Mmm whatcha saaaaaayyyyy

Pop CultureFebruary 28, 2019

How the hell did ‘Hide and Seek’ end up in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child?

Editor

Mmm whatcha saaaaaayyyyy

In the middle of a spectacular play about witches and wizards, a song from The O.C. plays. Madeleine Chapman unravels the history of ‘Hide and Seek’.

There are moments in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the stage production now playing in Melbourne, that will make you believe magic exists. There are moments that bring fantasies to life and transport the audience back in time, both as the characters onstage and as ourselves, children again in the face of He Who Shall Now Be Named, Lord Voldemort.

But for me – and I hope, nay, I pray, for many others – there was one moment that transported me, mind, body and soul, from a seat in Melbourne’s Princess Theatre, through Hogwarts, and to a grimy apartment in Orange County, California.

Before I go any further and you get the wrong idea, I loved the show. It’s fan fiction come to life in the best way for longtime Potterheads. I have my favourites (Snape, Luna Lovegood) and I’ve taken the quiz (I’m in Ravenclaw) and I’ll happily consume anything to do with my magical friends at Hogwarts, no matter how much J. K. Rowling tweets. But you can read all about how amazing the show is in the dozens of reviews already published. I want to talk about just one moment.

The scene itself is nothing extraordinary. Despite a comically strict review policy around spoilers, I think I’m allowed to say that it involves some characters standing at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. I think I’m allowed to say that because the song that plays during this moment is listed on the official soundtrack as ‘Suite Two: Edge of the Forest’.

The scene involves some characters standing at the edge of the Forbidden Forest looking at something. As they’re looking, music begins to play. This is an hour into the play. The audience has heard a lot of music, the soundtrack to this magical world, and all of it has been instrumental. It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that the music now playing will also be instrumental. And it is, until the world collapses.

“Hiiiiide aaaand seeeek.”

My head snapped. I almost laughed involuntarily. It couldn’t be. I surely did not just hear what I thought I heard because what I thought I heard was a 2005 ‘folktronic’ pop song by Imogen Heap that featured in the season two final of The O.C. starring Mischa Barton and had since been made into a meme. There was absolutely no way they were pl-

“Traaaains aand sewing machiiiiines.”

It was still going, undeterred by the meltdown happening in seat P34. I looked around me, hoping to catch someone’s eye but all eyes were locked on the stage, oblivious. I nudged the man next to me. He was young, he liked TV, he later claimed to have seen The O.C., he’d understand. “Oh my god where’s Marissa?” I whispered, a killer reference to the character at the heart of that fatefully memed scene. He looked at me, confused. I was alone.

“Aaaalll thooooose yeeeears.”

The novelty wasn’t wearing off. With every elongated word, I was born anew, blinking in my new reality. A reality in which the “Mmm whatcha say” meme song was playing earnestly during a hugely successful stage play.

“Theeeey weeere heeeeere fiiirst.”

Except they weren’t. ‘Hide and Seek’ has had a long illustrious life. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is merely a short, unconventional stop on its journey to world domination.

There are so many questions that must be asked, and I will ask them. Those same questions must be answered, and I will ask them.

But first we must look at how we got here. As the philosopher George Santayana warned, “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” The history of ‘Hide and Seek’ is worth learning and repeating.

19 May 2005

It’s 2005 and I am wearing Canterbury trackpants. More fashion-forward tweens are wearing pink material belts from Supre and Von Dutch trucker hats. The O.C. is the weekly drama on everyone’s lips and no one at my intermediate school has noticed that Benjamin Mackenzie (Ryan Atwood) is playing a teenager but looks 39.

On the 19th of May, the season two finale airs. There has been a teaser playing all week showing a gunshot. Who’s holding the gun and who gets shot is unknown. What’s also unknown is what music will play the moment the gun is fired.

Ryan is fighting his older brother Trey in an apartment. Marissa shows up, ominous music playing, and yells for them to stop. When Trey picks up an old-timey telephone and is about to hit Ryan in the face with it, Marissa shoots him. Then history is made.

“MMM WHATCHA SAAAAYYYY.”

Never has a music cue been so on the nose as that MMM the very moment Marissa fires the gun. Ben Johnson has one of the quickest starts in the 100m, reacting in less than 0.1 seconds to the starter gun. That’s still not as quick as MMM WHATCHA SAY reacting to the gun Marissa fired.

The song is ‘Hide and Seek’ by Imogen Heap and this is its introduction to the world.

April 14 2007

It’s 2007 and the Lonely Island have no ideas for their digital short segment on Saturday Night Live. They don’t have time to shoot something elaborate like a music video but they need something. They need ‘Hide and Seek’. With The O.C finishing its fourth and final season earlier that year, the infamous shooting scene from season two has not been forgotten.

On Saturday, SNL airs “Dear Sister”, a digital short parodying the shooting scene and liberally using ‘Hide and Seek’ as the overbearing music cue.

