Well, hello everybody and welcome to the live cast. My name is Paul Feasy, and as always, I'm joined by Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_01Hello, Paul Feasy. I'm Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_03How are you doing with you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, doing really well, thank you. Here we are in our studio and uh it's all coming together nicely.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, back in the flesh now for the second week.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yep. And uh people just can't see. We'll have to cut in one of these days. We'll we'll show you what's on the other side. But actually, as of Friday, people will be able to see what's on the other side of the studio, which is our reset set. Yep. And uh they'll be able to see our Douglas Murray interview that I recorded this time last week. Hmm.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and you've done uh lots of other good ones, haven't you, as well? So we've you've spoken to John Lennox and John Lennox, Professor John Lennox.
SPEAKER_01John Lennox, Rupert Sheldrake of the Show. Professor Rupert Sheldrake, yes.
SPEAKER_03Catherine Burbelsing.
SPEAKER_01Profess no, actually Catherine Burbelsing, yes, as well. She was uh she was sparky. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I saw a uh I saw the clip you shared on Twitter that you shared a bit of that interview with her, and uh and that was uh uh already she's got herself quite worked up. Right. And I think she was talking in the clip about what we're talking about here today. Great segue, Paul, yeah. Professional. Yeah. Uh which is uh the the film that's currently on Netflix, Cutie's, uh, which has kind of caused some controversy. So it's not Netflix produced, is it? Netflix is uh kind of the platform for it. Um but if you've not heard of it, Netflix is a French film.
SPEAKER_01QT's is a French film. That's right. Netflix is a streaming platform with 192 million users.
SPEAKER_03That's right, that's right. Cutties is a French film. Um and uh basically it it is depicting the story uh of a young girl who um is torn between two cultures, kind of the her um the culture she's grown up in, of an Islamic family, um uh and also the kind of sexualized kind of secular secular culture uh of uh France and uh basically the reason it's come under a lot of fire is for its depiction of the sexualization of children. Right. Um and so i as is the way with social media, uh obviously it it's kind of blown up. Blown up, yeah, massively, huge kind of spread like wildfire, really. Um for a number of reasons, there's been a clip that's been circulating from the film um which shows kind of 11-year-old girls dancing in very sexual, uh very sexual manner, and then there was the promotional poster from Netflix itself, which uh had caused a lot of controversy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that was certainly the first time it came across my sort of feed. Yeah, same here. Um so it was probably probably maybe maybe about a month ago um uh that the the poster was first launched by Netflix. And uh we'll we'll have up on screen the difference between the French poster and the Netflix version. So it was a film produced in France uh by director Maimuna de Couré, and it was released at Sundance and won Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival. And uh on the left of your screens you'll be able to see Mignones, or however you pronounce that in in French, meaning cuties. And there you see this magical kind of coming of age drama, and you wonder what is it that these children are engaging in that is enabling them to run free in a in a kind of a lovely French kind of cobbled on a cobbled street in in Paris, and um they're they're liberated and they're happy, and um there's no hints there really of anything sexual. Uh and then on the right, you'll see the way that um Netflix decided to promote the film. Uh and that's really taken straight from the from the film, from the final scene of the film, and a very different image, and quite l quite rightly receiving uh a heck of a lot of pushback on that. And then um Netflix continued and and released the film on the 9th of September, and then yeah, the the clip that a lot of people have seen is uh the clip of this girl, all-girl dancing troupe of 11-year-olds who are basically aping the postures, the poses, the dance moves of uh rappers and those kind of highly sexualized um videos. And quite rightly again, um kind of garnered the disgust of social media sort of en masse. But something triggers in me, like w whenever there is a a large movement movement on social media, something in me says, Okay, looks looks pretty bad. Sure. Is there another take on this?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, I'm the same to be honest. And I I think the first I heard of it, I mean, you said it was about a month ago. I mean, I'm not sure I was aware of it even that long ago, to be honest. Um I think I saw in the last week or two, probably just the poster.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, and obviously it kind of s began to see a bit of controversy around that, and kind of saw the picture myself and just thought, oh my goodness, this is a bit kind of, you know, distasteful and whatnot. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um and when Net Netflix was um promoting it at that stage, before they'd released it, I think um I think the description used to be eleven-year-old Amy starts to rebel against her conservative family's traditions when she becomes fascinated with a twerking preteen dance group. Right. But now it's she's become fascinated with a free-spirited dance crew.
