that Netflix adjusted its algorithm so that search queries such as steamy or sexual movies did not surface any children's films, and that Netflix also made sure that problematic search terms such as Petto did not surface cuties because their algorithm actually takes into account behavioral data. So if you're somebody who was like, I want to watch a lot.

this movie that everyone is saying is like a pedophile movie, if you type in pedo, ordinarily it would have brought up the movie that everyone is typing in peto and then clicking cuties for, but that they tweaked their algorithm so that wasn't the case. So in that, in that instance, I actually feel like that might have been a responsible choice. But it does seem clear from this report, though, that Netflix did seek to suppress promotion and related search queries for cuties. And I just feel like it's pretty shitty for this first time. filmmaker that her debut film was suppressed on the platform that acquired it for reasons that were entirely not her fault, like a whole campaign around her film that she had nothing to do with.

And I think that her and this project seemed like they both personally took the fall for Netflix's bad marketing with that poster. And this completely disingenuous campaign built on a lot of lies and half-truth was about her and her film. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel. Help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

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I actually have a really hard time believing that anybody who was making claims about the film being, you know, exploitative to children, actually watched it all the way through because much of what is floating around the Internet about the film are either outright just lies or completely out of context. So I want to talk about what actually does go down in this movie versus how that was represented online. So there's going to be a spoiler here. So if you are planning on watching this movie and you don't want it, spoiled, there's a spoiler here. So social media accounts with pretty big followings posted like parents' warnings and parents' guides that got a lot of traction online that contain lies or that take some of the scenes out of context. For instance, one viral parents guide that I think Dinesh D'Souza reposted says the film contains nudity of a minor. And that is just not correct.

The only nudity in this film is a very brief scene of a bare breast. And it's the bare breast of someone who is meant to be an opposing dance team member as she's getting changed. Within the universe of the film, my sense is that the audience is meant to understand this particular woman whose bare breast is she. shown as a bit older. Like, it's not, it's not like she is meant to be a very young, like an obviously very young character. There's a scene where, like, someone is changing and they see part of her bare breast, and it's meant to be like a cool, older girl, not a child.

And the actor herself was 18 at the time the movie was filmed. And so it's just a lie. The actor whose bare breast is shown for a second in that movie, not only is she in the film meant to be older, she herself, the actor, is also of age. And so there is no child nudity in this film of any kind. I saw so many viral posts online suggesting otherwise. Another pretty obvious misrepresentation in the film is that in a parent's guide, they say there's this salacious scene in the film that an 11-year-old girl in tight leather pants has her pants pulled down and the camera zooms in on her butt. And so this is a really interesting one because

it really shows how bad actors will take this nugget of truth and completely explode it and take it out of context. What actually happened is my question because I just know they're out here full cap. Full cap. I can tell you. Full cap. Okay. So again, spoiler. So in the movie, Amy is shown as being less financially well off than the rest of her friends. And so there's a scene where she's trying to look older than she is by borrowing her friends, like, very cool leather pants. While she's wearing these pants, she gets into a fucking. Can I just say, like, it's so unbelievably normal? Totally.

Like, didn't you do that shit when you work in? Yeah. I mean, everyone. Everyone. It's so infuriating that that's what they're, okay. So in the movie, she gets into a fight at school, and her leather pants are accidentally yanked off. of her. And when the pants are yanked off of her, it exposes that she's wearing underneath these cool leather pants. She's wearing these childish, ratty, oversized underpants that have, like, obvious signs of wear and tear. And so the scene is obviously meant to be embarrassing, right? It is not a sexy scene. It is clear. Like, she leaves the cafeteria in tears and, like, doesn't come to school the next day or whatever because she's so embarrassed. But that parent's guide would have you believe that it's meant to be like a sexy scene or a sensual scene.

Like Gucci takes down her leather pants. But it is a misrepresentation of a scene that actually does kind of occur in the movie, but it's clearly made the sound worse than it is. And that misrepresentation went completely viral, like big accounts posted it. And it got so much traction online. And I honestly think that here is like people who haven't seen the movie but are like, oh, well, I'm, you know, don't want to see children be exploited in film. Like, that's bad.

When you read the salacious misrepresentation, it makes it seem like there's got to be some truth to it. And, like, I can see why people shared that without, like, having seen the movie. But it totally takes the truth out of context to fit a wider agenda. Yeah, I mean, I got pants in the sixth grade. I was wearing some not great undies too. Not, not, I relate. Like, these are, again, these are just. just like fucking normal things in childhood that happen.

