Duffy has penned an open letter calling out Netflix CEO Reed Hastings for the “irresponsible” decision to stream the film 365 Days, after sharing her own harrowing experience of being drugged, kidnapped and raped, which led to her “hiding” for years.
The singer has criticized the popular yet controversial Polish film about a man holding a woman captive, and giving her one year to fall in love with him, for glamorizing “the brutal reality of sex trafficking.”
“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,” she wrote in the letter, obtained by Billboard. “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,” Duffy wrote.
“It grieves me that Netflix provides a platform for such ‘cinema,’ that eroticises kidnapping and distorts sexual violence and trafficking as a ‘sexy’ movie,” she continued. “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. And so, I am compelled to speak on their behalf, and to ask you to right this wrong; to commit the resources of Netflix, and the skills of its talented film-makers, to producing and broadcasting content that portrays the truth of the harsh and desperate reality of what 365 Days has sought to turn into a work of casual entertainment.”
Duffy went on to say, “We all know Netflix would not host material glamorizing pedophilia, racism, homophobia, genocide, or any other crimes against humanity. The world would rightly rise up and scream. Tragically, victims of trafficking and kidnapping are unseen, and yet in 365 Days their suffering is made into a ‘erotic drama,’ as described by Netflix.”
“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,” Duffy wrote.
