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Netflix is catching some serious flak on social media today around their upcoming original film Cuties most of which likely could have been avoided.

Cuties, a film from French-Senegalese director Mamouna Doucour, made its debut in January at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Decider was there in Park City for the screening, and our Senior Film Reporter Anna Menta filed a review of Cuties, calling it a coming-of-age film that will speak volumes to anyone who has lived through the agonizingly confusing time that is girlhood.

Earlier this week, Netflix announced the premiere date of Cuties (September 9) and released the trailer for the film, which immediately set off a firestorm of criticism from hordes of angry keyboard warriors most of whom, we assume, have yet to actually see the movie who found some fresh ammunition for the culture wars. The first part of the problem arose from the language that Netflix used to describe the film on their official movie page, as well as YouTube. That language read:

Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her familys traditions.

Ever since Miley Cyrus set the world aflame in 2013 by bringing the twerking dance craze into the mainstream putting cultural appropriation directly into the crosshairs of the outrage economy on both sides of the political spectrum the word twerking has been a loaded term. Combining that term with the precocious age of the films primary protagonist, an 11-year-old girl, left the rabid (and scarily thriving) QAnon community foaming at the mouth; it was the cultural equivalent of throwing red meat to Joe Exotics menagerie of underfed tigers. The movies TV-MA rating further incited Twitter users to accuse Netflix of making child porn, of being run by a bunch of pedophiles, and much worse. (We dont even want to imagine whats being said on Parlor.)

Presumably realizing that they were under fire, Netflix tried to compensate by quietly changing the films description to something more sanguine:

Amy, 11 years old, tries to escape family dysfunction by joining a free-spirited dance clique named Cuties, as they build their self confidence through dance.

This, as you might guess, only exacerbated the issue. A Netflix spokesperson told Metro.co.uk that the language had been changed because this was not an accurate representation of the film so the image and description has been updated, but now this very vocal faction of Twitter jockeys again, we should say, have almost definitely NOT SEEN THE MOVIE now had evidence of a cover-up.

Making matters even worse, Netflixs official YouTube channel currently has BOTH descriptions of the movie still lingering on their Cuties trailer page.

Making matters even WORSE, somehow, the official page for Cuties on Netflix is accompanied by a More Like This section powered by Netflixs world-famous algorithm:

Yikes. Seeing the inclusion of 365 dni in this section, a movie Decider described as the closest thing to porn on Netflix, does NOT help Netflixs case, either.

Nor does the films poster. On the left is the poster being used to promote the film for American audiences, and on the right is the French poster:

Double yikes on the spooky Sparkle Motion vibes that the American version is radiating. Netflix was forced to issue an apology earlier today for the poster you see on the left, which they have now pulled, telling Deadline that Were deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which premiered at Sundance. Weve now updated the pictures and description.

This is not the first time that Netflix has skirted controversy when it comes to movies that sexualize underage characters and participants. Their Italian dramatic series Baby revolves around teen prostitutes and was denounced by the the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) for allegedly promoting underage sex trafficking, and their 2018 Belgian film Girl drew ire for its inclusion of a full frontal nude scene featuring a 15-year-old.

As a company whose mission is to produce and acquire content for a worldwide audience, these are the kinds of cultural landmines that Netflix will continue to trip on occasionally particularly as they continue to release and market dozens upon dozens of new shows and movies across the globe each month. You dont need to be a cultural anthropology major to understand the complex issues of gender and sexuality that arise as content gets consumed by global audiences with very different value systems and cultural mores, but Netflix certainly did not do themselves any favors with how they have bungled the marketing for this films release thus far.

Cuties will be released on Netflix on September 9, at which point youll be able to judge the way this film treated its subject matter for yourself.

Watch Cuties on Netflix on September 9

See the article here:
Netflix Stepped On A Landmine Of Controversy With Their Botched 'Cuties' Marketing Campaign - Decider

In 1934 the acting U.S. Secretary of Commerce released a 261-page report that would change the world. In it, statistical economist Simon Kuznets laid out the first estimate of what he called National Income and what many of us know today as Gross Domestic Product or GDP. Kuznets developed the metric in response to the Great Depressions unprecedented fall in economic activity. He hoped that it could help future governments assure their citizens of robust economic growth.

