By now most Americans have heard of Netflix’s decision to host the controversial French film “Cuties” on its video streaming platform. The controversy is directly related to the fact that the film uses 11-year-old girls to depict sexually exploited 11-year-old girls. As film critic John Nolte puts it, “Cuties is soft-core pornography disguised as art. Nothing less. Nothing more.” Put another way, “Cuties” is child pornography that has been labeled “art,” making it socially acceptable to the progressive intelligentsia. Demonstrating this twisted reality, French director Maimouna Doucoure won an award for “Cuties” at the Sundance Film Festival.

Netflix pathetically attempted to defend its decision, noting that “Cuties” is an award-winning film that aims to expose the problem of child exploitation. Subscribers should watch the film before criticizing it, Netflix further suggested, as if one needed to observe child pornography in order to determine that it is indeed exploitative and immoral.

An interesting metric to consider is the huge difference between the opinion of critics, the vast majority of whom veer left, and that of average Americans. The rating site Rotten Tomatoes shows that while 88% of critics gave the film a positive review, only 3% of its audience expresses the same opinion. In other words, polar opposite opinions. It’s always the less pretentious who are willing to admit that, if you’ll forgive the idiom, the emperor has no clothes.

Stepping back from this immediate controversy, it’s easy to see that Americans have seen this scenario play out before. This film’s shock factor is intended to “soften the beaches” for the social normalization and eventual cultural acceptance of pedophilia. Leftists continually propose the next round of radical social change, often using entertainment as indoctrination, to erode public objections to immorality. Recall how quickly mainstream American culture changed its views on the definition of marriage to include homosexual partnerships. Holding to traditional marriage is now considered a backward and intolerant minority position. Even more recently, consider how “transgenderism” has suddenly become a mainstream issue with the cultural “watchdogs” demanding full capitulation to the new “morality.” With “Cuties,” it’s not hard to see what’s next.