SPEAKER_03Um I think I think similar to you though, um I again you start to see it kind of trending on Twitter and the hashtags and whatnot. Um and my suspicion was as I as I read things, you know, people saying I'm thinking, oh, I am I imagine there's something else to this. You know, there must be another side to the story. Yeah. And my suspicion was that there's probably thousands of people tweeting about this who've who've just heard someone else tweet about it and have not really looked into it at all and thought about it.
SPEAKER_01Now, before we go any further, I have seen the film and I don't think it should have been made. Okay, let's let's let's I've not seen the film.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and um probably quite rightly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Sure, yeah. Yeah, I mean, because we talked about it, didn't we? We talked about we we felt it was something we wanted to talk about, and you know, we kind of discussed whether it was I said, Do you want to see it?
SPEAKER_01You basically said do I want to see it. Quite right.
SPEAKER_03I I looked at what some of you were saying and I thought it is a it's definitely a good topic of conversation, but given a few things people had said, I thought I'd I still are not sure I want to watch it. But yeah. Which feels bad because I'm definitely one of those people who feels like you've not even seen it and you're commenting on it. Like But I think that's okay.
SPEAKER_01I there's certainly a space for saying it should not there are some things that should not be seen, and you don't need to see it in order to have an opinion on it.
SPEAKER_03No, absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And maybe uh I think cuties could fall into that category. Um because before we you know, before it sounds like we're becoming apologists for cuties, I'm not an apologist for cuties, I've seen it. I I think um there are incredibly disturbing scenes in this film. I don't think it should have been made. I think it actually exploited the 11-year-old girls who are starring in the film. Yeah. Um and we will get to that. But is it important to figure out what the director was trying to do? I think the answer should be yes. Um and so let's let's have a look at a clip of um the director, what she says she was trying to do, where she was coming from. Um and I think that'll at least help us to have a rounded view, even even if you want to say, let's cancel cuties, let's cancel Netflix forever. Um, let's at least uh hear what Maimuna Dukuri says. Let's have a look.
SPEAKER_00Cutie's is uh the story of an 11-year-old little girl who is trying to find herself. She's navigating between two models of feminity. One represents her models, traditional origins, and the other one is a group of young girls called cuties. I had the idea of cuties when one day during a neighborhood gathering in Paris, a group of very young dancers came on the stage and they were dancing like what we are used to seeing in a video clip. And I was surprised because of their age. They were only 11 years old. So I decided to spend the next year and a half doing research. I met with hundreds of preteens who told me their story. I needed to know how they felt about their own feminity in today's society and how they dealt with their self-image at a time when social media is so important. How girls see that the more a woman is overly sexualized on social media, the more she is successful. And the children just imitate what they see, trying to achieve the same result without understanding the meaning. And yeah, it's dangerous. I recreate the little girl who I was at that age, uh, growing up in two cultures, is what gave me the strength and the values I have today. I can appreciate my double culture and live between my parents' one, which is Sonegalese, and my French Western one. And as a child, that question of how to become a woman was my obsession. I saw so many injustices around me that women were experiencing, and I kept all of that anger inside me. I was poorless when I was a child. Today I can use my voice, my heart to share my vision of feminity, my fight for women's freedom in society and in our minds as well. I put my heart into this film because this is my story. I believe that cinema and art in general can change the world. We are able to see oppression of women in other cultures. But my question is, isn't the objectification of women's body that we often see in our Western culture not another kind of oppression? My film Curies is a mural today's society. A mural sometimes difficult to look into and accept, but still so true. We can blame our children for what we value in our society. I hope that people can become 11 years old during an hour and a half of Curies in our whole.
SPEAKER_01So that side of things is one that's rarely aired on social media, isn't it? I mean that that that angle that it's actually trying to depict the horrors of the sexualization of preteens. Um that's not the view you generally hear when the hashtag just runs around social media.
SPEAKER_03No, not at all. So I think I think if you had just seen the social media reaction, um the way the way it's depicted on social media is that this is basically just a a piece of effectively child pornography that has been put onto the main a mainstream platform. I've there's very little of that kind of discussion around it about well what what where's this come from, or what's the director trying to do with this and so on.