When World War II ended in 1945, Western countries turned to GDP as a way to show the superiority of capitalism over communism. Led by the United States, those that remained in the capitalist bloc were told that they would experience prosperity or rising GDP. This soon became the consensus view in Western politics.

Technocratic Democrats, like those that served under President Kennedy, attempted to come up with clever interventionist policies to boost GDP growth. During this period, dissenting free market economists led by Milton Friedman tried to shape a more laissez-faire narrative. They argued that less government intervention would lead to higher GDP growth. This would soon become the dominant economic narrative among Republicans. By the time Reagan was elected president in 1980, Democrats and Republicans had developed different approaches to economic policies. But both parties took it for granted that the goal was higher GDP growth.

In the interim, Western culture changed beyond recognition. Increasingly, the two sides of the political aisle began to clash over just about every issue, from abortion to the traditional family. Democrats and Republicans drifted further and further apart. Issue after issue became politicized as the culture wars heated up and the nation began to split into two groups. But Kuznetss GDP remained a shared metric. Economic growth would hold the nation together.

Recent years have seen criticism of GDP. The left notes that GDP abstracts from income distribution. Many on the left have also said that GDP may be a bad thing, not a good thing, as increasing GDP may lead to rising C02 emissions, which they believe produces climate change. On the right, many have started to notice that the breakdown of the family seems to accompany increasing GDP growth. A society geared toward production and consumption seems to prefer workers and consumers with no family ties and few personal and geographical commitments. Feminism has moved out of the radical fringes and into corporate boardrooms, where women are told to ignore family commitments and lean in.

Some of these critiques have something to them. Nevertheless, for better or for worse, we have centered our societies on commerce for almost a century. When we neglect GDP growth, the disruption is profound. People have been taught, in a sense, to order their lives toward GDP growthtoward production and consumption. When GDP falters, peoples lives go into a tailspin. We can see the results in the opioid epidemic in de-industrialized regions.

But the most striking thing about the lockdown policies enacted this year is the extent to which GDP has been ignored. At the time of writing, the U.S. economy is contracting at a rate not seen since the Great Depression. The result could well make the financial crisis of 2008-09 seem like a minor inconvenience. The lockdown policies appear to be at once destroying and reshaping the economy in profound ways. Extrapolating recent trends forward do not paint a rosy picture. We may be looking at a huge loss in wealth and permanent unemployment for many. Small businesses may become a thing of the past and those lucky enough to have jobs may be at the mercy of monopolies.

Yet as this happens, policymakers, economists, and financiers remain fixated on metrics related to COVID-19. We may be entering an era in which GDP falls by the wayside and no longer has pride of place in the eyes of politicians and technocrats. Now that we have voluntarily destroyed our economies, with almost no resistance from any quarter, there seems to be nothing to prevent politicians and technocrats from coming up with ever-new target metrics that will supposedly help us better society. Given the timbre of the political culture, these are likely to be highly politicized.

Only last year, most of the wacky schemes that entered political debate could be held in check by pointing out that they would massively damage the economys capacity to grow. People should not underestimate how much of a check this appeal to GDP growth placed on public policy. This check and balance now seems to have taken a backseat in the public policy debate. The gloves are off on highly partisan attempts at policy innovation.The lockdowns have reorganized the economy in a way that favors online shopping and the big tech monopolies, and basically destroys the high street and small service businesses. Now that we have allowed policymakers to experiment with such reorganization, it seems likely that they will continue to meddle. Soon we could be seeing our leaders set new cultural targets that massively disrupt normal economic activity. Since the focus on GDP has waned, as people lose their wealth, their jobs, and their livelihoods, policymakers may simply chalk this disruption up to collateral damage in pursuit of the new targets.

