Icon: enlarge
Scene from "Mignonnes": Every pose a cry for help
Photo: Netflix
Films, books, paintings and sculptures are not mathematical equations, but open to interpretation.
This makes them vulnerable to political instrumentalization.
A prime example of this is what's happening with the Netflix movie "Mignonnes".
In an extremely sensitive way, he tells of the eleven-year-old Amy, who lives with her single mother, who comes from Senegal, in Paris and seeks her way between the traditions of conservative Islam and the promises of Western society - this also includes the openly displayed gender, the ubiquitous sexualization.
An increasingly excited debate, which led about Europe and Turkey into the toxic climate of the USA for socially demanding discussions, has now managed to turn the message of this film into its opposite.
The charge is: "Mignonnes" portray and feast on children in sexually explicit poses.
Conservative commentator Tammy Bruce said on Donald Trump's favorite Fox News channel, referring to the film, "Maybe Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself. Maybe he's working as a consultant on film projects."
As bogus as this allegation may be, Bruce's sentences that are obviously designed to be as provocative as possible are part of a shrill discourse in which 600,000 people signed an online petition calling for people to end their Netflix subscription because the company was exploiting children.
On Thursday "#CancelNetflix" was the number one trending topic on Twitter in the USA.
But you have to deliberately misinterpret "Mignonnes" to be able to conclude that he is sexually exploiting children.
"Do you know where evil shows?"
The film uses a classic didactic dramaturgy to outline its topic.
It begins with a prayer session in which a veiled woman says, "Do you know where evil is shown? In sexually dressed women. We have to be decent. Obey our husbands."
Amy hears these words, just like shortly afterwards this one: "Freedom!"
It comes from the throats of some girls who have founded a dance troupe at the school and are chased away from the school yard by a teacher after the break has ended.
As a result, the viewer witnesses these children - Amy would like to be one of them - prepare for a dance competition.
The more provocative they dance and dress, the more attention they'll get on social media.
They discover their own body, which is about to change during puberty, and believe that they can gain recognition through it that they cannot get anywhere else.
The French filmmaker Maïmouna Doucouré, who partly processes her own story here, integrates each of these dance sequences into a narrative context that shows her true core.
It becomes very clear: These are children who have no positive role models, who are on their own.
Each of the practiced poses is a cry for help.
This becomes abundantly clear at the end when the girls at the competition can be seen barely dressed and with their legs apart on the stage.
Conservative reporter Mary Margaret Olohan picked this sequence for a tweet about which she wrote, "Netflix is comfortable with this. A lot of people will defend it. Our culture has got that far."
What she didn't write: That she only tweeted part of the sequence.
That it continues in the film and shows how Amy suddenly breaks off during the dance and starts to cry, how she escapes from the stage and runs home to her mother.
How she throws herself into her arms.
And how this mother throws herself in the breach for her child for the first time and begins to fight for it.
In a moving way, Doucouré outlines a possible path for Amy into the future.
A way in which she neither has to submit nor sell.
"Mignonnes", which runs under the title "Cuties" in the USA (both means "The sweet ones") treads a fine line and keeps their balance in a brilliant way.
The debate, which got out of hand, shows once again that the art of soft tones has a hard time in a whipped up climate in which it is rarely about the matter, but rather about finding arguments for one's own spin.
A clarification that is actually superfluous
Netflix has to put up with the accusation that it made this twisted debate possible in the first place because the marketing department did not advertise with the original film poster, but with a self-designed motif that showed the underage actresses in sexualized poses - without the indispensable Context.
This just sparked a justified contradiction in the social networks in Europe and resulted in a ban on film in Turkey.
Netflix has since apologized for this.
In the USA, "Cuties" is accompanied by a filmed statement in which the director Maïmouna Doucouré describes her motivation for making this film.
She says, "Amy seeks freedom through her hyper-sexual behavior. But is that real freedom? Especially for a child? Of course not."
A clarification that is actually superfluous.
Your film says exactly that very pointedly and clearly.
You just have to look at it.
Icon: The mirror