SPEAKER_01For instance, the clip that is very disturbing, and you know, the clip alone should never have been made and is a reason for for you not to have made the film. Um not you personally, Paul, I know nothing to do with, quite rightly. But it it it is the reason it is one of the reasons why the film should not have been made. And yet that clip was cut, certainly the one that was going around social media was cut, right at the point where, okay, so the the girls are on stage and they're doing this highly sexualized dance, and actually the lead character, Amy, starts to recognize the horror of what she is a part of. She starts to hear the songs from her Senegalese youth, and the the the kind of the disjunction between this this life as a twerking tween and her conservative family up upbringing was just a cognitive dissonance that actually breaks her, she breaks down in tears, she runs off the stage, and actually she runs back home and basically pulls on a sweater, becomes uh a kind of a wholesome 11-year-old and jumps rope with the kids, you know, like in the in the you know in the street and regains her innocence again. And that that's kind of the end the end of the film. You would never get that idea from the from the clip that's you know circulated in social media.
SPEAKER_03The clip the clip itself was, I don't know, 30 seconds or something long, yeah, you know, whatever it was. Yeah. But of course, uh that just like the poster and I mean and that clip itself, it's they they've both been kind of ripped out of context. Yeah. So now again, that's not to say that it's it that justifies those things, because like yourself, you know, I think from what I understand, although there may have been some good intention behind it, it has, whether inadvertently or not, has done the thing it's trying to expose right. So therefore, you know, that's a that's a a a fail on its part. Um but you know, we do know that we or we should know the dangers of just seeing something ripped out of context and making an assumption about it, as we talked about with the uh you know, the Covington High kid. Um you know, my reaction to watching that video of the director is um there's a part of me that feels quite sorry for her and what what's kind of happened off the back of this because she clearly has uh uh she clearly had an intention, which was a good one, to expose something very dark in our society. And I mean she says a couple of powerful things in there, doesn't she, about um you know, we uh it's very easy for us to see oppression in other uh cultures. So I think she's probably referencing there, but particularly looking at Islam and and you know the kind of views there. Um but it's more difficult to see it in our own. And I think you know, and I think there is a you know, there's a case to be made that there there's a good thing in in making us look at our own culture, which is hypersexualized, um and for us to be able to see that in a way perhaps we haven't seen it before. You know, sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees, that kind of thing. Um I'm not s so whilst that is the good intention behind it, I'm not again just continually we need to keep reiterating, we're not saying we think this this cutie's film is a good thing, right? Or has been done in a way that is good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um shall I shall I read out the notes that I made? So I like I'm I'm kind of infamous in the office for watching everything on double speed, you know, and and people kind of make make fun of me for um and I I I thought I was over it when I listened to the book The Relentless Um The Relentless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. I listened to it on Audible and it was on double speed. Brilliant. Brilliant. And by the end of the introduction, I thought I probably better listen to this on normal speed, and I and so I, you know. Um but I've I've started listening to things faster now. Netflix actually has a feature where you can listen to things at one and a half speed. So it's yeah, I at least I at least got through cuties in one hour rather than one and a half hours. I made some notes along the way. Let me just read out some of the notes so that you don't have to watch this. Don't watch it. Um I've watched it so you don't have to. Um so it's it begins with Amy and she's going to the going to prayers at the mosque, and instantly you realize there's a segregation. You know, the women go upstairs, the men go downstairs. And then there's a woman teaching all the other women, saying, That's why we must be pious, because there will be many more women in hell than men, uh, which is just a very common Islamic teaching. Muhammad himself taught it. Um there will be many more women in hell than men. And um so that that's sort of setting the the stage for her conservative religious upbringing and the oppression of women that she feels in that background.
SPEAKER_03And now in any other in any other kind of film, let's let's say let's say a Western film, uh, you know, in a Hollywood film, you know, not French, um obviously French is Western, but um you're expecting the way this plays out here to be here's the oppressive regime, here religion is oppression, and now here's the liberation and freedom away from religion. That's kind of where I guess what you expect it to go in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And what she's trying to do, I mean obviously a French director and uh just a rampantly secular culture like France, in which the religion is secularity, lay cité, it's it's kind of enforced secularity. Um what she's wanting to do is say, hey, you know how oppressive that looks. I wonder if our secularized, sexualized preteen social media is itself oppressive. That's that's the interesting thing she's trying to do. And to the extent that she's trying to do that, that is that is a noble goal, I think.
SPEAKER_03And and particularly because I think I think she's right. Yeah. It absolutely is. You know, it's not just could it possibly be? It's like, well, it blatantly is oppressive. Yeah. Um but unfortunately, yeah. Again, which films.
