Netflix as site of transnational gender conflict: the US (mis)understanding of Maïmouna Doucouré’s <i>Mignonnes</i>

Abstract

A confronting French film which condemns the influence of sexualised media on pre-teen girls, Maïmouna Doucouré’s Mignonnes/Cuties premiered to acclaim at the Sundance International Film Festival in 2020, where Doucouré won the Directing Prize and the film was purchased for international distribution by Netflix. Yet when Mignonnes reached the US-based streaming platform in September that year, advertised with a misguided poster that failed to convey the film’s critical gaze, it became the target of the #CancelNetflix boycott, spearheaded by US politicians and co-opted by the QAnon movement, who accused Netflix of endorsing child sexual exploitation. This article considers both the experience of the protagonist Amy (Fathia Youssouf) in Mignonnes, and the reaction of the US groups who boycotted Netflix following its release, through Bourdieu’s habitus and field. Both Amy and the boycotters lack the embodied, contextual, cultural competency to truly understand the field they occupy, to interpret the sexualised imagery they are consuming and to take it up in productive ways, leading in both cases to disastrous results. Thus, the authors con-tend that both inside the film (in its plot) and around it (in its reception), Mignonnes teaches us a lesson in the dangers of media illiteracy.