(ANALYSIS) Netflix’s latest attempt to boost its streaming platform with diverse, award-winning content has backfired.

The service will release “Cuties” — “Mignonnes,” in France — on Sept. 9. But since the release of the movie’s trailer by Netflix, it has received significant backlash, petitions to remove the movie and calls to boycott Netflix. 

“Cuties” originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019, and won the Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic.

French-Senegalese director Maïmouna Doucouré is known for her short films that capture the emotional complexity of children. 

“Cuties” is no different: 11-year-old Amy is the main character, and she goes through a drastic transformation throughout the movie. She and her family are conservative Muslims, and Amy is first seen wearing a hijab. But she meets other girls her age that are part of a dance troupe. She is enamored with the idea, wants to dance with the girls and later is seen without her hijab joining them. 

Several Change.org petitions, some started by evangelical Christian groups, call for viewers to boycott Netflix, and others petition Netflix itself to remove or ban “Cuties” from the platform. Some on Twitter have encouraged users to “dislike” the movie’s trailer on YouTube — the video currently has 34,000 likes and 1.4 million dislikes. 

The first had to do with Netflix’s marketing of the movie: the original artwork advertises the four young main characters in sparkly, revealing dance outfits. The original description says that Amy “becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew.” The girls are also posed in a way that showcases the revealing nature of these outfits; many have said this sexualizes the girls in a way that’s unnecessary. It was also pointed out that Netflix’s poster was different from the original artwork. 

After online backlash, Netflix released a Twitter apology: “We're deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties. It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which won an award at Sundance.”

They also changed the cover art and description. The movie’s summary now says that Amy “becomes fascinated with a free-spirited dance crew.” Neither description mentions her Muslim faith. 

It has called into question the ethics of creating a movie centered on the sexualization of young girls to begin with. Will the movie serve as an outlet for people to sexualize children? What commentary about the negative impacts of sexualizing children can it successfully make if it sexualizes children to make its point?

The brief Netflix marketing scandal seems to suggest there’s more potential for harm than good. 

Muslim communities were displeased with the first impression of the movie because it shows a character arc of a Muslim girl removing her hijab to become more free or “find” herself.

A lasting stereotype many Muslim women fight against is the idea that hijabs are oppressive to women by forcing them to cover up. And while it’s true that some women in countries like Iran — where hijabs are required by law — resent the requirement, hijabs are not inherently a symbol of oppression, they argue, and are a voluntary act of submission to God. 

Several reviews of the movie from its Sundance debut also characterize Islam as a tool of oppression. 

Kate Erbland from IndieWire notes the “visual humor” of “Cuties” with reference to a scene in which Amy watches twerking videos on a stolen cell phone during a prayer service. Amy Nicholson from Variety says one of the most powerful scenes of the movie happens when Amy’s aunt attempts to cleanse Amy of her sin with a Muslim purification ritual, much to Amy’s resentment: “The flailing girl looks like she’s suffering — and she also looks like she’s twerking.”

Doucouré’s mother was a devout Muslim who told her not to pursue a career in filmmaking, so it’s likely that the movie contains some of her own feelings toward the faith. 

And if part of Amy’s transformation includes getting rid of her hijab and actively choosing secular sexual ethics over her faith, it’s also not likely that the movie will celebrate a faithful, devoted version of Islam. That’s something many Muslim creators are not pleased with. 

The streaming service Alchemiya, which was founded by Navid Akhtar and functions as a platform for Muslim-centric movies and television, is just one place where Muslims are creating content for and about Muslim communities. Their content includes movies, documentaries, kids’ series and other media.  

Alchemiya hosted a Facebook live panel on Aug. 22 entitled “ERTUĞRUL AND BEYOND: Spiritual Muslim Media in the Netflix Age” to discuss what Muslim creators are producing and how they’re doing it when streaming services are the primary medium for consuming entertainment. 

In the panel, author Haroon Sugich said that “Muslims are way, way behind the curve in terms of understanding and participating in cinema.” He added that this is often because those in devoted Muslim communities disapprove of cinema and the Muslims who participate in the production of it. So movies are primarily made in a secular space, he says.

This can lead to a lack of Islamic representation in media — or it can lead to only a certain type of representation, confirming stereotypes that aren’t shared by all Muslims. 

Many on the panel expressed distaste with the release of “Cuties” for the same reasons. To have a movie that doesn’t seem to honor Islam and is linked to accusations of sexualizing children is not something that reflects well on their community, they say. Which is why they create their own spiritual content and have formed a platform such content can live on. 

“It was really important to us that we build our own independent space,” Akhtar said. “The only way we’re going to see the progress that we want in terms of how Muslims are represented — or even entertaining, authentic content — is by taking control of that content.” 

If “Cuties” were to provide any benefit to the Muslim community, Ashtar says it would be the “spike of traffic” in subscribers Alchemiya received recently, as he says some did decide to cancel their Netflix subscriptions in light of the movie’s release and sign up for Alchemiya instead.

If the movie does celebrate the removal of Amy’s hijab and further denial of her religion, it will contribute to the stereotype against Islamic coverings. And it will offend many Muslims who would prefer to see a celebration of their religious practices than one that celebrates the abandonment of them. 

“Cuties” will be available to stream on Netflix beginning Sept. 9.

Jillian Cheney is a Poynter-Koch fellow for Religion Unplugged who loves consuming good culture and writing about it. She also reports on American Protestantism and Evangelical Christianity. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.