When ‘Edginess’ in Cinema Becomes Exploitation and Ethical Ruin

Commentary

The world of edgy Western film has taken a turn for the worse. While it has always been a gimmick for Australian viewers to flip across to SBS and alarm ourselves at the liberal doses of nudity, the age of Netflix has struck up an arms race where the winner is the program that can “shock” rather than “entertain” the viewer. Ending up as a furious headline would be as good as draping a gold medal around the producer’s neck.

How else can we explain the creation of the French film “Cuties”? Its content involving the sexualisation of young girls in provocative clothing, gyrating at the camera in dance sequences, could not be screencapped or put up on social media for the purpose of review.

Netflix got its wish, becoming an overnight outrage with high-profile accounts advising fellow Twitter and Facebook users to immediately delete their Netflix accounts as a way to fight the war against the entertainment industry’s fetishisation of children.

And they did. It was a bad year for Netflix.

Whether the film industry was prepared to acknowledge it or not, the “don’t sexualise our children” message appeared to sink in.

It was the second strike for the industry after an arguably more disturbing film was released in February of the same year. Airing at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival to horrified walkouts, “The Trouble With Being Born” centred around a 10-year-old female robot made to look like a human girl. The middle-aged man, who owns the robot, insists it calls him “Daddy.”

While this might be the foundation for a creepy tale about parenting in a childless AI future, the film quickly took an unforgivable dive into creepy territory where it hinted at the man initiating an intimate relationship with the robot that he designed from a real memory.

Robot or not, on the screen, this is presented as paedophilia.

It was the crossing of that fine line where foreign films go from “pushing the envelope” to unnecessary indulgences in the worst of human nature that nobody needs to see outside a criminal trial.

Perplexingly, the film was created by a woman. Austrian director Sandra Wollner described her film as the “antithesis to Pinocchio.”

“What I found interesting about it is that we have an android whose only desires are the ones you program it to have. I found it fascinating to show the perspective of the world through this machine that does not judge and does not care and doesn’t need the meanings that we do,” she said.

However, what played out on screen was a young child being preyed upon by a father figure in a film that only will be sought by predators. Whatever intellectual point Wollner was trying to make, the film disturbed viewers.

Nothing New for Hollywood Either

This industry has form. Who can forget Brooke Shields being photographed nude for Playboy at 10 years old during the 70s, which landed her the role as a child prostitute in “Pretty Baby” (1978)?

Audiences weren’t happy with that either. They could see a pattern emerging in Hollywood where idolising abhorrent sexual relationships on film led directly to real-world abuse, all in service of “art.”

The intellectual thesis behind “The Trouble With Being Born” may have held more weight if the original age of the robot—a woman of 20—had been preserved. That said, the script contained even more explicit content, which makes Wollner’s decision to age the actress down to a 10-year-old strange.

But producing a disturbing piece of the film didn’t stop the industry from showering it with awards or from its critical peers saying things such as, “[The film is] a powerful and revelatory achievement … complex, artfully crafted, sometimes wilfully perplexing.”

“Perplexing” may be the only word of value there. At what point does humanity say, “Well, actually, it’s creepy, inappropriate, and romanticising illegal and extremely harmful behaviours in men who abuse children? Disgusting. Stop using young actresses to make this sort of thing.”

At least the Melbourne International Film Festival had the sense to refuse the screening, citing fears the film could normalise sexual interest in children and “be used as a source of arousal for men interested in child abuse material.”

No Lessons Have Been Learned Since 2020

Last month, fans of the adult cartoon series “Rick and Morty” began walking away, fed up with the show’s increasing exploration of both incest and paedophilia. Dozens of articles finally called the showrunners out while fans tweeted their disapproval.

Remember, this is a show famous for pushing boundaries, so to upset fans—you really have to try.

“Is ‘Rick and Morty’ feeding into a troubling fan obsession?” Headlined Digital Spy, referencing the long-running joke about the closeness of the grandfather-grandson relationship (voiced by the same actor).

Disturbing as it may sound, there are entire online communities devoted to this topic, normalising what should be taboo.

“In many realities, Morty and Rick are in a passionate, healthy romantic relationship. Maybe we’ll do an episode about it,” said voice actor and show co-creator Justin Roiland. This is in addition to their brother-sister incest child and a sexual relationship between clones of the mother.

Art and reality are closely intertwined. As a civilisation, if we allow our art to be significantly corrupted, so too will our reality become.

In the same way that music shapes the attitude of each generation, what we allow our kids to casually absorb on streaming services like Netflix will alter the way they think as adults.

As someone heavily involved in moderating fandom communities, I can assure you that each generation is descending further into the realms of grisly fetishes that even I, as an adult and free speech advocate, wish could be erased from the internet.

The abuse of children is a persistent remnant of our evolutionary history. Child brides were common (and still are) in the poorest parts of the world. There is obviously a predilection for this behaviour among some people, so why are we feeding it with mass-produced content?

As the Cultural Daily writes, “The objectification of children in the media stimulates an entire culture of child abuse outside Hollywood.”

Child abuse is a plague, and in our rush to break down boundaries while constructing a “modern society,” we’ve reduced the necessary protections to rubble.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.