SPEAKER_01So I mean, remember the Bruhaha over burkinies in France. You know, you you're not allowed to wear a burqa to the beach and and that that sort of thing. Um obviously the pushback at that point was, well, isn't the bikini itself oppressive to women? Sure. It might be you you might choose to put on the bikini for yourself, and yet hasn't the culture, you know, told you as a woman that this is the standard of beauty?
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_01And um you you too are being oppressed by the male gays in the West, just as you think that the the conservative Muslim is being oppressed by the male gays. So that there are interesting points to be made, and the director is definitely trying to make those points because coming out from the from the mosque, Amy uh goes into the laundry room in her apartment block, and she watches uh an 11-year-old girl who is just by herself having fun in the laundry room but dancing in a very seductive way. And then what I've written, and I've written this probably about ten times in my my notes, um the gaze of the camera exclamation mark.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Very disturbing. That's what I've written.
SPEAKER_03The gaze of the camera, very disturbing because So for those who might not be in with the lingo there, you're talking about Where's the camera camera is focusing? So it's not just showing the whole scene, but it's very much drawing attention to particular things going on.
SPEAKER_01Zooming in on an 11-year-old's butt, that's not cool. Yeah. Right? And that makes the entire audience zoom in on an eleven-year-old's butt. And so the gaze of the camera becomes the gaze of the audience. And so you you are being forced to see things through a certain lens. And, you know, it's been pointed out that, you know, Netflix has 192 million users. How many of them are pedophiles? Right? So, you know, to to what degree are they providing something that's, you know, hopefully most people watch QDs and go, ah, let's run a million miles from that. Out of 192 million users, how many people are going, thank you very much, I'll have some more of that, please?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Very disturbing. So the gaze of the camera. Um and so the the entire film is is kind of playing off against each other, and you and just as you see a scene of a conservative Muslim kind of practice, um, you know, you then see a scene of of kind of secularity and sexualization running amok. So you you've got the next scene um about um doing ablutions and and washing, and um, I think it's a mother who says, Let the water run, it washes your sins away. Um, and then the next scene you have um discussions of Instagram and putting filters on and porn and sexting one another. And so it just goes back um between the two things. What's interesting is very very often you see scenes in which the girls are having innocent fun. And and the director's very clearly wanting to show that these are 11-year-old girls who don't know the first thing about sex, actually. Who don't know why on earth, like why do why do the dancers in rap, you know, videos like suck their fingers in that particular. They're not sexual.
SPEAKER_03They're just mimicking.
SPEAKER_01They're just mimicking, and they would prefer to have fun with gummy bears and just you know dance in the streets and just just have fun. But then that that is then juxtaposed with they're watching these dance videos. Um and then they're starting to copy the dance videos. And so there's this dance troupe of 11-year-old girls, and they start practicing and they start aping the the uh the dance videos that they're seeing of of adults. And again, I've written gaze of the camera, um, because the camera is focusing itself on on things that the pedophile would look at. Okay, and that's not cool. Um so it it goes on, and um and and again one of the plot points is that the mother of Amy is um well the father of Amy is in Senegal picking up a second wife and bringing her home, and obviously the the mother is distraught at this, and you see kind of the the the way that polygamy is is so oppressive of women, and and that that theme is kind of brought to the fore. But then on the other on the other side, you you see ways in which Amy is like hypersexualized and and now she's trying to get in with the cool girls, she goes further than they go in their sexualization and tries to teach them to do routines that the other girls weren't, you know, content with to begin with. They become more sexualized. She has stolen the camera, uh stolen the phone from her cousin and starts her own Instagram account and starts uploading photographs that become ever more sexualized until she takes a crotch shot of herself and uploads that. Um and it it just, you know, in in the true style of the tragedy, it just heads down, down, down, down, down. Until you hit the pit. And where you where where you get to is um you know there's this really interesting scene where they gate crash a um a laser quest type place, you know, where you you shoot each other. Um and they're just having innocent 11-year-old girl fun. And then the security guard um says, Right, girls, I'm gonna call the police because you're not meant to be in here. And so they decide to do like an erotic dance for the security guards to kind of to get off the the charge. And the security guard kind of likes it. And you're kind of you're left, I think at that stage, feeling rightly icky and disgusted and and horrified, and especially, you know, you've got this overweight security guard sweating and liking the fact that 11-year-old girls are are doing this. And I think at that point, again, the the director is trying to draw attention not to this not to the not to the fact that the 11-year-olds are sexy because they're not, but to the fact that the security guard is disgusting. But then Amy, when her cousin discovers that she has stolen his camera, he wants to grab it back and she says, Please give me back the camera, I'll do a seductive dance for you. And again, I think that scene was done quite well in that you don't see very much of Amy. What you do see is the horrified cousin, who hopefully the the horrified cousin is actually a much more respectable man than the security guard was, and he's like, You're being ridiculous, you know, and he sort of runs in the other direction. I think that scene shows what QDs could have been if it was totally reshot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because I think there are ways of suggesting um the hypersexualization of 11-year-olds that do not require an 11-year-old actress to do that.
