November 21, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Netflix is again pushing sexual content on its platform, this time agreeing to stream a film that shows frontal nudity of a 15-year-old male actor.
Girl tells the story of a teenage male ballerina who “identifies” as female. The film won rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival and is set to debut on Netflix in January, but The Hollywood Reporter reports that distribution hit a snag over a scene in which the film’s star, Victor Polster, is seen fully nude. Polster was fifteen at the time of filming.
Director Lukas Dhont had reportedly commented to Belgian media that the scene would be cut when it hits Netflix, but told The Hollywood Reporter that everything has since been worked out.
“Regarding reports made this week in the Belgian media, we as filmmakers had some internal conversations with Netflix in which we discussed how some of the material in Girl could possibly be received outside of Europe,” he said. “We were given the option to be able to edit the film, and it always was a dialogue in which the filmmakers had the strongest say.
“The version of Girl that will be shown on Netflix will be the same version that premiered in Cannes, and in theaters in Belgium and other parts of the world,” Dhont said, confirming the underage nudity will remain.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, a nude depiction of a minor is harmful if it “(i) appeals to the prurient interest of minors, (ii) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable material for minors, (iii) and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.” At Quora, author John Burgess writes that the legal permissibility of showing underage nudity depends on whether the image is “sexual in nature,” or “incontrovertibly innocent” such as showering.
Girl is only the latest in a series of Netflix offerings that sexualize minors in various ways, as well as offend religious and pro-family viewers in various other ways.
Previous controversies have concerned the cross-dressing superhero cartoon Super Drags, the cartoon Big Mouth about preadolescent and pubescent children discovering sexuality via masturbation and porn-viewing, the Argentinian film Desire showing one little girl masturbating in front of the other, Anne with an E’s pro-LGBT retelling of the literary classic Anne of Green Gables, and a reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch that has shocked viewers with orgies and Satanism.