spinofflive
Hannah Tamaki (image: Newshub)
Hannah Tamaki (image: Newshub)

OPINIONPop CultureFebruary 23, 2020

Hannah Tamaki can’t dance away from her past

Hannah Tamaki (image: Newshub)
Hannah Tamaki (image: Newshub)

News broke today that Hannah Tamaki is rumoured to have been cast for the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars. Emily Writes explains why the religious leader and aspirant politician has no place on the show.

Update, 25 February, 4.30pm: Mediaworks has announced that Hannah Tamaki has been dropped from the new season of Dancing with the Stars

“Our announcement for this year’s Dancing with the Stars cast is scheduled for the end of March,” a spokesperson said, “however we are taking the unusual step to confirm Hannah Tamaki will not be part of that lineup. It was originally planned for Hannah to take part in the show. We now recognise this was a mistake and we apologise.

“We have seen a very strong reaction, some of which has been extreme and concerning and MediaWorks does not condone bullying. We would be failing in our duty of care to everyone if we continued as planned. We will be reviewing our decision making processes to make sure we get it right in the future.”

 

In an exceptionally sad display of desperation, MediaWorks appears to have booked Hannah Tamaki, known for her bigotry and megachurch, for the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars. It is my sincere hope that it’s all BS and nobody at MediaWorks was so colossally hideous to book someone openly xenophobic, anti-Muslim, homophobic and transphobic.

The Spinoff has approached MediaWorks for comment, with a spokesperson saying “yes there will once again be 12 celebrities getting on the dance floor in the name of charity. But we won’t be naming them until much closer to when Dancing with the Stars goes to air”. That said, Spy is standing by its story and that statement is by no means a denial. So it seems that someone there is so out of touch with public sentiment and human decency that they just decided Hannah Tamaki would be good TV. Here are some reasons why this is an absolutely morally bankrupt decision.

MediaWorks will be providing free publicity for a political party that spreads hate speech

Wow! They won’t have to spend a cent of the hoarded wealth they’ve gathered from scamming vulnerable communities to spread their message of *checks notes* banning “new mosques, temples, and other foreign buildings of worship” if elected. At a time when the nation was horrified by the mosque shooting in Christchurch, Brian Tamaki objected to the call to prayer. As the world applauded New Zealand’s response to the shooting, Destiny goons stood outside mosques intimidating Muslims.

MediaWorks will be providing a platform for chill ideas like gays causing natural disasters

According to the Tamakis, the Christchurch quakes that killed 185 people were caused by gay people. The government not giving Brian money was the equivalent of gang raping him. And that he’s sexually attractive.

Ads by the Tamaki cult on Facebook have been removed for violating community standards. Yes. Facebook, not exactly known for having strong community standards, decided the Tamakis couldn’t use their platform for their ads. Yet MediaWorks is considering welcoming them with open arms. OK. Way to read the room in 2020.

MediaWorks will be supporting extremely questionable charities

The Man Up programme, a domestic violence programme by the Tamakis, has been well-covered in other media. They have sought government funding for this programme for some time, with corrections minister Kelvin Davis telling Newsroom that “Destiny Church had enough money, and if it wanted to make a difference it should use that money to help people in the community, and did not need the government’s blessing to do so”. Evidentially MediaWorks seems to want to help anyway.

Stuff revealed a man broke his partner’s jaw the same day he graduated from the programme. The survivor “immediately launched separation proceedings, but he later used the Man Up certificate in court as evidence of his good character”. Stuff also revealed a Man Up facilitator was stood down for directly messaging a domestic violence survivor and telling her it was her fault if she provoked her partner. So would it be OK if Hannah picks a charity like Man Up? A charity Women’s Refuge chief Ang Jury has publicly stated is dangerous?


Read more: The fascinating case of Hannah Tamaki vs the Māori Women’s Welfare League


MediaWorks will be ensuring a spot at the next corporate Pride Parade by making sure the homophobic and transphobic comments get still more air time.

In 2015 Brian Tamaki claimed “gay power” was taking over the world and that a whole generation of children will be bisexual because the “perversion of homosexuality is leading the charge”. If only.

My first interaction with Destiny Church was in Tauranga leading up to the civil union bill. I challenged their protest with a sign that said “Love isn’t a family value” and in return their parishioners encouraged their children to scream “dyke” at me and then laughed when their kids picked up dog shit and threw it at us. They followed this up with their ‘Enough is Enough’ march in 2004. Dressed in Black and Red they screamed Enough is Enough at anyone they deemed gay. It was a great message to young queers already facing high rates of suicide in New Zealand. The message was clear as day: You are hated. HATED. Good old family entertainment eh MediaWorks!

Despite all of this, Hannah Tamaki and her husband, who called people upset by Israel Folau’s homophobic comments “Cry Baby Gays”, say they have gay friends. Which is as grim as it sounds. A month later they issued an “apology” to the rainbow community along the lines of sorry you were offended.

MediaWorks will be dragging all their actual talent into this mess

MediaWorks is New Zealand’s largest independent broadcaster, spanning TV, radio and digital properties. They have chosen to use this platform to push the Tamakis into our homes. And look, I would never say a woman should have to be responsible for the words of her husband, but Hannah Tamaki and Brian Tamaki have a business together. Their business – Destiny Church – is a joint business. She is present whenever he spews his hate, and she’s often his mouthpiece. They’re interchangeable and attempts to paint them any other way are incredibly disingenuous.

When Mediaworks and Mediaworks employees rightly champion diversity and inclusion and put slogans like “They are us” and “This isn’t us” and “Love is Love” and hashtag Happy Pride on their social accounts they’re taking a stand. The casting decision impacts all who work there, all who have worked to make those slogans mean something within their organisation and to their audience.

