Duffy has accused Netflix of glamourising rape and sex trafficking by screening the hit Polish film 365 Days.
The pop singer, who recently revealed her own rape and kidnap ordeal, wrote an open letter to Netflix chief Reed Hastings, saying: “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.”
She added that the film “glamorises the brutal reality of sex trafficking, kidnapping and rape”.
365 Days, adapted from a novel by Polish writer Blanka Lipińska, has become a Top 10 hit on Netflix. It stars Anna-Maria Sieklucka as Laura Biel, a woman who is kidnapped and given a year to fall in love with her captor, the head of a Sicilian Mafia family. It has been universally panned by critics, earning a 0% score on reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
In February, Duffy said that she was raped after being drugged, kidnapped, taken to a foreign country and held for a number of days. She has not said when the attack was, but it precipitated her retreat from the public eye in the years following the release of her second album Endlessly, in 2010. She had shot to fame with her debut Rockferry, which won a Grammy, sold 9m copies and was the UK’s biggest-selling album in 2008.
She was praised for her candour by rape counselling charities, with Katie Russell from Rape Crisis saying her words “can make other survivors feel a little bit less alone and less ashamed”. In June, she released her first music since 2015, a song called River in the Sky.
She concluded the letter to Netflix by sharing resources on human trafficking, including from the United Nations. “You have not realized how 365 Days has brought great hurt to those who have endured the pains and horrors that this film glamorises, for entertainment and for dollars,” she added. “What I and others who know these injustices need is the exact opposite – a narrative of truth, hope, and to be given a voice.”
The Guardian has contacted Netflix for comment.