It’s a hit. And spawns hundreds of memes with ‘Hide and Seek’ played over dramatic death scenes from classic films, as well as everyday fails. It becomes known as the “Mmm Whatcha Say Meme”.

May 5 2009

It’s 2009 and I’m still wearing Canterbury trackpants. ‘Hide and Seek’ has long been added to every teenager’s moody playlist, joining ‘Skinny Love’ and ‘How To Save A Life’. The memes have finally died down. Then Jason Derulo releases a song heavily sampling Heap’s classic and titles it…’Whatcha Say’.

Mmm it’s back, baby. The official music video for Derulo’s song now has a quarter of a billion views on Youtube. Everyone knows the bridge to Heap’s 2005 hit thanks to Derulo, but many don’t know that she originated it. Her hardcore fans require an explanation for “ruining” what was otherwise a beautiful, heartbreaking tune.

Between 2005 and 2016, ‘Hide and Seek’ appeared in a handful of television episodes and films. After the SNL parody, usage waned, but the song made frequent appearances accompanying performers on So You Think You Can Dance? It was finally back to being an indie hit, and could maybe have been deployed in a Grey’s Anatomy episode without too much fuss. It served as the backing track for more than one Harry Potter montage video uploaded to YouTube in the early 2011.

7 June 2016

It’s 2016 and I’m looking to buy some Canterbury trackpants. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child premieres at the Palace Theatre in London, with Imogen Heap composing the score. It’s been disclosed that a lot of the melodies are reworked versions of her already-released music. There are modified themes from early albums that true Heap fans will pick up. There’s also ‘Hide and Seek’.

How did this happen? According to Heap, it happened despite her wariness.

“Using ‘Hide and Seek’ in the play was not my idea,” she said in response to a question on Twitter. “I was actually not sure if we should use it because it’s such a recognisable song. I was worried that it would take people out of the moment.” Does me twisting in my seat to see if Mischa Barton was stage left holding a smoking gun count as being out of the moment?

“However, Stephen Hoggett and John Tiffany had had the idea of putting ‘Hide and Seek’ into the play at that moment, way way back in the day. Four years ago or something. They’d already decided that they would love to have that song. It’s the only time in the play where you hear any lyrics.” Yes it is the only time in the play that you hear lyrics. Not just any lyrics either.

“Hiiiiiiide aaaaaand seeeeek”

It’s a little slower and sung by a choir, but it’s still ‘Hide and Seek’. And though they never sing the fateful words of the bridge, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has ensured that – at least in my small mind – the Mmm Whatcha Say meme lives on. May it never die.

Keep going!

Notice something? A few angry gamers have.

Pop CultureFebruary 27, 2019

Breast is best: The controversy that plagues Dead or Alive

Sam Brooks

Contributing writer

Notice something? A few angry gamers have.

Less than a week out from release, Sam Brooks dips back into the breast physics controversy that has enveloped Dead or Alive 6.

If there’s one thing on the internet that I can strongly endorse you don’t investigate, it is the debate around breast physics in video games. It’s a fast way to stop believing that there is lightness amongst the dark.

In the middle of last year, I did a dive into this haunted section of the internet and in doing so coined the cursed phrase ‘big unnaturals’, in reference to the depiction of breasts in video games. It was less of an investigation and more of a primer – if I have to live with this cursed knowledge, then so do you.

Seven months on, and Dead or Alive 6, the focal point of the most recent controversy, is about to come out.

So what are the series’ die-hard fans freaking out about?

(Content warning: Dudes talking about breasts, virtual and real, in ways that are truly strange and may be upsetting to an audience.)

Yes, this is toned down from previous games.

“In a perfect world, I should be able to play with Kasumi and Ayane wearing nothing but nipple tassels and butt-floss bikinis and anyone with common sense and self-confidence should be able to look past that, join me in a match, and dig into the game’s mechanics.

Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world.”

This is the kind of discourse present on the Reddit Thread ‘Dead or Alive 6 Controversy Megathread’.

The controversy that the thread title refers to is an article that Yohei Shimbori gave last year about toning down the fan service in Dead or Alive 6, a series which has been better known for its depictions of women fighters in skimpy clothing, with a fantastical physics system that their breasts are rendered with.

Through a translator, Shimbori explained his reasons for toning down said fan service. One reason was to appeal to the growing e-sports market, because while apparently Super Smash Brothers Ultimate is taken as seriously as a foreign film about sad children, Dead or Alive 6 is regarded as a bit too much. The other reason was to conform to ‘current world trends’, in that audiences are looking down on games with too much sexual content, which then leads to difficulty marketing (and selling) the game.