It's just, come on, people. Yeah. And I do think it speaks to like a larger discomfort that people have around coming of age stories for women and girls. Yeah. I think that people are really uncomfortable around that. And like these things, like there are things in the movie that ring so true to me. If you had gotten pants in elementary school or like middle school, someone saying like, oh, that was like a sexually charged moment.

You're like, actually, it was really embarrassing. Exactly. You're like, no, I was, come on, people. No, it was PE class. I was in the sixth grade. I was wearing the wrong day of the week underwear. And clearly, clearly still, still embarrassed by that part. Yeah, like, it's, there's another scene in the movie where she found.

a condom on the ground and she doesn't know what it is and she blows it up like a balloon and puts it under her shirt. Yeah. So normal. Describing that as like a sexually charged scene. Like I would argue that like that's actually the weird thing to be like, oh, little kids exploring these things they don't totally understand. Like that's normal. And showing that on screen is probably normal and good and fine. Adding some sort of nefarious intent to it to something that most little kids go.

go through, that I think it's a little bit fucked up. Yeah. So I think that a lot of the sharing of inaccurate content about QDs online really came from like low information folks who haven't seen the film but are interested in standing up against material that harms kids. Something about those posts is that they always make it seem like no reasonable person would not agree that this is exploitation of minors, right? And so they say like, obviously showing a child,

naked in a Netflix movie is not good. And most people would say like, oh, I agree, that's not good. But the fact of the matter is they didn't do that. And so they just traffic in these inaccurate or misconstrued out-of-contextextextapements when that just isn't the case. And in reality, Ducey says that a trained counselor was present on set during the filming in the movie and that the project was approved by the French government's child protection authorities and that the actors, they had their parents on set too.

And the film does contain a few scenes of young girls like twerking and dancing in skimpy outfits. Another spoiler, like the scene that probably generated the most conversation and controversy, and the one that is depicted on the poster, is the movie's big climactic ending. The girls have their big dance contest. They've been practicing for the whole film. And they get on stage and they do this very age inappropriate dance. They're grinding, they're twerking, and they're wearing their skimpy outfits. But the entire point of the film is the crowd that is watching them dance in the movie.

And I guess also us as the audience at home is horrified. The crowd is audibly booing. They're covering their kids' eyes so they can't see it. Some of them turn to leave and disgust. And it's clear that the girls do not have the maturity or the context to understand why the way they're dancing, like, isn't okay. and why it's not being well received by the audience they're dancing for. You know, the main character, Amy, when the audience has this negative reaction, she runs away crying. And at the end of the movie, she has clearly decided that this world of, like, dancing is not for her.

At the end of the movie, she's living a much more modest life and, like, playing age-appropriate games. And it's clear that, like, oh, I had this little interlude with dancing and it was not great for me. And now I'm not doing it anymore. And so it's interesting that people say that this movie, like, how can I put this? There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to be made about this film and the way that it handles girlhood sexuality. Like, I've seen criticisms that say that the dancing scenes with the girls are gratuitous. I've seen some arguments that seem to be suggesting that the film, which is pretty clearly making an argument against the sexualization of children, is actually attempting to do that by engaging in the very thing it is critiquing.

Like if you've seen the movie Kids, when a kids first came out, it was accused of the exact same thing, right? That like, oh, it's a movie that's supposed to be critiquing child drug use by showing child drug use. So this is like a well-worn film criticism. Those are all, you know, fair arguments, but they're very different than accusing this filmmaker of breaking the law and being a child pornographer, which is exactly what happened. And so cuties became this like very popular thing to bash online. I saw a few big name people standing up for the filmmaker, but I really recall there was a climate that this French black woman made this racy film involving children. And people just did not want to take the risk of wading into that controversy.

This is actually a tactic called a reputational smear where people make your personal brand so toxic that other people don't want to take it. any kind of risk and being associated with you. And I think Duceret being a black woman and also Senegalese and also French probably is part of why that kind of attack was so effective. Because I think when you're a black woman and you're like a visible, I just think it's different. People are going to be less likely to stick their neck out and defend you when you're being attacked in this like very, very inflammatory way.

And it's funny, I actually recall when this was all happening in 2020, being nervous about making a podcast episode about it. I was like, the climate is so, the climate was so like tense and, you know, against her. I was like, it wasn't a great time for most people. It absolutely was not a great time. And, you know, I think it really contributed to this climate of silence. where people who see what's going on and they see like, oh, this person is being hung out to dry are also afraid to speak up. I think that's part of the way that these attacks work.

