03 July 2020

Singer Duffy brands Netflix ‘irresponsible’ for streaming 365 Days film as it ‘glorifies rape and kidnapping’

Singer Duffy has criticised Netflix for streaming the film 365 Days as it ‘glorifies rape and kidnapping’.

The 36 year-old, who spoke about her own harrowing rape experience earlier this year, says in an open letter to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, that showing the film is ‘careless, insensitive and dangerous’.

The film follows a young Polish woman who is imprisoned by a dominant Sicilian man who grants her 365 days to fall in love with him. 

She wrote: "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 glamorises 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 commercialised in this manner.”

She also stated that 25 million people are being trafficked around the world.

Duffy said: "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.

“To anyone who may exclaim 'it is just a movie', it is not 'just', when it has great influence to distort a subject which is widely undiscussed, such as sex trafficking and kidnapping, by making the subject erotic.”

She has also asked for viewers who have watched the film to ‘reflect on the reality of kidnapping and trafficking’. 

She spoke publicly about her own experiences in February before sharing the impact of her rape ordeal in April. 

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