Perhaps it was time to re-examine our societies tendency to worship the GDP metric. But in doing so we needed to tread carefully, recognizing how successful targeting GDP has been in the past. GDP still needs a prominent seat at the public policy table. This seems unlikely to be the case in future. The lockdown policies have been so all-encompassing that it is not hard to imagine ambitious and nave technocrats cooking up schemes to foist on the public in the coming years. Add to this the destruction of the shared consensus around GDP growth, and what we see emerging is concerning indeed.

John William O'Sullivan writes from Dublin, Ireland.

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The End of the GDP Consensus? | John William O'Sullivan - First Things

Before earning her Ph.D, Dr. Leigh McKagen pondered what her research would look like. A Virginia Tech graduate twice over (in 2006 and 2009), Dr. McKagen was teaching at her alma mater and was mentally working herself into the right state of mind to go for the doctorate. Her problem was settling a subject for her dissertation from the world of culture, politics, history, and ethics.

One evening, after putting their daughter to bed, Dr. McKagens husband invited her to watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation with him. This was fortuitous, as she had been considering looking at American Science Fiction as a subject. Before she knew it, the long time science fiction fan had been sucked in by TNG, and soon Voyager, watching two and three shows a day logging every single episode over a year and a half.

She found Picard to be an amazing leader, but it was Janeway who really piqued her interest. She dove headfirst into the world of the U.S.S. Voyager and its adventures in the Delta Quadrant, and how those stories reflected a style of storytelling that can trace its roots from Gullivers Travels to Gunsmoke. Even without knowing it, Janeway and her crew were a part of an imperial saga, told by the Spanish, French, English, and yes, Americans, to justify conquest.

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In between teaching at Virginia Tech, raising her three-year-old, giving birth to a baby boy, and through the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. McKagen wrote her masterpiece, which looks at the cultural significance of Star Trek: Voyager, and how the show and its star, Kate Mulgrew, both pushed the boundaries of what had been done for a female characters in the role of leader within the boundaries of the genre of American Science Fiction.

StarTrek.com: Tell us about your project:

Dr. Leigh McKagen: My dissertation is a case study, essentially, of Star Trek: Voyager, and the various ways that European Imperialism and imperial ideologies and practices are written into the narrative. This happens in a number of ways, including the reliance on castaway and adventure narratives that serve to establish the right of the explorer in the way of American settler colonialism.

I explore the way that Voyager taps into the creation of the domestic space-home against the wilds of the frontier of the Delta Quadrant, as one of the many traditions of American imperialism. That was fundamental in the creation of an American empire and an American nation.

Then I ended the project with an exploration of ways that Voyager offers some moments of exception to these imperial narratives. The way to think about how the genre, Star Trek in particular, and American Science Fiction television more broadly, could move beyond that.

The overarching purpose of moving beyond these narratives is the crisis known as the Anthropocene the Climate Crisis of the 21st Century that was in large part caused by Western imperialism and capitalism. Im seeking a way to use this work as a way to not only diagnose the problem, but also see where change could come, or where change could happen within those dominant, and often unacknowledged narratives.

How did you become interested in using Star Trek for this huge project?

LM: It sort of happened almost by accident. In terms of general interest in the show, and then well speak academically, they are sort of two separate things. I actually did not watch a lot of Star Trek growing up unlike a lot of academics who work with Star Trek. So I think I come at it sort of from the perspective from writing about it, which puts me in an interesting position. I was familiar with it, and I had seen a few episodes. I knew the pop-culture significance of the series, but I hadnt really dug into Star Trek. I was very interested in popular culture as a teaching tool.

I started using a lot of science fiction and fantasy TV in my classes. I would show a Buffy the Vampire [Slayer] episode and we would talk about communication. I used those tools as a way to bridge the gap for my students between the academic stuff that they were reading and their real life.

So when I started thinking about a Ph.D. I sat down and talked with [the director of the academic program], and said I want to write a dissertation on science fiction, on science fiction television. I want to explore how this genre engages with America and American culture. This particular genre of American television engages with the story that we tell ourselves about what it means to be American.

And then my husband, Branden, said Hey, lets start watching Next Generation! I said sure. I had never really sat down and watched from start to finish. It sounded great.

