During the Hollywood Code years of 1934-68, American movie productions were strictly regulated on moral grounds to ensure they don't present positive views of homosexuality or promiscuity. Look at how well that worked.
Anyway, that's irrelevant here because the French movie in question is fundamentally critical of the existing normalization of sexualization of children. A lot of fault must be put on Netflix for jacking up the controversy in their US marketing.
That's a pretty thoughtless view. Maybe it did work, and it delayed gay marriage for two decades. Maybe it did work, and marriage rates would be 10% without a top-down media campaign, instead of the 50% it is today.
Clearly it didn't WIN completely, but that argument's like saying "Well we've banned murder, and look at how well that worked!"... it's really hard to find natural experiments to test a thesis that these initiatives work or not.
You cannot seriously mention homosexuality between consenting adults and sexualization of children in the same sentence.
> because the French movie in question is fundamentally critical of the existing normalization of sexualization of children.
By engaging in it.. this isn't even a fig leaf, that's like posting insults and slurs to criticize insults and slurs, or saying "no offense, but $incredibly_offensive_thing". Even if that actually is the intention, that is irrelevant, the actions are what matters.
> A lot of fault must be put on Netflix for jacking up the controversy in their US marketing.
Nobody but the defenders of this even care about the marketing; it's about the content, about the minute long close up shots of children "grinding".
Regardless of the attempts to frame it that way, "thinking of the children" isn't just a monopoly of hypocritical, puritan "outrage", it's also what any healthy adult does by default. Even (non-predator) animals in some cases treat the young of other species that way.
> "it's about the content, about the minute long close up shots of children 'grinding'"
This is not the right criterion to evaluate a film's intent.
Action movies spend most of their screen time showing killing. Horror movies contain extended torture scenes. Gaspar Noé's "Irreversible" has a 10-minute extremely realistic rape scene, but it would be absurd to claim that it's a pro-rape film.
Anyway, that's irrelevant here because the French movie in question is fundamentally critical of the existing normalization of sexualization of children. A lot of fault must be put on Netflix for jacking up the controversy in their US marketing.