Month: February 2019

Every year Hollywood’s finest gathers at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for a night of entertainment, fine dining, and nerve-wracking competition to decide who gets to go home with the esteemed award.

This years hosts were SNL alumni and star of NBC’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Andy Samberg, and the revered Sandra Oh, mostly known for her performance on Grey’s Anatomy. This year Oh was the winner of the Best Actress in a TV Drama award.

As for Best Motion Picture, fan-favorite and critic-catastrophe, Bohemian Rhapsody, took home the gold. This became a sudden topic of discussion as the biopic has been consistently under fire for its queer erasure.

Throughout the film neon lights and longing stares were apparently enough to equate for queer representation, and while this was almost more than enough, and not too displeasing for straight viewers, the queer audience shifted in their seats uncomfortably; conflicted because there were heavy tones and faded subplot lines that almost worked, but still didn’t quite meet the mark.

When Freddie officially addresses his bisexuality in the film, he is promptly corrected by Mary Austin (his then fiancee), “Freddie, you’re gay.” This was a key moment in the film, for its what caused the deep rift between Mercury and Austin and forever changed the nature of their relationship, but it also caused a rift between Bohemian Rhapsody and its queer audience. By diminishing Mercury’s self-identification, Bohemian also decimated any idea of bisexuality validation and representation in the film.

While Bohemian struggled with proper representation, the other nominations for Best Motion Picture oozed diversity. The runner ups, BlacKkKlansman, Black Panther, and If Beale Street Could Talk, all had dominantly African-American casts, which isn’t something you see very often at American awards shows.

Seeing the nominations prior to the show almost led one to believe major change was taking place, and while its definitely in the works, the film industry has a long way to go, in more ways than one.

Harriet Hall of the Independent had her own idea of what was the worst part of the 2019 Golden Globes. And it wasn’t Bohemian’s win that upset her, it was the ever-deteriorating percentage of established female-directors and the ever-growing male dominance in the industry.

Hall wrote that all was well in the “pale, male and stale film industry,” it was elsewhere, like usual, that the problems lied. Men left the Golden Globes with all of the frontrunners; Best Drama, Best Musical or Comedy (Peter Farrelly’s Green Book), Best Director (Alfonso Cuaron for Roma), Best Screenplay (Green Book) and Best Foreign Language film (Roma).

And while there’s other awards that women happened to win, and they matter too, we can’t pretend they’re as equally mentionable and honorable as Best Drama, Best Picture, and Best Director.

Hall closed her piece with a powerful statement: “Thank goodness women were there [at the Golden Globes] to stand up for themselves—because its clear no one else will.” If nothing else, this years Golden Globes reiterated once again that the film industry has a long way to go before women and people of color alike receive equal standing.

On the evening of January 12th, Little Mix’s Jesy Nelson received backlash for posting a video of her singing along to an R Kelly song after yelling “yes, R Kelly’s Ignition!” The people calling her out claimed she was uneducated since an entire docuseries about the sexual abuse allegations of R Kelly had just come out. Instead of not singing along to the song, knowing that he’s disgusting, she decided to post on her story to her millions of followers, allegedly praising him and his music.

After the backlash, instead of listening to what people had to say, she disabled her comments, and even friends of hers blocked fans that politely told them to educate Jesy. One of her friends even told fans that they were “looking for pathetic things” to call her out for.

This isn’t the first time that she’s been ignorant. On New Year’s Eve, she posted a video of her white friend singing the n-word a few times in a row in the song “Freaky Friday” by Lil Dicky ft. Chris Brown during a party. She even claimed that she was the only one sober, making this decision to post the video even more ignorant. There have been other allegations of cultural appropriation, scandals surrounding her once having orange dreads, and the tanning of her skin that made even some of her own fans once believe she was mixed raced, even though she’s fully white.

Another incident that happened on January 25th is a video that she posted on her story of her singing along to a Chris Brown song days after allegations came out that he’s a rapist. It almost seems that she’s doing all of this on purpose.

These offenses seem to keep getting brushed aside. She ignores the problematic nature of the situation, and seemingly, many fans of Little Mix tried their best to ignore it as well. Her friends and even her hairstylist have attacked fans for calling her out, calling them pathetic and “petty.” “It’s just hair” or “it’s just a song,” they would say, completely ignoring the deeper feelings that fans have.

A lot of Little Mix fans, called Mixers, are people of color, and a lot of them are black. Those fans are going to be offended and disappointed that their favorite artist is allowing their white friend to say the n-word. It will obviously be a bigger impact on the minority group of fans; no one can change that.

This goes the same way for sexual assault survivors and victims of abuse who don’t agree with Jesy happily singing along to a known pedophile and rapist’s song, as well as a woman abuser’s song. That is something that they will obviously have deep feelings for and won’t blindly be at Jesy’s side to defend her.

Some Mixers have defended  her actions, and that’s the bad part about this. It might be hard for them to understand but hey: calling out your favorite artist, actor, or celebrity isn’t hate. You can still adore them but acknowledge that they’ve done something problematic and should apologize. Commenting underneath their pictures telling them what they’ve done is wrong isn’t hate, it’s telling the truth about a situation that needs to be resolved.

This happens all of the time in fandoms. The celebrity that people adore does something wrong and instead of the fans rushing to blame them for their actions, they look for excuses so they can still praise their favorite celebrity and not see what’s so clearly wrong in front of them. They act in denial and look for little things that can excuse said actions, before forever brushing it off to the side and never talking about it again.

I’ve seen Mixers tell other fans that they are “fake fans” if they are not defending Nelson’s actions and that you should be a fan of all of the girl group, not just three of them. I’ve even seen people telling Nelson that she “shouldn’t listen to the haters” and her even liking a few comments that are blatantly defending her, showing that her and these other fans are still very much ignorant and in denial about this all. And that’s where the problem lies.