SPEAKER_03To do those things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because as you said, it's a really strange way of standing against sexualization of 11-year-olds to make 11-year-olds be sexualized. Really strange. And I think I think it's bad filmmaking as well. Um there there are ways of suggesting things off camera. There are ways of there are ways of misdirection and and um cutting away from what we all know is about to happen without having to zoom in on crotches. So it's it's bad filmmaking, and there are some scenes in the film that point in the direction of where it could have gone. Yeah. You know, if they just suggested at the at the hypersexualization. But it all heads towards the big train wreck of the final dance scene when uh they do their routine and they're humping the floor and doing like horrendous things. And then her conscience kind of kicks in, and the Senegalese songs start occurring to her. She breaks down, cries, runs away. And in the end, I don't know how she discovers her childhood innocence, because literally she kind of runs off stage, runs home, and like within 30 seconds, she's just jumping rope and smiling and happy, and she now she's back to being an 11-year-old kid. Suddenly she's found the middle way between the oppressiveness of the Muslim background and the and the sexualization of social media. We're not it doesn't explain in any way how she finds that that middle way. But that's the ending. That's the film. There you go. I've I've told you the film, you don't have to watch it. Don't watch it.
SPEAKER_03I think like the the the thing that's that I find interesting is that obviously people have reacted very strongly against it. Um and almost kind of saying like how an I don't understand how this can have come into our society almost. Right. Um and there's a bit of me that goes like I don't understand how you don't understand where this has come from because you know, you talk about the gaze of the camera focusing in on like butts or whatever, yeah. You know. But but i if you look like say any hip-hop video or whatever, or it doesn't have to be hip hop, it could be any genre of gener generally, um the camera will very deliberately do those things with adult women. Um and you know, you women who are seventeen year seven years older than that. Well exactly, that's the thing. So let's imagine you had a dance troupe of you know, you've got five girls, and let's imagine by some crazy coincidence, they all shared the same birthday. You know. And there they are one day, they're all seventeen, doing a dance routine like that.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03And we're like, this is children the worst of the worst. Disgusting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But the next day they're all eighteen. Yeah. And we go, oh, it's fine.
SPEAKER_01It's liberated.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they're liberated now, because they're look at these young women, yeah. Just, you know, empowered doing what they want to do. But and so there's this complete conflict of messages there, isn't there? Yeah. Um you can to me it seems very obvious why those things have crept in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And and the director has wanted to draw attention to exactly that thing. She's exactly wanted to draw attention to the fact that um eleven-year-olds already are sexualized in these ways. They they already are being, let's use a Christian word, discipled in the way of what it means to be a woman. And what it means to be a woman is to be Cardi B, you know, and s and singing a song. We we can't even we can't even say what the title of the song is. It's just come out W A P. Um but if if she is in any sense any kind of icon for any kind of girl, which she is, then she is discipling people in in that way. Where does this film come from?
SPEAKER_03And and people can say, can't they, oh, but you know, there's adults over there doing this, and that's not appropriate for children, and obviously that's true, but the reality is like adult culture bleeds down into children's culture. That's just the way it is. That's what they aspire to be. Yeah. They're they're looking. You know, I think she makes the director makes reference, doesn't she, to who do you look to, and you you look at women, you think who are the successful women? Well, it's the Cardi B's, it's the Megan Thee Stallions or whatever, you know, who are up in those videos. Yeah, you know, basically they're uh for the male gays. But I mean this is where it gets difficult though, doesn't it? Because the we look at we look at cutties and we go, this is completely wrong. And we know it's wrong. But yet when we look at the Cardi B's or whatever, there'll be a number of us who go, Well, this is definitely wrong. But there'll be other people going, well, you know, are they doing it for the male gays or is it because they are empowered and stuff? You know, women who are in pornography, are they being abused for the male gays, or are these women just embracing their sexuality and you know, they can do what they want with their bodies and they're mourning money and all this kind of stuff, you know, there's and the difficulty is when you start having those kind of conversations, it's very difficult to then start saying something is def definitely wrong because you can always find someone else who's gonna say, ah, but what about like that? Right. And so you've got no found there's no kind of moral foundation.
