Pop CultureJuly 17, 2017

Power ranking the most violent acts female actors have committed against male fans

Editor

BBC have announced that the 13th Doctor in Doctor Who will be played by a mere human woman and men are not happy. Sadly, this isn’t the first time a woman has committed an act of violence against thousands of men. Madeleine Chapman ranks the worst of them.

There’s nothing worse than blatantly miscasting a fictional character, and no one knows this more than the die-hard male fans of movies and television. They’re an angry bunch, those nerds. They’ll defend their beloved characters to their dying day, so long as that beloved character is white and male. Which, until recently, was a given.

BBC announced the 13th Doctor through a trailer that screened after the men’s Wimbledon final in the closest thing the UK has to a Super Bowl ad slot. It was hotly anticipated, and played up the suspense by having the Doctor walk away from the camera, hood up, for most of the 30 seconds. Then a womanly hand appeared and testicles all over the world began to shrivel. By the time the Doctor had pulled her hood back to reveal actress Jodie Whittaker, it can only be assumed that some Whovians had shat themselves. Luckily, phones can be used in the bathroom so they wasted no time at all in mainlining their masculine rage into the Twitter and comment sections the world over.

To honour the casting of an excellent actor in an iconic role, and the hilarious rage that inevitably follows, here’s a power ranking of each (recent) act of violence against male movie fans and their beloved fictional universes.

6) Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road was snubbed for the Best Picture Oscar in 2016 (JUST MY OPINION) and I was not impressed. But even less impressed with life itself was men’s rights activist group Return of Kings, a blog for those who believe “men should be masculine and women should be feminine.” They were furious(a) when they found out a movie about a manly man named Max was also going to feature a prominent female character. How. Dare. They. It was a very funny rant that got laughed at and was mostly harmless, except it gave some men an excuse to shit on one of the coolest characters in film history.

5) Ocean’s Eight

I have tentatively placed Ocean’s Eight this far down because it hasn’t even come out yet, but I’m sure it’ll move up once the first trailer is released. Lucky for us, opinions are out there despite the lack of information and they’re not great. There has been literally one photo released, which makes me want to see it (though I’d want to see it even more if it were called anything but Ocean’s Eight). And from that one photo we have the first ripple in the inevitable ocean of bile that’ll appear closer to its release date.

4) Star Wars

The more time that passes between sequels – or prequels or installments whatever you want to call them – the more time movie makers have to think about who their casts represent. Disney decided that with the latest installments in the Star Wars franchise, maybe there should be some women doing stuff too. So naturally it angered Star Wars fanboys who were still holding out hope that Harrison Ford hadn’t aged and could travel through time to play every character in the movie. Instead they got a woman and a black storm trooper and their lives were ruined.

3) Wonder Women-only screenings

Not the most vile but definitely the most ridiculous. Superhero fans got their Superman boxers in a knot when Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse cinema announced there would be one, just one, women-only screening of Wonder Woman. That’s right, there was one screening on one day (not opening day) at one cinema in one city in America for women only and men. lost. their. minds. It was hilarious but worrying that something so insignificant could anger so many men. It’s the equivalent of getting mad because the restaurant you eat meat at also has a vegetarian option. Though now that I think about it, I’m sure that’s happened a worrying number of times. Men threatened to show up anyway despite no women ever intruding on the unintentionally male-only screenings of Entourage. Thankfully, the Alamo Drafthouse is one of the coolest cinemas in the world and their responses to men’s ridiculous complaints were *mwah*.

2) Doctor Who 13

The latest turd pile of opinions has been served up on this very day thanks to Dr Jodie Whittaker. Lifelong fans have had their childhoods ruined, their homes burned to the ground, their families kidnapped, and their lives put in real danger because of this casting decision. The Doctor isn’t even a human so already BBC were wrong by casting skinny white men to portray him all these years. But by God, now they’ve cast a woman to play an alien which is so much worse. When will this PC madness end? I decided to go directly to the source of terrible comments and on my way I learned that the Daily Mail managed to be their usual worst self.

1) Ghostbusters

The jewel in the men-getting-mad-at-things-that-they-could-easily-ignore crown is the hate tirade that led to death threats and cyber attacks on Leslie Jones, one of the stars of the all-female Ghostbusters. Once again, childhoods were ruined for the umpteenth time and men felt personally victimised by a piece of fictional story-telling. Was Ghostbusters as good as the original or even as good as we hoped it would be? No. But was it an act of violence against movie fans who now have to walk around with no childhood to reminisce on? According to thousands of men, yes.

It’s a funny thing when men loudly complain that women are getting all the lead roles and men are being portrayed as one-dimensional idiots. It’s like the last 60 years of cinema never happened. I’m going to be optimistic and say that it seems like every time a woman gets cast in a lead role, a few more men jump off the hate wagon and into the ever popular why-should-I-even-care cart. Eventually, hopefully before I die, the rage over a woman being cast as a shape-shifting alien will be because of something other than her boobs.