And I recall a lot of bad actors making and spreading content based on lies and misrepresentations that made it seem like calling this movie a crime, calling this movie child pornography was reasonable even for folks who had not seen it for themselves. And it created the condition for a climate where elected officials were condemning this movie and also urging for the government to take action against it. Here's a brief roundup of all the different electives that came out against this movie.

U.S. Senator Mike Lee sent a letter directly to Netflix's CEO, Read Hastings, asking for, quote, an explanation on Hastings's views as to whether or not the potential exploitation of minors in the film constitutes criminal behavior. Uh, cool, Mr. Anti-Democracy himself, Mike Lee. Got it. Cool, cool. Who's next? Failed presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. Ah, yes. Oh, Tulsi. I could, I would love to never think about her again. I know. Me too. She explicitly called the movie, quote, child porn and said that it would wet the appetite of pedophiles and help fueled the child sex trafficking trade. Oh, girl.

Come on. Yeah, like, come on. Jesus Christ. Ted Cruz. Oh, there he is. Knew he was coming. You knew he was coming. He sent a letter to the Department of Justice to, quote, investigate whether Netflix, its executive or the filmmakers violated any federal laws against the production and distribution of child pornography.

Tom Cotton and Representative Jim Banks also called for the DOJ to take legal action against Netflix. Cotton explicitly accused. Netflix-induced array of a crime saying, quote, there's no excuse for the sexualization of children and Netflix's decision to promote the film cuties is disgusting at best and a serious crime at worst.

None of these people watch the movie. Continue. Oh, absolutely fucking... You think fucking Ted Cruz is sitting through a two-hour movie about fucking French Senegalese girlhood? Absolutely not. He was probably on a plane to Cancun.

Representatives Ken Buck and Andy Biggs of Arizona. called for the DOJ to investigate. And the state attorneys general, by the way, I didn't know that the pluralization of attorney general is attorneys general. So that is, it's going to, it sounds incorrect, but it is correct. The state attorney's, I was like, good you know, noted, um, cool. Yeah, if you ever have to pluralize attorney general, it's attorney general.

State attorneys general. State attorney. I don't like it. Very ghoulish. Continue. It sounds, it sounds off. I'm like, I support you. I don't like it.

I don't like it. But the Attorney's General of Ohio, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas also asked for Netflix to remove the film. Also, isn't it funny how nobody talked about like free speech, cancel culture, these things that people on the right are supposed to be so aggrieved by didn't even come up. Government officials asking for Netflix to take down a film didn't need free speech didn't even, free speech who? We don't know her. It didn't even come up. in truly incredible what they what they think is important exactly so like you said i would be willing to bet my entire life savings that that whole list that i read of elected officials responding

did not watch the film not a single one bet my fucking life savings on it and eventually this you know, went from, I guess, like, grandstanding and puffery to a grand jury in Tyler, Texas, indicting Netflix on the charge of promoting lewd visual material depicting a child. The indictment claims that QD's holds no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. And what is wild is that this attempt of an indictment is still going on. In November, a federal judge issued an injunction that bled. locks that Texas prosecutor from bringing child pornography charges against Netflix for distributing the film. And just two days ago, December 5th, the prosecutor, Tyler County District Attorney

Lucas Babin, filed a notice indicating that he will appeal the ruling to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. And so this guy is like, no, I'm not dropping this. I am going to continue to pursue pursue charges against this film. And what's interesting to me is that most of the elected officials who, you know, had a problem with this film and tried to pursue the Department of Justice to look into it, they've mostly all dropped this, right? Like, and I, part of me wonders, why is it that someone like Ted Cruz can be so loud and vocal about attacking a film that I bet he hasn't seen.

But then it can just be quietly dropped, right? Like, I think it's a mark against the way that, like, right-wing elected officials use these cultural flashpoints as, like, little stunts where they want to, like, speak up about them and then they just drop it. Like, I would be curious to know, like, do you still think that this movie is child pornography? Do you still think the DOJ should investigate?

