Netflix Hopes to Stop 'Cuties' Child Porn Lawsuit in Texas

By Allison Schonter

The controversy surrounding Maïmouna Doucouré's film Cuties is still ongoing more than a year after it made its Netflix debut. The streamer on Thursday, March 3 asked a federal court to block a Texas prosecutor from pursuing child pornography charges against the company over its distribution of the film, which has been widely criticized for sexualizing young girls.

In September 2020, just after the film's premiere, Netflix was indicted by Lucas Babin, the elected district attorney in Tyler County, Texas, who claimed the movie violated a state law against the "lewd exhibition" of children. Although a hearing was set for Thursday, it was postponed after Babin dropped the original indictment and brought forth four new indictments under a different statute, alleging that the film violates the Texas state law against child pornography, according to Variety. In response, Netflix filed a complaint for injunctive relief in federal court, accusing Babin of "abusing his office and infringing Netflix, Inc.'s constitutional rights," and requesting that the case be tossed entirely.

"This one prosecutor -out of all the prosecutors in America- has indicted Netflix not just once but five times," the complaint continues. "Each indictment violates the United States Constitution and comes in retaliation against Netflix's exercising its First Amendment rights to free speech and to petition the government for redress."

In the 29-page document, the streaming company argued that "without the Court's intervention, Netflix will suffer irreparable harm by being forced to continue playing Babin's game in state court and defending itself against even more baseless charges." It added that "the Court has jurisdiction over this case, and should grant Netflix the preliminary and permanent injunctive relief." A hearing is now scheduled for Friday, March 4 at a federal courthouse in Beaumont, Texas.

Premiering at Sundance in January, where Doucouré won the directing award in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section, before arriving on Netflix in September 2020, Cuties is a French-language film about an 11-year-old Senegalese girl living in Paris who is split between her family's traditional upbringing and her friends at school who are influenced by internet culture. Ahead of its U.S. release, Netflix promoted the film in a way that many believed hyper-sexualized the young actresses, releasing a promotional poster showing the four girls scantily dressed along with a questionable synopsis. The streamer eventually changed course and issued an apology "for the inappropriate artwork that we used for this film," which they said "was not an accurate representation of the film."

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