Sounds like the original and still most pervasive cancel culture, the right wing, is at again, and showing that conservatives are oblivious to the nature of satire.
Well, it isn't
satire. The tone is serious. The director clearly states that it is a critique of the hyper-sexualization of young girls in our culture. The movie is about how a young immigrant girl navigates her conservative, immigrant background and the hyper-sexualized milieu that exists in her adopted country.
The controversy reminds me of the one surrounding the movie
Kids.
I criticize the film for very different reasons from the right wing pearl clutchers, but I would say that, yes, they focused more on 11 year old crotch as well as making it appear that the girls themselves are the source of sexualization than they did on cultural critique.
I don't think it actually is a critique of society or culture. It doesn't play out that way in the film at all. It plays out as a critique of little girls. When the girls dance, they dance to music with lyrics of a sexual nature, but it only plays the music in that context, as if the music is just incidental and the girls themselves are the original source of desire to dance in a sexy way.
I also criticize it for the fact that the males in the film are almost totally shown as moral and disgusted by the girls' behavior. We all know the real world is very different. The film shows a girl taking a photo of her vagina and posting it on the internet, for example, but the film is not at all clear about what motivated her to do this. A boy in her class called her a whore for doing it The friends who initially drew her into dancing all condemned the act and ostracized her for it. What prompted her to do that? Just puberty and liking boys doesn't make little girls do things like that.
I think the film could have been a useful critique of culture's sexualization of children, but all in all, it seems like it serves more as religious moralizing about how females are the source of all sin and suffering.
The good part, the part that possibly redeems this disingenuous portrayal of little girls, is the ending, where the main character is performing an extremely sexual dance with three of her friends in front of a large audience and as she's dancing it hits her that she doesn't really feel good about this, that she doesn't really want to do it and maybe we are to read her mind and realize that she was doing it all for the wrong reasons, for acceptance. She then stops and runs home, and later we see her without her friends but wearing less sexy clothing and doing normal girl things such as going to school and jumping rope with friends.
So it does successfully convey the message that "sexualization of children is bad, bad, bad," but it does not make it clear what really influenced the girls other than some quick side glances toward music and internet.