Do you still believe that was an effective use? of your time in terms of, you know, your duty to your, the people that got you in office. Like, the way that people are able to. No, I'm confident in saying they forgot they tweeted about it and have moved on to bullying some other marginalized group of people. Yeah, I would be, I would totally agree. And the way that they're able to evoke these things loudly and just move on doesn't sit right with me because there's real people on the other end of them. Like, Duce-Rae is a real person with a real career that she's trying to to build that they can just

evoke her name and her work misrepresented and lie about it and vocally accuse her of a crime and then just move on really does not sit right with me. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert

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Something that I think is kind of interesting here is like, you might be thinking, why would all of these right-wing shitheads be interested in attacking Netflix and this kind of obscure French film? And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that culture is by and large seen as the domain of the left. And so these right-wing extremists,

they have to attack purveyors of culture, right? These attacks are highly politically charged. So on Tucker Carlson segment about the film and the controversy around it, first, he framed it as an attack attack on what he calls, quote, the media elite. Listen to this. I'll begin this segment with a warning something we never do, but the footage we're about to show you comes from a film that was released yesterday on the streaming service, Netflix.

It's called cuties. We've edited it to obscure the most sexual parts because we have no choice, but it's still over the top and disturbing. As you watch it, remember that our media class, the gatekeepers of entertainment have no problem with it. In fact, they love it, a sure sign the civilization is in trouble. The New Yorker magazine, which after almost 100 years has become truly a garbage publication, unfortunately, called this film, quote,

extraordinary and said that only evangelicals don't like it. The Telegraph newspaper said it's an important film, quote, in an age terrified of child sexuality. Late Rome, for real. We're not going to show you a portion of what... Okay, you can stop it there. So it's interesting how Tucker Carlson

frames this film, the controversy around it as an attack on the New Yorker, the media elite, the telegraph, right? So weird. It's so weird. I think it really reveals how these attacks are just kind of proxy wars for this larger culture wars, highly politicized thing that they're trying to wage here. And it doesn't matter that a first-time filmmaker gets sort of like caught in the crossfire.

Again, here's later into that segment, here's how his guest talks about the people that she says are, quote, staying silent and allowing this film to exploit children. And yet curiously silent, Tucker, are the Obamas, is Susan Rice, who's involved also, she's on their Netflix board, Obama is, the deal with Harry and Megan, Harry of England and Megan Marple. they've got like an over reportedly a $100 million deal with Netflix a word from any of these people could stop this in its tracks and they should say something

Okay you can stop it there Can I just say that in a court of law Fox won a lawsuit by saying that they couldn't they couldn't imagine anybody to take Tucker Carlson seriously as an actual news person because clearly he is doing a character

that that that first of all second of all yeah these people are such fucking ghouls none of you watch the movie um all of you are just ridiculous yeah let's let's ask harry and megan it's like any chance to to pick on megan markle um cool um exactly like the way that they effectively like pull make this an attack on megan markle they're like oh my god another black person i can point the finger at um Oh, cool. Like, let's take, let's take the opportunity to blame them for a movie we have not seen. Exactly. And so, yeah, they use this film to take aim at the Obamas. The Obamas at the time had a high-profile deal with Netflix to produce documentaries. Fox News's Rachel Campos Duffy wrote in a piece for the federalists called Michelle Obama is complicit in Netflix child porn film Cudies. She writes, quote, at a time in the left has declared that silence is violence.

violence, Michelle Obama's silence on the Netflix's controversial movie cuties has not gone unnoticed. And again, it's such a disingenuous way to use this film to attack people that they clearly already have a pre-established grievance against. And so it's interesting how culture becomes a stand-in for these political grievances that clearly it's like they're barely able to mask it when they talk about it. It's embarrassing for them. It should be embarrassing. And I guess all of this is to say that, like,

the sad part to me about this is the way that bad actors are so good at, you know, a good part of it is that, like, it all comes back to this grain of truth. And the reality is that we actually do live in a world where far too many young people are suffering. survivors and victims of sexual abuse and violence and things like grooming. And we don't have a society that offers those folks a ton of support. And bad actors, they seize on this heartbreaking reality.

And in lieu of support, they offer dangerous conspiracy theories and the smearing of regular people as predators and threats to children. And my real question is like, because all of those elected officials were too busy drumming up these attacks on the movie Qudies, that was tough. not spent actually scrutinizing the online platforms that we know are actual purveyors of child sexual abuse material platforms like Facebook. Facebook is the number one platform responsible for sexually explicit material involving the abuse of children. That's just a fact. And so isn't it interesting that all these elected officials came out against this movie, cuties, but that's time they could have been

actually speaking to what we know actually pose real threats to children. And I think turning something as important as protecting the survivors of childhood sexual abuse into just another way of scoring cheap political points is a symptom of the fact that our society has really has a problem. Like we're not talking about anything that can actually be of use to vulnerable people. We're only interested in partisan attacks and fucking grandstanding and stunts. And it makes me sick. And I think the same way that the grooming of children is like a real, very serious issue. But if you turn that into a way to attack LGBTQ people or drag queens or whatever, the people who are actually grooming kids, they can just go on

