Netflix is apparently fighting controversy about a film on its platform by issuing copyright takedown requests against tweets that include negative commentary about the movie, according to a new report.
TorrentFreak reported today that Netflix has sent dozens of takedown requests to Twitter targeting specific posts that criticize the movie Cuties (Mignonnes), a French film written and directed by Maïmouna Doucouré and released in the United States on Netflix in September. While the tweets are still live (except where the original posters deleted them), the videos attached to the post now display messages reading, “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”
Why this movie?
Cuties is a coming-of-age drama about a Black girl in France on the cusp of adolescence. She rebels against her immigrant parents’ traditional culture, in which women remain quietly covered up at home, by going overboard in the opposite direction—taking to dance and social media to express a sexuality she is too young to understand the implications of and too new to Western culture to know how to frame it all. Doucouré won a directing award for the film at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in January.
There’s a discussion to be had about the actual film and to what degree it does or does not convey its messaging and themes. Here in the United States, however, the film’s marketing was instantly politicized before the film itself became available to watch.
Detractors took a look at the poster, which depicted a troupe of 11-year-old dancers in suggestive poses, and decried it as only a half-step away from child pornography. Republican politicians joined the fray, and a grand jury in Tyler County, Texas returned an indictment against Netflix and its CEO Reed Hastings on September 23, accusing them of “promotion of lewd visual material depicting a child.”
Netflix executives repeatedly disputed those claims. “Cuties is a social commentary against the sexualization of young children,” Netflix said after the indictment. “This charge is without merit and we stand by the film.”
A few days later, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at a virtual event, “It’s a little surprising in 2020 America that we’re having a discussion about censoring storytelling… It’s a film that is very misunderstood with some audiences, uniquely within the United States. The film speaks for itself. It’s a very personal coming-of-age film, it’s the director’s story, and the film has obviously played very well at Sundance without any of this controversy and played in theaters throughout Europe without any of this controversy.”
Drastic measures
Netflix’s takedown requests, which are still rolling in today, seem only to have targeted tweets that described the film negatively, although some more than others.
“IMAGINE A CHILD SEEING THIS #Cuties #Netflix #CancelNetflixCuties,” one message read. “WARNING CONTAINS EXPLICIT CONTENT,” another similar message said. “Go ahead and try to justify how this film is an appropriate representation of 11 year olds. I’ll wait. #CancelNetfilx.”
Some of the dozens of tweets Netflix issued DMCA claims against used clips from the actual movie, TorrentFreak reports, in which case Netflix’s claims are understandable. However, many of the tweets in question shared the film’s trailer, which is widely and publicly available on YouTube for anyone to view or share.
One person who shared the trailer told TorrentFreak that she didn’t do anything wrong in doing so. “Someone posted the trailer and I retweeted it and stated how I felt about the movie,” she said. “I believe people have the right to be upset about the movie. If people share the trailer and say ‘go watch it,’ it’s not a problem, but if someone disagrees with it, it’s a problem,” she added.
TorrentFreak notes that the cluster of claims is unusual for Netflix, which has sent roughly 300 DMCA claims to Twitter in the past month, half of which centered on tweets related to Cuties. Before Netflix started targeting Cuties tweets, most of the claims it sent were related to accounts known for distributing pirated content.
Ars asked Netflix for comment, and we’ll update if we hear back.
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1719528