SPEAKER_01There's one. And it's such a flimsy one.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the consent.
SPEAKER_01Consent.
SPEAKER_03Consent. And and of course the the difficulty with consent. Which is good. Which is obviously a good thing. Yeah. So consent is great, and people will say, well, obviously the difference is the you know, these women over here are women who can consent, and these are minors who cannot consent or you know, have informed consent or whatever. Um But the difficulty is what what if you've got uh someone who's an adult who's eighteen, like who who's who's drunk? Um can they consent? Yeah. Um the the the casting couch in Hollywood. There's a power dynamic, right? Someone says yes to something, but are they only saying yes because someone else has a power over them to give them a job or or whatever?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And so consent by itself, what's consent is a good thing, by itself it's not enough.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And there are always power imbalances. Even even right back to the the raw fact that men have two to three times the upper body strength of a woman. There there is always that power imbalance in in sex and in the the sexes coming together. So to to say consent is the um moral value that we're gonna uphold in this is just so flimsy and it it just it just doesn't work in in so many different scenarios. The other thing that I kind of think of is um, as you said, a 17-year-old doing this dance, it's inappropriate a day later and she's 18 and suddenly it's it's legal. You know, I saw some statistics the other day that said um that the um the most popular tag or category of porn that was searched for on the most popular porn site um in the world was teen. Which, when you think about it for longer than 10 seconds, you're like, hang on, what what does that mean? Um because the there aren't too many legal years of teen, actually. You know, there's there's only a couple of legal years of teen, and there's a heck of a lot of illegal years of teen, and that's the number one thing. And what are we doing in a society in which everyone agrees that the thing that is the worst as regards sexual morality is actually the thing that we privately view the most? That's that's just shocking, isn't it? You know, within a prison, you know, who who comes bottom of the ladder in in terms of you know the honour among thieves? You know, the it's it's other inmates will beat up pedophiles because they are the bottom of the bottom, the worst of the worst. Um and yet, what is it what is it that even just on the legal sites we're looking for? We're we're looking for we're looking for those who are shading towards cuties, right? Where's this film come from? Like, I don't know where who's pushing this film on us? No, no, no. Yeah, we're asking for it. Exactly, exactly. We're totally asking for it. And I think the director was trying to make some important points that traditional conservative values might seem oppressive to you, but what about hypersexualized values? That is also oppressive, actually oppressive. And we're not used to thinking in in those kind of terms.
SPEAKER_03And let's say it it but it has that potential, therefore, within that to be a kind of almost like a uh an earth-shattering thing for someone, to to you know, because we we're all living in this society that's saturated by it, so to the point that you know, as I said earlier, you you don't see the forest for the trees almost. Um that stuff is so normalized that we we almost don't see it. So this kind of film has the potential to wake people up to something and for people to suddenly sit there and go, I can't believe I never really thought about this. Like it's so obvious, it's in front of my face. But as we said though, it could have done it in a way without having to exploit young girls in the process, you know. Right.
SPEAKER_01So Right. Do you do it as an animation? Do you do it do you think?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, or even like you say, e even if it was filmed, yeah, more suggested. You take like a horror film, right? Often the most effective things in horror films is what you don't see. Yeah. It's what you you know, things are suggested, yeah, and you fill in the gaps, and sometimes and maybe maybe that was a way of doing it. I mean, like you said, there was the scene with the cousin and a large part of it is like that. But or you know, like you say, maybe you could animate it or something. But so in a sense it's a real shame that something that deals with a a very serious issue has done it in a way that has kind of derailed its message so much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And as a sidebar, just on the issue of creativity, you know, to to quote the great Jeff Goldblum, just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done, right? We got we've got to get a Jurassic Park quote in. Absolutely. Um just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done. And that that that holds for all sorts of artwork that could be exploitative, you know. Like, wouldn't it be a cool piece of artwork to drop a nuclear bomb on the middle of London and then like film the blast, right? Like be interesting. Like, okay.
SPEAKER_03That's an extreme, but you know I think I saw someone else who said, like, um, you know, imagine you couldn't film a a film, like someone dying in a film without actually having to kill them. Right. You know, we would definitely, you know, like a war film. Yeah. You wanted to say war is wrong. Yeah. Um, but the only way you could do it was by actually filming war and killing people.