examine it. It's like, okay, well, please continue to say that drag queens are the threat to kids. And I'll just be over here continuing my business of actually endangering children. And so the reason that why this is such an important thing to me is that we have to figure out a way to have the real conversation and not allow extremists and bad actors and

grifters to distract us with the shiny object of this film is the threat to children when the real threat to threats to children go unexamined. 150% please stop worrying about movies you have not seen

that do not cover what you think they cover. Please stop worrying about drag queen reading story time at libraries. You dumb people. I cannot stand to you. I could go on a rant. I will not. Like, disastrous incompetence and the negligence to do their jobs is baffling and damaging

to so many people, specifically marginalized people. Exactly. I hate you all. I can't believe that you are allowed to decide things for anybody. Yeah. And I mean, this is like a tried and true thing that we see when it comes to disinformation and conspiracy theories. They just take all the air and the oxygen out of the room. And so we don't really have the space to have a real conversation about the actual threats to the people and to kids because so much room is taken out of the, like, when was the last time you saw an art? article about an actual threat to children. It's all, these days it's all completely made up threats, right? Yep.

And what's really scary to me is how baselessly accusing someone of being a child predator or a pedophile or a child pornographer or a groomer or a threat to children has made this real comeback as a solid way to attack somebody that you don't like, just like what happened to the filmmaker Doucerey. It is dangerous. It can lead to real-world violence. in fact, we know it already has. I would be remiss to not mention the fact that just last week, Elon Musk smeared

Yol Roth, Twitter's former head of trust in safety, who is gay, baselessly insinuating that he is a child predator. And of course, a few days later, CNN reported that Roth had to flee his home for his own safety. We should really be afraid that baselessly attacking anybody that you don't like as a child predator is now a go-to strategy for extremists. And so that's my big thing is like when we have a culture where made up threats based on conspiracy theories, lies and attacks on people's identity are able to take up a lot of room, it endangers us all because we're not able to make room for the conversation about how we keep people safe that we need to be having. And so yeah, this is my this is my plea to be better. We can't have that. Like maybe focus on the sex trafficking of indigenous girls.

Not on a movie that you haven't seen. Again, like I can't emphasize this enough. They have not seen the movie. And they have formed opinions off of some tweet. Like I said, do you want to read the article before you share it? Literally. This is exactly that. Exactly.

And like, I could talk all day about this. But like there are so many ways. that children and young people are being endangered and exploited in the United States. And if you actually gave a shit about that, there are things that you could do. Some of them are big systemic things, but some of them are like pretty easy to accomplish. We don't even have that conversation. And instead we're given a conversation about fucking nonsense. And so I would like to posit that we need to stop.

Like, we cannot allow for the nonsense to proliferate and take all the air out of the room. because that is exactly what they're counting on. People like Ted Cruz don't have actual solutions to offer people. All they have is stunts and grandstanding. And so I think the more that we can peel back the curtain and show that that's all they have to offer us, the better we all will be. I think that's where we end it. That's all I got. Sophie, thank you so much for being down to have this conversation with me.

I get a little ragey, but there is no one I'm rather. Because I too love a dinner party and I too love renting about things and then making it into a podcast. So I'm glad that we're on the same page here. Yes. If you would like me to come to your dinner party and scream about cuties, just let me know. I'm happy to. Yeah. And if you don't, what's wrong with you?

It's so interesting. Bridget, thank you so much for having me on. Where can people follow you? Well, you can follow me on Twitter at Bridget Marie. Yeah, I'm still there tweeting away. You can follow me on Instagram at Bridgett Marie in D.C. And as always, check out the whole slate of Cool Zone Media shows because they're fucking awesome and you should be listening. I have no bias there. And I completely agree. I also think that they are wonderful.

Thank you so much for having me on the show that I produce. We'll be back. Probably with some kind of a bonus thing or another episode. Just look out for it. You're subscribed and if you're not, why? is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, check out our website, coolzone media.com, or find us on the IHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel

help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches and Olympic champions,

about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the. entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can, like, I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Why are we all so obsessed with romance? On the radio 831 podcast, join us, Sanjana Basker and Tyler McCall, as we unpack all the trending tropes, fuzzy adaptations, book talk drama, and celebrity love stories with hot takes and sharp guests. Each episode digs into what these stories reveal about desire, fantasy, identity, and how we love now.

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