Glamour and Glitter, Fashion and Fame! And A Bunch of Dudes In Charge

As surely everyone is aware by now - or at least everyone who'd be interested in such a thing - a live-action Jem and the Holograms film is in the works. (Also, thanks everyone who sent me links to the news, I kinda love that people associate me with Jem, Sweet Valley High and zombies. Three of the Best Things Ever.)

Anway, Jem! She of the truly outrageous pastel pink hair and blingy Eighties fashion and damn catchy songs and secret double life!

Me, on hearing the news.

I've written about the wonder that is Jem here before and have been hooring my way through episodes of it on Netflix, often while tweeting my appreciation of things like ALL OF THIS AMAZING ZEBRA PRINT.

Oh, The Misfits. Never change. And your songs ARE better.

However, the more I've heard about the film, the more cautious my excitement has become. In fact, you might say that I'm downright skeptical of the whole thing. One of the reasons for this is the bro trifecta that appear to be in charge of the endeavour.

Namely, Scooter Braun (Justin Bieber's manager), Jon M. Chu (director of two Bieber documentaries, Step Up 2: The Streets, GI Joe: Retaliation and other mediocre-at-best films with colons in their titles) and Jason Blum (producer of the Paranormal Activity franchise). HMMM.

Maybe it makes a kind of commercial, tweeny-pop sense for such Bieber-associated involvement, if that's the demographic they're hoping to snag with the film, but I can't help scrunching up my face at the very notion, seeing as Bieber is essentially the Joffrey Baratheon of this decade. Even Sansa Stark said so.

And considering that the majority of the show's existing fans are women around my age who think Bieber is an entitled little shithead who would benefit hugely from a root up the hole, I know I'm not alone in my unease about the whole thing.

Secondly, the original Jem creator and writer, Christy Marx has been left out of the whole process, which is some Grade A bullshit. So not only are a bunch of dudes taking over telling the story of Jem, Hasbro have shut out the WOMAN WHO CREATED IT.

I know, Donna. I know.

Considering how female-centric Jem and the Holograms is - an all-female band with a lead singer who's also a record executive and den mother to a home full of orphaned girls, not to mention the legit awesome all-girl rival band of punky bitches - why the hell aren't there any women involved in developing the movie?

I feel you, Kimber. Jem would have to hold me back too.

Also, they're "crowd sourcing creativity" for the film, with an open call for ideas for costumes, casting, songs and even audition tapes, as confirmed in their dumb announcement video, where one of them keeps randomly firing some kind of Nerf gun for no goddamn reason. Can you tell I'm not overly fond of them?



The "if you have a cool mom, she'll definitely know what it is" bit really rankled me for some reason. I think I told the video to fuck off at that point.

Anyway, I really want to be excited about a Jem film and maybe they'll get a whole bunch of female writers on board and it won't suck and it might turn out to be a really fun film, in which case I'll gladly stand corrected. But right now I'm apprehensive as hell.


I'll leave you with a Misfits classic. Good luck getting it out of your head for the next four days.