SPEAKER_01I used to think that was the case. You know. I I I used to think that people who died on camera were probably really dying, but they probably had a terminal illness and they just decided they'd go out in glory. So go out famous.
SPEAKER_03Um, they're saying no, if that was the case, you knew you would never do it. You wouldn't film those things, you know. Yeah. And they were saying that's the thing with with cutties, you know, you the way you've done it is actually to do the thing you've had. Yeah, you've made eleven-year-olds do it. And so actually it shouldn't have been made.
SPEAKER_01That's the kind of thing you'd said. And another critique, just while we're at it, um, is that that ending thing? Because we we want to we want to reach a kind of a finale in which we say no to polygamy and we say no to child brides, right? And we want to be able to say no to the hypersexualization of of preteens and teens probably. Um what is that third way? Is it is it just kind of learning a balance between the two? Like what will Amy now have to believe about herself, about her identity, about sex, about sexuality, about what it means to be a woman? What will she now have to believe in order to live this fulfilled life, you know, that that the film wants to give to her at the end? And I I suggest that she will have to reject her Islam and reject the the social media you know view of of sexuality and reject them quite heartily, you know. Because I I think it's true that um okay, in the Quran it does say that hell will be far more populated with women than with men. I I I don't think that's liberation for women. Like I I really don't. Um Muhammad himself took a bride when she was six, and they say he didn't consummate until she was nine, but she still had her teddy bears at that stage, which was a sign of you haven't yet menstruated. You're you know. Um and so, you know, the founder, the founder of your religion is is doing that. I I think you have to reject Islam in order to be um a liberated woman and to have uh a true view of sex and marriage. I also think you need to reject the sexual revolution that has unwoven what really needs to belong together. What needs to belong together is that sex belongs with marriage, and sex belongs with pregnancy, and pregnancy belongs with children, children belongs with family, and that together is a kind of a foundation for society. But what we've done with the sexual revolution is that sex no longer belongs with marriage, and so it's it's free-floating as long as you're consenting adults, you know. Sex no longer belongs with pregnancy because of the pill and contraception. Pregnancy no longer belongs with children because we've got abortion, so we we we stop the children after the pregnancy. And then children and families, well, they must take behindmost because it's our sexual liberation that's actually, you know, prime in all that and all that thing. And so what what do we have there? We have we have a society that's kind of cut adrift, and we need to weave those things back together, in which sex belongs with marriage and sex belongs with children and family, and build it up from the ground up. But you'll need to be converted. You won't just need to jump rope in the street with some friends, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it does it does seem very much like the ending of the film is she's gone from here to there, but you've not really seems like there's a s there's something here. Yeah. But you've just jumped over that. There is somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01There is a third way, and I just you know, and and one of the things is I I think the film does bring this out about um the the male domination in the Muslim society. So the the man is allowed to go off to Senegal and get his second wife and bring her back, and and his first wife has nothing to say to this to this matter. And so, yeah, there's male domination there. But there's also male domination in in the sense of here are women who have to prostitute themselves in order to get past the security guard, in order to, you know, like um there is a male gaze that they are living up to that is dominating. What I think happens when you when you come to Christianity is actually the men are the ones who primarily are limited, are restricted in their sexuality. You know, when when Jesus in Matthew 19 kind of lays out his vision for sex and marriage, he basically says, Yeah, one man, one woman, for life, there's no getting out of it. That's your lot.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_01And and what does red-blooded fisherman Peter say to that?
SPEAKER_03It's just like, well, surely, surely it's better not to do it then. Yeah, right. Better not to marry. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And Jesus is like, yeah, yeah. So you're you're taking the eunuch option. Good one. Good one, Peter. Like, I fully endorse the eunuch option, but those are your options. Actually, I'm not sure it's enough for that one either. He's like, no, those those are the two options. Like, literally, okay, you are with this one woman for the rest of your life, or you become a eunuch for the kingdom. Which is it? That those are the male options. There are not male options of let me go and get lots of women or let me just, you know, play the field. None of that. None of that. So I I think the I the idea that, you know, Christian marriage is patriarchal, um, certainly it erupted in the midst of patriarchal society, but nothing has ever like limited and restricted um male sins, male sexual sins, like like marriage, because it ties the man to his sexual choices and to the fruits of his sexual choices. It ties him to the woman, it ties him to his children. Full life, no getting out of it. And Peter's like, don't make that much. Yeah. And he's a look, he's a Jew from a con conservative culture.
