"This should not be anyone’s idea of entertainment"
As a survivor of being drugged and raped, the Welsh singer has appealed to the head of Netflix to take the title down.
Duffy's open letter to Reed Hastings, the Chief Executive Officer at Netflix, sees the singer implore him and his streaming platform to remove '365 Days' as she claims it "glamorizes the brutal reality of sex trafficking".
If you haven't seen the controversial movie - which was added to Netflix recently (and appeared in the top 10 titles watched in Ireland over lockdown) - think of it as a much more intense version of '50 Shades of Grey'. The Polish movie follows a man named Massimo, who kidnaps Laura, and gives her 365 days to fall in love with him. And in case you're wondering, it currently sits with a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, and a 30% rating from audiences - so no, it's not worth the watch really.
In a lengthy post to Hastings, Duffy's open letter touches on her own escape from a predator, which she revealed recently, and how seeing such a movie on Netflix causes "great hurt to those who have endured the pains and horrors that this film glamorizes, for entertainment and for dollars."
Here's an excerpt of her post:
Dear Reed,
Recently I wrote publicly about an ordeal I was subject to. I was drugged, kidnapped, trafficked and raped. I released a statement of my personal account, which you may find online in further detail on https://www.duffywords.com.
Today, I really don’t know what to think, say, or do, other than to reach out and explain to you in this letter how irresponsible it was of Netflix to broadcast the film ‘365 Days’. I don’t want to be in this position to have to write to you, but the virtue of my suffering obliges me to do so, because of a violent experience that I endured of the kind that you have chosen to present as ‘adult erotica’.
‘365 Days’ glamorizes the brutal reality of sex trafficking, kidnapping and rape. This should not be anyone’s idea of entertainment, nor should it be described as such, or be commercialized in this manner.
I write these words (ones I cannot believe I am writing in 2020, with so much hope and progress gained in recent years), as an estimated 25 million people are currently trafficked around the world, not to mention the untold amounts of people uncounted. Please take a moment to stop and pause, and think about that number, equivalent to almost half the population of England. And of those trafficked annually, no less than 80% are women and girls, and 50% of them are minors.
It grieves me that Netflix provides a platform for such ‘cinema’, that eroticises kidnapping and distorts sexual violence and trafficking as a “sexy” movie. I just can’t imagine how Netflix could overlook how careless, insensitive, and dangerous this is. It has even prompted some young women, recently, to jovially ask Michele Morrone, the lead actor in the film, to kidnap them. [...]
As we approach World day against trafficking in persons on 30th July, I encourage Netflix and everyone who has watched ‘365 Days’ to learn more about human trafficking by visiting https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking.html and to pledge to make a difference to organizations such as: catwinternational.org, hopeforjustice.org, polarisproject.org, antislavery.org, stopthetraffik.org, unseenuk.org, notforsalecampaign.org, ijm.org, a21.org and madeforthem.org.
If all of you at Netflix take nothing from this open letter but these final words, I will be content. You have not realized how ‘365 Days’ has brought great hurt to those who have endured the pains and horrors that this film glamorizes, for entertainment and for dollars. What I and others who know these injustices need is the exact opposite – a narrative of truth, hope, and to be given a voice.
When we know better, let us do better, Duffy.
You can read the full version of Duffy's open letter on Deadline.