It didnt take long of watching it for me, not only to get hooked as a science fiction fan, and also as someone who was working with the genre from an academic standpoint. My original ideas for the dissertation actually involved talking about and tracking 20 years worth of American television.

But my committee said this was really a big project. They encouraged me to cut it down and to pick just one show to work with. It was hard enough to juggle the 172 Voyager episodes, not to mention the many others.

Through all of this I still was not really sure exactly where I was going to engage with the genre, but I started reading more about imperialism and in particular, ways that imperialism is still a very much present and ongoing formation and player in not only the global order but also in our daily lives in ways that we often dont talk about or dont acknowledge. America has always pushed against the label of being an empire, even though we absolutely always have been, from the early days of settler colonialism.

I was very interested in how that started playing out in these narratives that we tell about the present, as science fiction does, but also about the future, which Star Trek, in particular, really tries to engage with.

Why did you focus on Voyager, and not TNG or Deep Space Nine?

LM: In large part, it was a practical decision in picking Voyager, because a lot less people talk about Voyager, which made it seem more manageable for me and also perhaps, more interesting. Everyone wants to talk about The Next Generation because its amazing.

Voyager is often a footnote in somebodys book. Im reading these books about the myth of Star Trek and even ones that were written in the late 90s and early 2000s, there are only two pages on Voyager. I still really dont know why people dont talk about it, but I did, and it was fun.

One of my committee members kept pushing me on [saying] youve got to think about what was going on in the 90s and why Voyager was doing these things and tackling these issues.

It is very important and interesting to look at the time period in which these shows are being made. I think that Deep Space Nine and Voyager really do reflect the deep uncertainty in the 90s, where we the government and the popular narrative was really trying to figure out what was going on. In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and in the wake of the Cold War and the rising Culture Wars, and I hit on this in a couple places trying to figure out what was really going on. To some degree, those shows are a reflection of that.

What were some episodes of Star Trek that got away from the imperialistic narrative?

LM: The Next Generation episode that did this best was Inner Light. Its one of everybodys favorites; it won a Hugo for very good reason and its a phenomenal episode because they lose. Because Picard just lives that life unable to save things; Picard as Kamin, he does not win and they do witness the natural destruction of the planet. Picard has to take that and live with those ideas.

Theres something to be said in studying and exploring those episodes, and Voyager plays with those in a couple of ways. Like Memorial and theres definitely potential there. I think its important to note that and I think that is why I really wanted to keep that last chapter but maybe thats not the point right now. Its important to engage in that, even though its a minor part or an afterthought of the project in some ways it might seem. But to note when something is going well or perhaps differently in completive ways and more could be done with that.

Why is Janeway so important?

LM: Theres a cover of the January 1995 Entertainment Weekly that has Janeway in uniform, which was out right before the series aired as the flagship show of this new network (the UPN). And the tag of the cover of the magazine says boldly going where only men have gone before. And I think that in a lot of ways, that was really important in the 90s. And it continued to be important to me, maybe as a female audience member, but certainly someone who was engaging with the show, even in my 30s, that this is such a male-dominated show up until the 90s.

Entertainment Weekly

While theres a lot of Janeway thats masculine, they at least wanted to engage with that, or straddle that kind of passionate captain in ways that not even Picard isnt quite able to be.

For me, I think that makes Janeway a more interesting study than someone like Picard or Sisko, who was great, and even Archer. Trying to watch through all these series, all the captains were unique in their own way and they have their own battles to fight, which make each series unique. But Janeway was in the position as being the only female captain, but being the only female captain in exile. She cant just go and get new crewmembers when something isnt going her way.

She cant just turn to the Federation for help not that Picard and others could do that either, but sometimes there were problems with communications or what have you. So shes very much the solo figure. [At the same time], shes just such a strong character and always so decisive and really smart. Theres definitely a lot to admire about Janeway.

What does it mean now that Michael Burnham an African American woman is the face of the Star Trek franchise?

LM: Its two fold: I think its amazing that we also had a second in command main character (Burnham) but we also had the captain (Georgiou). The captain and the second in command are both female and not white, and I think that those are great things.