SPEAKER_03And even he's in the conservative culture is going, oh, hang on.
SPEAKER_01And then like the only other thing Jesus says about sex and sexuality is in the Sermon on the Mount. And he's like, Yeah, outside of marriage, don't even think about it. Like He's like, Don't even look with lust on a woman. And he puts it, he he he commands that to the male. I mean, there are implications for females, not to lust. True. But the first person he addresses it to are other men. He's like, men, don't look at women like that. Don't even look at them like that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like, so if we're looking at what traditional religion does, and it's so oppressive to women and it limits them and it restricts them, um, wow. Look at look at what look at what Jesus does to men. And it's it is for the blessing and the flourishing of society. We've we've built a civilization on this view of sex and marriage, where men don't even think about sex unless it's that one woman who you're gonna give your entire life to and her children, and you're in you know, in covenant bonds and till death you do part. Like that, in one sense, gosh, that's limiting, isn't it? But in another sense, it is for the flourishing of mankind.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, liberating, that's yeah. Totally liberating liberation right there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. In disciplining your sexual desires, there is a liberation. Um in letting them run rampant, you get cuties. You know, that's the that's the that's the alternative. And and listen, you know, let's not let's not finish just on a note of lore. That's not to say that um, oh gosh, if you've fallen short of that, then you can never be a Christian. We all fall short of that, like massively every day. And this is why the true romance that the Bible's talking about is the way that Christ comes to us, even though we are sinners, even though we're failures, and he comes and he commits to us, and he gives himself to us, and he limits himself, if you like, to us in in a covenant bond and says, till death us do part and beyond. This is the kind of sort of marriage relationship, if you like. This is the kind of romance that actually saves us and sets us on our feet, and hopefully we can reflect it a bit in the world. But without that, where's the happily ever after?
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I don't know. So, I don't know. That's kind of uh that's my take on Cutie. Is there anything more to say about No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_03Um you know, I I I just hope that um I hope, you know, I I despite the that there are obviously serious issues with it, um I do hope that there can still be some good that comes out of it. You know, at least if it raises some discussion and makes people sit back and think, oh hang on, yeah. Um if it makes people think about the sexualization of children, you know, I've got I've got three I've got three daughters, you know, and the oldest one's eight and then six and then the youngest one's five months. But you know there's a sense in which you know you think, oh she's my oldest one, you know she's only eight. But you you know, I think what did I know by the time I was eight? You know, the things what do people talk about in school? I definitely had heard about sex well in year four. She's just going in, definitely remember that coming up at some point. So these things are gonna start to be there. You know, and I know people who've got children who are maybe a little bit older who have uh who are, you know, kind of teens, preteens, who have already got like Instagram accounts and you can kind of see some of them beginning that kind of selfie, you know, it's that just photos of yourself type thing, and I just keep looking at it thinking like, oh my goodness, this is gonna be such a difficult road to traverse because you can see how easily people can get just dragged into this world of what you know, what does it mean for me to be a young woman? I need to look like this and I need to act like this, and you know, I'm I'm eleven, I'm twelve, and I'm posting photos that reflect what these celebrities look like who are posting provocative photos, you know, and I just think, oh my goodness me, like what a nightmare like of this coming down the road.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, yeah, yeah. That's definitely what the director was trying to, you know, articulate. It's it's just a shame that she forced four girls to do what she says should not be done. Um great. Well, that's our take on cuties. I don't know what your take on cuties is. Let us know in the comments below. If you're not yet subscribed to us on YouTube, we are speaklife media there. We are speaklife uk everywhere else on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. And uh we'd love to hear your comments, so please do get in touch. Uh, you can go to speaklife.org.uk to get in touch with us via email. And if you want to support uh all that we do here at speaklife, you can go to speaklife.orgs.uk slash give. That's the one. That's the one. We're pros here. We're total pros. Um but do stay tuned on Friday. We've got Douglas Murray's interview coming out. It's one you won't want to miss, and that will kick start our reset uh going back to the beginning. And we hope that that uh really engages with this meaning crisis and points people back to Jesus. Thank you, Paul for Paul Feasy.
SPEAKER_03Thank you, Glenn. Been great as always.
SPEAKER_01All right, God bless. See you next time.
SPEAKER_03Okay, bye.