Musical Hell

The October episode is running late, partially because of real-world commitments and partially because it's running long because as is often the case with the Zombies movies I Have Opinions. Look for it later this week.

2 years ago | [YT] | 320

Musical Hell

The Playmobil Saga continues....

So this morning, not only did Vimeo remove the Playmobil video, they took down my entire channel in the process. I apologize for the inconvenience and annoyance, and thank everyone who watched and commented thus far.

The review will be back in some (probably very petty and maliciously compliant) form, but it will take time to re-edit. Not sure how long that will take, but I'm not abandoning this yet.

In the meantime, support striking creatives as they fight for fair treatment:
entertainmentcommunity.org/
mptf.com/

3 years ago | [YT] | 358

Musical Hell

Hey everyone, I'm back from vacation but I didn't get as far along into the editing process before I left. Expect "Mr. Quilp" to show up on Monday the 23rd. Stay chill until then!

4 years ago | [YT] | 331

Musical Hell

*looks left*

*looks right*

*sneaks in, casually drops link to disputed video on the table*

*sneaks out*

archive.org/details/episode-115-music

4 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 226

Musical Hell

Thank you everyone who got in to see the "Music" review before the copyright monkeys got a hold of it. I'm currently appealing the claim, so hopefully the video will be back up in another couple days. In the meantime I am looking into alternative hosting and will post that information here when available. Thank you so much for your patience!

ETA: See the episode now on Archive.org: archive.org/details/episode-115-music

4 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,186

Musical Hell

First off, thanks to everyone for your honest opinions and perspective. You gave me a lot to think about, and some options to consider.
When I first reviewed The Wiz, I approached it the way I approach everything else I review--discussing where the movie went wrong (and where it gets it right) and hopefully making a few people laugh along the way. And for the most part it was received as such. But from time to time people would crop up in my comments explaining what the film meant to them as a piece of Black culture, which admittedly wasn't an angle I had considered. A few told me that as a white person I wasn't capable of understanding the film, and that I was racist for even trying.
These last comments I handled the way I do every comment I come across that involves personal attacks, which was to delete them and move on. But in examining my own racial blind spots, I started to think they might have had a point. After all, The Wiz is one of the few family-friendly movies from its era with an all-Black cast; surely that counts for something. Maybe this was one subject I should step back from.
The responses--well, you can go down to the last post and read them for yourself. Most were supportive, some questioned whether anything in the review was truly offensive, some offered alternatives to removing the review, and a few questioned my motives, or said it was racist to assume Black viewers were too fragile to handle criticism of their media. At this point, my knee-jerk response was "fuck it, no matter what I do I'll piss someone off." This is of course an unhelpful attitude, because a) it's playing the victim, which is stupid and self-centered and b) it assumes a unified response to my behavior is possible or even desirable, which is just plain stupid. So I told my ego to take a seat and took some time to think about what I could learn from listening to the responses, both supportive and critical.
The fact is, I cannot tell any Black person how they should react to something that touches on their experience, whether it's a film adaptation of arguably the most recognized all-Black musical, or my critique said film adaptation. I can only offer my limited perspective in good faith, and hope that everyone who has a different perspective will respond in kind.
With that in mind, I have decide to re-post the Wiz review. It is currently uploading and should be available in a few hours (or a couple days, depending on the whims of the content gods). Some added context is included in the video information, but otherwise it will be presented as-is. It's just the opinion of a random white theater nerd, and should be taken with that particular grain of salt.
(The King and I review is staying down, though. That joke was awful, I feel awful for doing it, and the YouTube content bots decided long ago they didn't like the whole thing anyway.)

6 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 900

Musical Hell

After thinking a lot about what’s been going over the past week and some self-examination, I have decided to remove the reviews for The Wiz and The King and I from my channel.

While I still consider the 1978 film of The Wiz to be an inferior adaptation of the stage musical, I’ve had a lot of black viewers explain to me how much it meant to them in terms of representation and a cultural touchstone. This was an aspect of the movie I had not considered and which I’m not qualified to address. In light of that, I choose to step back into my particular lane on this topic.

I’m rather more ashamed of the King and I review, which featured a joke where I and several guests mangle the pronunciation of Prince Chulalongkorn’s name. This example of the awful “foreign names are weird” trope was made worse because it was at the expense of a respected figure in Thai culture. It was done in carelessness and ignorance, but that is no excuse and I sincerely apologize for it.

I had left both reviews where they were until now for completion’s sake, and because I didn’t want to hide my past mistakes. But recently I have come to the decision that I don’t want to cause any more hurt than I already have. Besides, I’m not Warner Brothers archiving their WWII propaganda films for historical context--I’m a silly YouTube review show where I spout my opinions on musicals in the hopes that it might make someone smile for a couple minutes. Leaving insensitive comments where they were would contradict that goal.

I am still learning--about my privilege, about what I can do to help, about all the things I don’t know I don’t know. I apologize once again for where I have stumbled in that process, and will try to be better in the future.

6 years ago | [YT] | 1,494

Musical Hell

Hey everyone, in my continuing effort to stave off everyone's cabin fever I will be joining in on a live stream of the already-notorious Cats movie! Check it out at 5pm EST tomorrow!

6 years ago | [YT] | 62