Ultimately this will be a test of what MediaWorks stands for. Let’s hope they don’t get found wanting. I still hope this is just an absurd rumour and any minute now there will be a statement saying it’s all bunk. In 2020, this can’t possibly be a possibility. Right?

This story has been updated to include comment from MediaWorks

Keep going!
Ahsoka Tano, one of the characters introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, that showcases the brilliance of the animated series, especially compared to the prequels.
Ahsoka Tano, one of the characters introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, that showcases the brilliance of the animated series, especially compared to the prequels.

Pop CultureFebruary 22, 2020

Review: The Clone Wars (almost) justifies the Star Wars prequel trilogy

Ahsoka Tano, one of the characters introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, that showcases the brilliance of the animated series, especially compared to the prequels.
Ahsoka Tano, one of the characters introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, that showcases the brilliance of the animated series, especially compared to the prequels.

The Star Wars prequels are universally regarded as the nadir of the franchise, but at least they gave us spinoff series The Clone Wars, writes Sam Brooks

Nobody likes the Star Wars prequels. Though that statement is slightly hyperbolic, it’s not far from the truth. Even if you can make a limp defence for certain scenes in the first three episodes – a podrace scene here, a Palpatine scene there – they’re hard to defend as actual films, especially in comparison to either the original trilogy or even the sequel trilogy. Watching the prequels is like having a child explain to you the fall of Rome. The plot beats are there, but none of the nuance or necessary detail.

It would’ve been nice if the prequels were any good, but the sad reality is that they didn’t need to be. Since A New Hope, every Star Wars film, good or bad, exists as a jumping point for near endless offshoots and merchandising. Since The Empire Strikes Back, the series has spun off into books, games, television shows, and just about every piece of content that you can slap the name Star Wars on and make a quick buck off. There’s a reason why they call it the Expanded Universe, y’all. 

Nearly immediately upon acquiring the Star Wars brand, Disney purged the Expanded Universe like a bride cutting extended relatives from the wedding guest list. All those books, all those games, all those spinoffs were declared to be no longer part of the canon. The only content that mattered were the films and anything released after Disney got their hands on them. One of the few spinoffs that survived the purge was the animated TV series The Clone Wars, which takes place between Episode II and III, and follows the war between the Galactic Republic (good guys) and the Separatists (bad guys).

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Despite being declared canon, The Clone Wars was one of the unfortunate casualties of Disney’s Star Wars acquisition. Despite the consistent critical acclaim since its Carton Network debut, the show was quickly cancelled after Disney bought it, and the series was allowed to finish its then-sixth-and-final season on Netflix. It seemed like the series would never get to finish out its run, but a near half-decade later, Disney announced that The Clone Wars would be returning for its seventh and final season, which debuted yesterday on its own streaming service, Disney+. The series picks up towards the end of The Clone Wars, focusing on the Siege of Mandalore, and continues the story of the Galactic Republic’s fight against the Separatists, with the Jedi on one side and the Sith on the other.

The show’s popular success, and critical acclaim, was down to the way it took the broad, clumsy strokes of the prequels, and coloured them with the nuance that had been missing. It introduced characters like Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker’s padawan, initially to bring colour to the crude dark-or-light nature of Anakin; she subsequently became a fully-realised character in her own right. The show also started to introduce more complex interpretations of the relationship between the Jedi (basically good warrior priests) and the Sith (evil warrior priests), in a way that didn’t contradict existing canon, Force forbid, but instead deepened it.

In the new season, that nuance is most noticeable in the humanisation of the clones, originally presented en masse in Attack of the Clones. A bulk of the cast is made up of these clones, all voiced by Dee Bradley Baker doing a spot-on kaleidoscope of Temuera Morrison impressions – because, of course, the NZ actor played Jango Fett, on whom all clones are based. Each is given specificity, most notably Captain Rex, the clone to which all others aspire to. The early episodes of this final season focus on The Bad Batch, a unit of elite clone troopers who have undergone mutation and modification, and the show manages to define all of them individually, through both the writing and Baker’s excellent performances.

A few of the clones in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, voiced by Dee Baker Bradley.

In other places, the series patches up the holes left by the other films. The relationship between Anakin and Padme is made more specific, with a beautifully drawn push-pull between their secretive relationship and their duelling obligations (him to the Jedi, her to the Senate). It’s one of the most believable relationships I’ve ever seen in an animated show – ironically, a lot more realistic and deeply felt than the live action version. The care given to their relationship is all the more impressive given that it exists inside a property seemingly resuscitated simply to fill a gap in Star Wars content (season two of The Mandalorian comes later this year, you guys).

The Anakin and Padme relationship highlights the big question with The Clone Wars – the same question that has hung around every Star Wars entry since The Empire Strikes Back. Is this a franchise for kids, or a franchise for people who want to revisit the same experience they had when they were kids? Most of Star Wars tends towards the latter, but The Clone Wars seems squarely stuck between the two. As an animated show, and a relatively cutesy, fast-moving one at that, with an almost conspicuously Disney-esque sense of humour, it often seems like its made for kids. But then there’s the occasional leap into darkness and depth that jars with that. It’s a show about war, and while this is hardly 1917, there’s some graphic imagery that ranks with some of the darkest of the franchise.

One of the biggest assets of the Star Wars franchise is that it’s never really done. There’s always a story to be continued, a character to be followed, or a past to unearth. The best Star Wars content does all three of these things, shining light where we might not have even thought to look. The Clone Wars, in its final season especially, goes one step further, serving as a beautifully rendered bridge between Episode II and Episode III. It won’t convert newcomers to the franchise, but it’s fascinating watch for anybody loves the original trilogy, or has even a blushing fondness for the prequels.

You can watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Disney+ right now. New episodes drop every Friday.

But wait there's more!