Cancel Culture Conclusion: Cuties

There are so many examples I could use to show white men claiming they were canceled, and women actually paying the price. 

I could write about Andrew Cuomo swearing not to bow to "cancel culture" as he is investigated for sexual harassment and cover-up (separately), and yet he is still in office, and nothing has changed for him yet. To date he has only faced criticism and questions, and yet, he feels victimized:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/03/andrew-cuomo-cancel-culture

Whereas Alexi McCammond stepped down from Teen Vogue after some tweets that foolishly threw in race:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56446635 

I could write about Jesse Singal -- "cancel culture" combatant extraordinaire -- hounding Julia Serano off of Twitter while he remains there:

http://www.juliaserano.com/av/JesseSingalStatement.pdf

We could draw lessons from the power imbalance that tends to prevail, whereas white privilege and male privilege -- things that give you a higher position in patriarchy -- tend to be the best protection, and how said privilege also tends to create the thinnest skin, where the complaints about any criticism or questioning will increase.

We might talk about how for a wealthy white man to actually be canceled seems to require at least 50 accusers, but only if at least one is well documented and still within the statute of limitations.

However, I think the most valuable topic will be to briefly focus on the movie Mignonnes, known in English as Cuties.

Maïmouna Doucouré is a screenwriter who came upon an inappropriate talent show one day, with "inappropriate" meaning that young girls were acting too sexy for their age, a common thing to see. Drawing from that and her own experiences she wrote a film about a young Senegalese immigrant to France who desperately wants to fit in with the girls at school, and who is angry at how her father's second marriage is hurting her mother. Amy is given a fair amount of responsibility and a fair amount of unsupervised time, but she does not have anyone trying to understand her or explain things to her.

And she does take part in an inappropriate talent show number, making some pretty bad choices along the way.

It would be very easy to get the telling wrong, where the sexuality of the girls is enjoyable to the audience, but it is really very well done. What the camera shows and does not show leaves you perfectly understanding what the girls are trying to do, but not lingering on it or glorifying it. In addition, you are constantly aware of their immaturity, and their lack of knowledge, and reminded of how hard navigating adolescence is. You can see why Amy finds the dancing liberating, while wishing she would find some other way. 

You also know this path is not going to lead her to happiness, because the film starts with a flash forward of Amy crying at the talent show.

It seems like something that could be a good topic of discussion, especially for parents and teachers of teenagers. It was well-received in France, and won an award at Sundance.

And it got death threats for Doucouré, and petitions to Netflix to pull it, and campaigns for people to cancel Netflix.

That was largely based on a misunderstanding, and Netflix changing the promotional materials in a bad way, but QAnon fanned the flames, and the boycott was popular with church members.

I remember seeing one friend righteously indignant about it. I tried to rein her in, but she was just more determined to cancel Netflix, because how dare they? 

There are ways in which this film made an easy target. It is about how young girls can easily fall prey to sexualization that they don't understand, and how they need better options than a choice between simple obedience to parents and husbands versus objectifying themselves to attract men. There are people who are against that level of conscious choice for women, and especially young women, so yes, the film is the villain, not society, and we can safely excoriate the maker of the film.

It is even more desirable to direct hate against her, because she is a woman, and a child of immigrants, and Black. She is also Muslim, and while we criticize their enforced modesty, we will also shame girls for showing too much leg or shoulder or neck; we win because our young women are allowed to show their hair.

And because this was Doucouré's first film, this can really set back her career, but successful careers are for men, and maybe occasionally white women.

There really was a full-blown attempt to cancel Doucouré, and Mormons helped. No one seems to have thought about mentioning the First Amendment in the same way in which they would for John Schnatter using the N-word.

Getting back to Alexi McCammond, it would be easy to defend and minimize her tweets, compared to other things that have happened. That isn't really right, but when there are credible accusations that Trump raped a 13 year old girl ignored, but the film where girls feel sexy and like it's a good thing while twerking is the real problem... what is the thought process there?

And that is why it was worth spending a few weeks on "cancel culture" if we are going to talk about fighting white supremacy. Repeating the phrase is more likely to be used as a way of not merely deflecting criticism, but also enforcing white supremacy. The damage will be done to others.

We need to understand how that works, and that the current system is rotten at its core.