I think that theres some very interesting things happening with Discovery, and I look forward to sitting down and watching that series a lot more carefully, and engaging with it as perhaps a follow-up to the things that were happening in the earlier series. In particular, in Voyager, a female-led show, going where no man has gone before.

What could Star Trek do to change the narrative in science fiction?

LM: Thats someplace that I definitely want to go with my research. The final chapter engages with some of the ways they could have done that. Then I think that if Western Science Fiction, and particularly American Science Fiction will have to move away from the classic western approach and shift to stories like AfroFuturism and other alternatives. Thats ultimately what Id like to see.

Some of the ideas from Ursula K. Le Guin, who was such an amazing science fiction author, and the ideas of thinking about stories that dont have to have a beginning, middle, and end. Where you dont have to triumph over something or return home. What would have happened if the Voyager story ended like it did with Oblivion did in that one episode. It would have been depressing, sure, but substantially more realistic in the long run.

In order to move beyond the hero-journey, which is very imperialistic, we must ditch the hero. If anybody could do it then I think it could be Star Trek and that would have a whole lot of power.

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Eric Pesola (he/him) lives in Virginia with his wife, children, shitzhu, and cats named Archer and Hoshi. The dog is not named after a Trek character. Hes on Twitter as @epesola .

See the original post here:
How Voyager, Janeway, and Star Trek Pushed Science Fiction into Bold New Directions - Star Trek

Nothing surprising has happened, Koppel continued. Nothing surprising is anticipated.

Surprise was an interesting metric for assessing value. Not significance. Not importance. Not expectation that reporters report. Just a demand for surprise, like a 7-year-old might make after giving a grudging kiss to Great Aunt Mary.

Its painful to think what Koppel and his viewers might have learned, the foreshadowing of foreshadowings, had he not grabbed his condenser mic and gone home. Would Koppel have been able to connect the language of the 1996 platform with the rhetoric of the 1992 Republican Party convention, a platform which now not only demanded full constitutional rights for the unborn, but denied them to the just-born? Could he have seen the significance of the platforms proposed constitutional amendment denying automatic citizenship to infants whose parents who are either not legally present or not long-term residents of this country? Could he have projected that far forward, and imagined implications for 2016 or 2020?

After all, it was in 1992 when the Republicans met in Houston and heard failed candidate and very successful influencer Pat Buchanan warn of the dangers that lay ahead in what was framed as his Culture Wars speech.

My friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are, cautioned the future Patron Saint of Hanging Chads. It is about what we believe and what we stand for as Americans.

There is a religious war going on in this country, " Buchanan continued. It is a cultural war this war is for the soul of America. And in that struggle for the soul of America, Clinton & Clinton are on the other side.

Its 1992, and Pat Buchanan has already painted an indelible bulls-eye on Hillary Clintons back. Its 1996, and the sound of silence is 15,000 credentialed media not following Ted Koppel out the door.

I get the need for pageantry, the need to distract from such grim messengers. I have seen my share of balloon drops. (Indeed, I was once caught in a blind corner in the Astrodome during the balloon drop when an overhead net of balloons got stuck, relentlessly dumping its entire load in one spot. When the high tide mark passed 5 feet with no end in sight, a woman from the Michigan delegation took a deep breath, dived into the balloons, and emerged moments later, waving her shoe victoriously over her head. She then proceeded to methodically puncture each balloon with a swift swack of her stiletto. Years before Romneycare, Mitts sister-in-law saved my life.)

And I get the need for excitement.

My first convention was Detroit in 1980. I was only 23, and by the time the Republican convention was gaveled into order, Ronald Reagan still hadnt picked his running mate. During pre-convention negotiations, an unorthodox proposal emerged: Former president Gerald Ford would join the ticket as Reagans vice president, but with unspecified expanded powers. Fords representatives in these negotiations reportedly included Henry Kissinger, who would become secretary of state in the co-presidents Cabinet. Rumors of the possible deal began to leak did I mention Henry Kissinger was involved? but in those pre-cell phone days, the best delegates and reporters could do was try to puzzle out the body language as Ford and Walter Cronkite settled down in the CBS skybox for a friendly chat.