For clarity and context, Dead or Alive 5 had an unlockable OMG Mode, which was an extremely hard to unlock mode that allowed a toggle option. If you toggled it on, the breasts of female characters would move up and down whether they were moving or not. Metaphors fail me, so I’ve included a video for your viewing displeasure:

Shimbori’s explanations, to my eyes, seem like genuine reasons to want to tone down your game. You want your game to be taken more seriously, you don’t want it to turn off potential audiences. It’s a little problematic that his reasons don’t include ‘because it is incredibly bad to objectify women in this way’ or ‘our series is one of the most famous examples of the objectification of virtual women’, but hey. Foetus steps.

Other gems from this particular Reddit thread include:

“Regarding breast physics, I’m also not sure if people actually know how breasts work in real life, they flop around like crazy if you’re not wearing a fitting bra. Breasts are made of a LOT of fat (think Jello) so it’s actually UNREALISTIC if they aren’t moving around too much, but people will use the “realism” excuse to force their agenda anyway.”

Think Jello.

A still from Dead or Alive 2, the halcyon days for some Reddit users.

“I never cared for the bikinis, I thought katsumi default in do5 was perfect, when they are bare and lack any features like muscle tone they look like barbies. More muscle pls.”

Take [sic] as implied.

Another thread, with the more emotive subject heading ‘Doa 6 is breaking my heart’ has some argumentative gymnastics that would qualify for the 2020 Olympics. Such as:

“They really need to get different settings in the game for people who care about the game and for people who want to see big boobs.

Personally, DOA5 was too sexualized for me, and I actually LOVE sexualization.”

Bless your feminist heart, redacted Reddit user.

And finally, finally, this gem:

” … as someone who prefers it toned back this to me creates more diversity. For me, in DoA6 everyone just felt big and if they weren’t it was literally Marie Rose. Mila or Leifang are probably the smallest otherwise but I mean, they’re not exactly small.

I don’t know the intentions or the perspective of the developers but it might just be creating diversity where DoA5 lacked.”

If ever there was an argument against the word ‘diversity’, this message would be one of the footnotes.

This is an actual costume in Dead or Alive 5.

Fans are defensive of what they love, regardless of the form. If anybody comes for my sweet blessed The Hours (book or film), I’m sure I would be as defensive as these lads are about Dead or Alive. To them, the feeling is as though something they love is being changed by someone who was never going to engage with it in the first place. For all the mental gymnastics involved with defending this fanservice, the prevailing feeling is one of: “This is my thing, this is what I love about it, why should it change for you?”

There is a genuine investment from these men – and let’s be real, these are men, these are lads, these are bois – in breast physics, and the depiction of them.

Is it right? God no. It doesn’t take a gender studies major to draw a link between this kind of representation and the harmful effects it has on real living women – and the brains of real, living men. But is it understandable? Unfortunately, yes. Nobody wants something they love to change for somebody who doesn’t even love it – regardless of how harmful the politics of the thing they love is.

It got to the point where in an apology, in a promo Twitch video featuring two gravure idols (softcore Japanese models) playing the game, EVO (an e-sports purveyor) said that the video did not reflect the ‘core values’ of the company. Since then, the phrase ‘core values’ has been used in reference to fanservice in the Dead or Alive series, among other things.

Sexualisation in video games is not an inherently bad thing. God knows, it would be amazing if video games with the reach of Dead or Alive were engaging with adult sexuality in a mature and nuanced way – but that feels like a long way off. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t be holding the artform, and this level of the artform, to account. It is an undeniable fact that the root reason for the sexualisation, such as it is, in the Dead or Alive series is straight-up objectification of women. There is no sound ideological defence for that.

A step in the right direction – a step away from objectification – for whatever reason, is a good one. Even if you consider that this is a series where scantily clad women (and also men, even though nobody ever talks about the men in the Dead or Alive series) hit each other in order to win a fighting tournament, and also there’s some crap about ninjas, cyborgs, ninja-cyborgs and cyborg-ninjas. It’s a step. Again, a foetal one, and not one that is worthy of pats on the back, but one worth noting.

This is the series we’re talking about here, just to remind you.

So what awaits Dead or Alive 6 when it debuts this Friday?

Honestly, probably nothing cataclysmic. The Dead or Alive 6 sub-reddit has 5.6K subscribers. Dead or Alive 5 sold around five million copies, physically and digitally. One person’s controversy is another person’s, “Wait. What?”

If you’re not someone who is already invested in this series’ and it’s so-called fanservice, then it will seem like nothing has changed. These women are still objectified. They’re still wearing skimpy outfits, however optional they may be. There is an option to make their breasts move in a way that breasts have never moved. That’s still a problem, and if you weren’t taking a fighting game called Dead or Alive, with a spin-off beach volleyball game seriously, you’re not going to start now. Breast physics or no breast physics, you’re out.

I’ll leave this piece on the note of another unnamed Reddit user:

“The breasts look pretty much same to me, I have been trying my best to compare and I can’t really see any difference at all.”