Sorry gays, we're not doing 'WICKEDIATOR'
13 Reasons Why We're Not Doing 'WICKEDIATOR' and why carefully orchestrating 'cultural moments' will never work
Like most people, I squirm when I hear the words ‘organic’ or ‘authentic’. Even as someone who actively promotes the benefit of inhabiting those qualities as a human being, I can acknowledge that there’s a significant level of cringe that those phrases carry.
But in the world of film, or meme culture - some of the most identifiable moments that we still reference to this day have been just that. Organic responses from celebrities or interesting looking blue haired people that have, over time, become irreverent reactions to all of life’s problems. Some even creating careers after being spotted in the back of news clips doing something iconic.
Take Karlie Kloss looking camp right in the eye. It’s meme royalty, a moment so authentically funny that she didn’t even realise that sending that picture out into the world was in fact the most hilarious thing she’s ever done. That’s what makes internet moments or phenomena truly funny. The naive and authentic intention from the person posting gets gently mocked and poked at until the very fact that the post itself was (at some point) posted with complete sincerity makes the joke ten times funnier. We’re not laughing AT Karlie Kloss, but at the same time, we absolutely are - with the upmost respect and love of course. She goes to dinner with the Kushners after all.
But where the internet falls foul is when it sets out to intentionally create a referential moment, in the hopes that it appears like it happened all by itself. We’re gay and on the internet which means we’re incredibly savvy to ‘faux authenticity.’
A rare moment of what one could call ‘curated authenticity’ was ‘Barbenheimer'. Of course those at Warner Brothers knew that they were releasing Margot Robbie’s shiny pink hit at the same time as Christopher Nolan’s atomic wet dream - but to us as the audience it felt more like a funny coincidence rather than an orchestrated marketing ploy to create what globally became known as ‘Barbenheimer’. The juxtaposition of Cillian Murphy’s blue eyes alongside extravagantly long sequences of bombs exploding with Margot Robbie ‘dancing the night away’ was what made the event so organically interesting as a cinema goer. The two films couldn’t be further apart on every axis, yet audiences had a genuine interest in going to see both, one after the other in their pink garb - joining the millions of people around the world who would be doing the same. Collectively, ‘Barbenheimer’ fever took over the world, with the marketing budget for the film more than the cost of its production at a staggering $150 million.
So when I awoke to the news earlier this week that Jon M. Chu’s Wicked Part 1 was having its release date changed to prevent a clash with the release of Moana 2, I felt glee at the prospect of having this much anticipated film a few days earlier. Rather than the 27th November, we’ll now see Miss Grande and Miss Erivo promptly on the 22nd. Beautiful.
But suddenly, the ground began trembling as gay members of society realised that this coincided with the US and Canada release of Gladiator II, which also falls on the 22nd. (In the UK and internationally we’re getting Paul Mescal and his blood stained torso on the 15th November.)
It took them all of two seconds to come up with a name for this new blockbuster clash and promptly the internet was introduced to a word that can only be described as painful to look at.
‘WICKEDIATOR’.
The meme’s began, with Jon M. Chu fuelling the internet frenzy by quote tweeting some of what he must presume are ‘funny tweets’ that are ‘funny to read’ and ‘funny to other people too’.
As I perused the influx of memes and gay people writing things on the internet, I realised that this was in fact - not funny in the slightest. In the words of Regina George, stop trying to make ‘WICKEDIATOR’ happen.
Surely a better name would’ve been ‘GLADICKED’ anyway because gay people obviously think things are funnier if it sounds like you’ve managed to sneak a synonym for cock in there.
Although harmless and inoffensive, this attempt by many to create the new ‘Barbenheimer’ just doesn’t work for the sole reason that it has been manufactured with the intention to replicate something that was so organically infectious. Barbie was so anticipated because of its mystery - we didn’t know what we were going to see when we sat down in the cinema and that’s why millions of us wore pink socks and posed inside Barbie boxes at our local cinema, because we had a genuine curiosity about the film.
Neither Gladiator nor Wicked have an air of suspense or seem to promise a staggering shift in narrative from what we already know, because of the fact that (more so with Wicked) we understand what the story is going to be. We’re not going to sit down to Wicked and it’s suddenly a film about the birth of famous alcholic drink WKD or a cartoon about a wick of a candle named Ed. She’s green, he’s got a sword and a shield - that seems fine and understandable. Barbie was rogue - were we getting a cartoon? Were we getting a feminist allegory? We had no clue until Helen Mirren started narrating and dolls began exploding on screen.
But more crucially, forcing a cultural moment inevitably pushes many to not want to partake in it because of the very fact that it’s being so obviously marketed at us. Like when you know you’ve got to put your washing away, but then someone tells you to do it so you then don’t do it because you’ve been told to. It’s demand avoidance, but about a green witch and a sexy Irish man. Perhaps the gayest example known to man.
So i’d say no gays - I think you’ve got this one wrong. Sure, it’s tough to offer internal critique of a community that so often have their finger on the pulse and have created some of the most hilarious memes of all time (eg: GO PISS GIRL). But this time, i’m afraid ‘WICKEDIATOR’ isn’t the serve you think it is, and the more we try and make it happen, the more frustrated us cynical gays will become. There’s nothing more obvious than faux authenticity, especially when we live in a time when true authenticity is so clear, especially when it comes to marketing. We’re gay, we’re savvy - we know when we’re being sold something and 9 times out of 10, we don’t like it unless it feels organically fun.
Considering Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande invented wearing green and pink together as early as the 2024 Oscars, and that this is just the marketing campaign for part one of the two part extravaganza - we need to allow audiences to become organically excited for these two films rather than trying to orchestrate a ‘surprise’ cinematic clash that I suspect will put more people off than it realises.
You can get 10% off an annual subscription when subscribing this July - or subscribe for free to get posts in your inbox every Thursday!