Instead of talking about the actual issues, like artists supporting very problematic artists or the inappropriate use of the n-word or white people cultural appropriating, they flood the artist with love and praise, as if any of these issues aren’t real issues. Fans talk of “fake wokeness” and “people take things too seriously.” Sexual assault survivors and black people should have the right to feel offended by these posts.

While justifying Jesy’s actions, fans are also making sexual assault survivors who have a right to be disappointed feel their experience discounted. You can’t tell them how to feel if you’ve never been in their shoes. Same with black people dealing with her white friend easily saying the n-word. You can’t tell them how to feel if you aren’t black.

Praising R Kelly and Chris Brown and their songs is still allowing yourself to just brush over all of the allegations and things that they have done. Their music all tie with the disgusting things they have done, so no, it’s not just a song. And she isn’t just oblivious of what these men have done, being in the music industry and all.

Jesy Nelson’s actions and the defending nature of some of her fans just shows how ignorant and unwilling people can be to become educated about these issues.

Music festivals are the trend of the century. From Burning Man to Coachella, and Lollapalooza to the Electric Daisy Carnival, festivals have become some of the most desired entertainment events of the year. Fyre Festival was meant to be one of these events, a weekend long music festival set to occur for two weekends, on April 28-30 and May 5-7 of 2017.

Fyre Festival was advertised as a luxury music festival to take place on a private island in the Bahamas. The island promised was supposedly once owned by the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. The festival was highly promoted and a promotional video was shared by some of the titans of the celebrity and modeling world. Hailey Baldwin, Emily Ratajkowski, Bella Hadid, and even Kendall Jenner were among those who were featured in the promotional videos and photos. The event included music from Blink-182, Migos, Major Lazer, and many others. Tickets sold from $500 to $12,000.

The man behind this festival was Billy McFarland and his celebrity partner, Ja Rule. Billy McFarland said prior to the event “It’s going to be the biggest event in decades, I promise you,” in a short video introduction for the Netflix Documentary. He wasn’t fully wrong, it was the biggest event of the decade, but not in the way he hoped.

Many things were promised, including, a paradise island, geodesic domes, and meals from celebrity chefs. None of these promises were delivered upon. The island was not once owned by Pablo Escobar, the festival was oversold, villas that didn’t exist were sold, there were no toilets, mattresses were scattered everywhere, and soon, music groups pulled out.

Guest were placed in FEMA hurricane rescue tents, fed prepared cheese sandwiches in foam containers, and given no water. Flight situations were a disaster, causing delays and leaving most of the guests to become stranded. Some were hospitalized due to heat strokes and dehydration. The inability to leave made the disaster worse.

People at home were shocked and the event caused tons of controversy. How could an event heavily promoted by elite influencers fail this hard? Tweets, pictures, and videos surfaced. The cheese sandwich with a side of two pieces of lettuce went viral and memes were made. People at home were gleeful to watch this disaster go down. The topic was trending for weeks; this was the talk of the decade as Billy McFarland promised.

Many were left unpaid for their work, the island suffered, locals were suffering, and full responsibility was never taken. A Great Exuma restaurant owner, Maryann Rolle, was one of the restaurant owners that helped cater to the guests after the fiasco occured. She was never paid, used her own life savings to cater to those stranded, and got little to no thanks. Her testimony of the event was included on the Netflix documentary of the event. After the documentary, a gofundme was made to repay her for her services and is still ongoing.

In late 2018, Netflix announced they had the license for the Fyre Festival disaster documentary. Then, on January 14th, 2019, Hulu dropped their own Fyre Festival documentary, Fyre Fraud right before the highly anticipated Netflix Documentary.

Hulu’s Fyre Fraud documentary included an exclusive interview from Billy McFarland, that they paid six figures for. Exclusive videos from influencers that attended were also included. It recalled the moment and weeks prior to the festival and the event in the eyes of McFarland.

Netflix dropped their documentary, FYRE: the Greatest Party That Never Happened, on January 18th, 2019 and was co produced by Jerry Media, one of the biggest advertisers for the event. It included videos of Billy Mcfarland in a home video and testimonials from workers, locals, and management.

Some involved took responsibility for this disaster, though many didn’t. In a meeting with the event creators, the quote “We didn’t kill anybody, nobody got hurt, we made a mistake, we’ll get past it,” was thrown out there. Fyre Media hoped to recover and still launch their app that allows users to book celebrities for events. They compared themselves to Samsung and their exploding phones.

Another story developed after the festival that Netflix touched on. Employees were told they weren’t fired, but won’t be paid, leaving the only option for employees is to quit without pay and benefits.

The Netflix documentary told a better story, and the use of stories told in many different viewpoints offered the viewers the whole story told by everyone, those involved, locals, both paid and unpaid workers, influencers, those affected, friends of McFarland, and those who were trying to expose the festival from the start.

Hulu’s Fyre Fraud was told only by a few people. The documentary seemed like a standard and stale documentary, not fitting for this disaster. Netflix touched on more of the event than Hulu. More importantly, Netflix mentioned more of the aftermath and effects of the festival. Hulu’s Fyre Fraud was an okay watch but seemed rushed to release to compete with the Netflix Documentary. The competition alone was promotion enough for the Hulu documentary as no prior advertisement was presented.

FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, was truly a fitting and appropriate documentary for the event. It obtained better reviews than the Hulu documentary and was an interesting and great watch, though Fyre Fraud wasn’t terrible, Netflix has a bigger audience pool making the documentary more accessible and was truly an educational and interesting watch.