“Cuties” is not the first film to cause an uproar with Netflix’s audiences. In 2018, The Parents Television Council, a media watchdog group, wrote to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and demanded the removal of the film “Desire” for “child-porn content.”
Netflix apparently never responded to the demand, and we have not been able to find evidence that it was removed.
The Argentinian film depicted a 9-year-old girl masturbating and experiencing an orgasm while watching a movie with another girl.
The film’s director, Diego Kaplan, defended the scene at the time by saying it was just acting. He blamed the audience for being offended.
Kaplan told IndieWire at the time:
“When we see a shark eating a woman on film, no one thinks the woman really died or that the shark was real. We work in a world of fiction; and, for me, before being a director comes being a father.”
“Of course this scene was filmed using a trick, which was that the girls were copying a cowboy scene from a film by John Ford. The girls never understood what they were doing, they were just copying what they were seeing on the screen. No adult interacted with the girls, other than the child acting coach. Everything was done under the careful surveillance of the girls’ mothers. Because I knew this scene might cause some controversy at some point, there is ‘Making Of’ footage of the filming of the entire scene.”
“Everything works inside the spectators’ heads, and how you think this scene was filmed will depend on your level of depravity.”
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