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Pop CultureJuly 17, 2017

‘Not a cent’: Oddly Even’s Isla Macleod on winning TVNZ’s New Blood competition with no money

Emma Clark

Guest writer

TVNZ’s New Blood competition crowned its winner last month and awarded one team $100,000 to make a web series. Emma Clark talks to Isla Macleod, one half of the winning pair behind Oddly Even, about producing quality content on a non existent budget.

TVNZ web series competition New Blood has lived up to its namesake after announcing the winners on Monday morning. Out of 163 entries, underdog entry Oddly Even won the popularity vote out of the top 10 finalists, despite being up against ex-Shortland Street stars (Grace Palmer) and experienced web producers (Luci Hare of Auckward Love). They will now get $100,000 to make the pilot into a full webseries. It’s a pretty big deal.

After they met at New Zealand Broadcasting School, creators Ashleigh and Isla were determined to make something together. Both working full-time in the industry, they used their free time and weekends to put the pilot together. Based on two sisters, Olivia and Frankie Hart, Oddly Even draws comedy from situations and experiences that Isla and Ashleigh have suffered through in their own lives.

After the win, I chatted to Isla about the commitment Oddly Even took from her whole team, and the ideas behind the series.

In regard to the storyline – did the story mirror any kind of situation in your lives?

Very much so. Ash and I embarrass ourselves on a daily basis, and we always joke that we’d be great to be in a TV show so that people could just laugh at us the whole time. We have notepads filled with ideas and silly things that have happened to us, and so when it came to entering the competition we had so much ammunition and content. We wanted to set it in New Zealand, in present time, with characters that were our age, so we could bring all those situations to life. That’s why at the very start we based it on sisters, as Ash and I both come from very big families. We got lots of inspiration from stuff going on with siblings, and having flatmates and busy houses. Once we pegged on to having two sisters, we thought of the two actors we know who we respected and who look like sisters. And Ash had always said to me, if we ever make something that has two sisters in it, we should cast these two actors, who are brilliant. That is Beth Alexander and Lucy Suttor. So once we had that, we started writing with those two in mind.

That’s awesome. Did you have any type of funding to pay the actors or crew?

No, not a cent. The cast and the crew did it out of love for the project. Obviously, we told them that it was for a competition, and if we won, then they would have a paid role. We literally called up people that we had met from Broadcasting School, or that we had met in the industry. The cast was friends or friends of friends, and we did do a casting call but we made it very clear there was no fee. We were shooting on the weekends or rehearsing in the evenings after a full day of work. And everyone gave up their free time basically to help us out. And I think that’s the one thing that we are most proud of, that people believed in us enough to give up their time. It was a real team effort. We couldn’t have done it without them.

Do you think your all round “relatability” – your age, the fact that you did this with no funding or much time, helped with your popularity vote?

Yeah, definitely. That’s the one thing at the end of the day – money. So we knew we were taking a risk. But we figured that if we found it funny and our friends, who are accountants or finishing their law degree, found it funny, surely we were doing something right. Something that young Kiwis can watch today.

Do you think that this win will change your career path, and give you a jumpstart?

This is a major stepping stone for us and a major opportunity. Obviously, the funding is incredible, but in the scheme of things, making content in television and web series is incredibly expensive and time-consuming. So although the funding is great, one of the massive advantages is the exposure. And the fact that we have the competition winner to our name, and all the connections and content that we can make from now with all those resources behind us – that is massive. It is the main reason we entered the competition. We are very much new blood, everybody in the crew and 99% of the cast are under 25. We are what you would call “not very established” in the industry. All the music is from local Kiwi emerging bands and artists. We were up against pretty big guns with the other finalists, so I am just so proud of the public vote. They’ve given people a chance who didn’t have a voice before, or a platform.

That makes the win even more impressive, because your team came out with just-out-of-uni experience, up against people who had spent years in the industry.

Exactly, and what I think really helped is that the whole crew graduated Broadcasting School basically at the beginning of last year, so we’ve had about 2 years working, as you had to do an internship in the industry at the end of your degree. So it was that perfect timing of going to uni and being taught the skills, and then working in the industry for a couple of years learning the ropes, and then we were itching to make something of our own. This competition came along at the most fortunate time, I couldn’t believe it.

Have you two written any more of the series?

We’ve done rough story lining. When you enter the competition, as well as the pilot you have to enter brief paperwork about your ideas. Just so they knew you had a general idea where the story was going. We had the main points in our head locked down but story lining and scripting takes months. In major TV shows they have big writers tables and they all go on retreats. Every minute planned is a minute saved down the line. There were 163 teams that entered and we weren’t expecting to win, so we didn’t go too far down the track. We know the main points, we know where it is heading and we know the ending of season one. But we don’t know the exact script.

What is the main thing you have taken away from this experience?

I think for us, the main thing is being so proud of the team effort, and we are so excited to give back now. The public voted for us, and we feel the responsibility to deliver something that they’ll all enjoy. We’re just really excited to bring it to life and be able to thank everybody. It is a really cool payback.