In the end, of course, it was George H.W. Bush, but not before there were some spectacular multi-reporter pileups as people ran back and forth through the narrow corridor connecting Joe Louis Arena with the media workspace in Cobo Hall.

Conventional wisdom among the regulars reporters, campaign staff, and consultants who have inhabited the same bubble long before COVID is that this will be the year that the nominating conventions are finally finished off.

No business gets done at a national convention that couldnt be done remotely, Steve Grossman, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, told the Globe recently, a sure sign hes getting a bit socially distant from reality.

This has been a hard year. Social distancing has exposed the limitations of social networking. We need to gather. Four years from now, when the parties must select their nominees, there will still be much rebuilding to be done. To do that, people need to come together all the people who see a chance to be part of something bigger than themselves. That includes the protesters, the true believers, and the T-shirt vendors. The numbers crunchers and the no-free-lunchers. The retired and the dead tired. And of course that guy with the boot on his head.

Individuals without community are without substance, while communities without individuals are blind, observed the great 19th century philosopher Josiah Royce. It will be as true in 2024 as it is today.

Margaret Doris is a Boston-based writer.

See the article here:
The community of political conventions - The Boston Globe

Arp, too, saw the issue through the lens of Trump-era polarization. Theres something in the ethos or the zeitgeist of the country currently, in which people have decided theyre going to be on one side or another of some sort of, you know, great woke divide, Arp told me, adding: Anything thats patriotic is automatically evil in some peoples eyes. Its automatically aligned with some sort of ism or phobia, without any discussion of merits or actual history.

5

So what was the actual history? Like many other arguments in the Trump era, that question would soon boil over.

One of the first people it started to scald was Geoff Paddock, the other Democrat on the city council. At first he had little interest in the debate. Whereas Hines had vehemently objected to the Wayne Day resolution, Paddock had not spoken up during the meeting, and then he joined the majority who voted for it. In the moment, Paddock later told me, his only thought was that it would look bad for the city if its council spurned its namesake.

But a few days later, a retired pastor in Paddocks district, John Gardner, asked him for a copy of the resolutionwriting that from what he had heard, it appears to express the sentiments and work of a white nationalist, according to emails I obtained under a public records law.

Paddock, who also ran a nonprofit organization that developed a riverside park near downtown, passed on the request to the councils administrator, Megan Flohr, telling her he would try to convince the pastor that he was no white nationalist.

Theres no win on this one, Flohr wrote back. If it failed, you all would have gotten dragged for not supporting history. But passing it is bringing up these points. No win.

Yes, Paddock wrote. I knew that when it was introduced. Hopefully, we will get by this one.

Gardner later told me that he had been stewing about Wayne Day since first hearing about it, seeing it as a bully move that, in his view, seemed to reflect the same toxic racial animus behind 2017s Unite the Right rally by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia. But after receiving a copy of the resolution, Gardner decided to read a biography of Wayne.

What he learned in the book about Waynes actual life, he said, caused him to become even more enraged.

6

As I sorted through this debate myself by studying books and interviewing historians, it struck me how sanitized my childhood exposure to my hometowns past had been. In the period after Fort Wayne was built and before the natives were forced to leave, it could be an ugly place.

The government used the fort to distribute annual treaty payments it had promised the natives in exchange for giving up their lands. The money attracted white traders who sold them manufactured goods and liquor, turning annuity days into exploitative bacchanals, contemporaneous accounts show.

Beset by rising alcoholism and dependency on annuities, tribes in the region like the Miami declined, able neither to adapt to the new culture of private property and yeoman farming, as an aging Little Turtle urged, nor to preserve their way of life. Between annuity days, the traders encouraged the tribes to buy on credit, running up debts that their existing payments could not cover. The government leveraged this dynamic to continually push Miami leaders to sell ever more reservation land, and then to agree to the tribes eventual removal.

Read more:
When the Culture Wars Hit Fort Wayne - POLITICO