| JuliusHackebeil said: I watched the movie now and have some hot takes. 1) Pedophiles are gonna be pedophile no matter what. It is not some movies concern wether it gives those sick people material or not. In the case of "cuties" it surely did give material to them. But if it had not, those people could easily look for other material, like going to scools, buying magazines, following kids on instagram,... The pool of legal material is almost endless. I can only assume the pool of illigal and explicit material is also quite vast. So expanding this legal, endless pool by adding this movie really does nothing at all. 2) But what was it good for? Why are those scenes needed? To make a controversial point about western culture: The movie really makes two big points for me. The first is, that in many ways Islam is bad. And not just the radical variety. If you cannot possibly go against your husband and that husband can take wifes as he pleases, this can only mean strain on the family unit that mothers and children have the bear. In these ways patriarchy exists and needs to be abolished by careful and thourough integration. This point is easily taken by "westerners" like myself. The other big point was that the cuties are wrong and bad aswell. It is good if you feel comfortabel woth your body and sexuality but there is a "too early" and "too much" that often gets disregarded. It is not inherantly wrong to tell young girls to restrain themselves. And this was hard for me to swallow because I went in thinking that the controversy was blown out of proportions. Like, sure, let them dance around a bit. But it was not a bit. It was much. Soooo much. And it was soooo clear. In the end I felt sorry for them. And weirded out because I had to watch all of this. In this, my experiences were similar to the protagonists. Spoilers: she finaly got that what she does is wrong. Not only for her, but for anyone her age. Her fashion choices in the end reveal where the movie stands: she does not take the dress for the wedding. That is a no to Islam, when it is lived like that. And she does not dress like a slut (like the rest of the cuties). That is a no to blind tolerance of "western" "values" (-for lack of a better word). In the end she plays jump rope in jeans with other kids and looks perfectly normal. A good ending and a good movie. I really thought the message was going to be that islam is all bad (which it obviously is not and it was not shown that way) and she has to free herself through the help of her little friends. But they were quite crazy, out of control, violent, overly sexual and a bad influence. The movie ended up being much more nuanced and I liked it much more than I thought. |
I'm stuck in a dilemma now. I'm not one to watch these sorts of films because I feel there are better ways to portray such messages and I don't want to support the creators by watching them. But at the same time, I feel they might not have represented my religion fairly and have protracted it wrongly to people and they might leave the film thinking some wrong things about it so I need to watch it and find out what it says so I can point out the correct cultural criticisms and the wrongful representations and attributions. I don't want people to think the wrong things about my religion nor confuse culture with religion or just straight up movie dramatization and fiction.
Like people going Hmm Hmm this is Islam when it might not be.
Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also
