Scope SCREEN INDUSTRY VIEWS
Above: Good Omens
WHEN RELIGION AND THE SCREEN MEET (AND CLASH) Liz Giuffre
In May 2019, Amazon Prime released Good Omens, a six-part series based on the 1990 book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The show follows the adventures of an angel, Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), and a demon, Crowley (David Tennant), who were originally sent to wait on Earth until the end of days. However, when it seems the end is nigh, they decide instead to intervene – upsetting the divine plan (be it that of Heaven or Hell) so that they can maintain the lives they’ve come to enjoy. And also to save the world’s population. The series was a success for the streaming service, gaining favourable reviews and, to date, three Emmy nominations. However, support was not universal, with a notable group particularly opposed to the production and its release. According to a June report in The Guardian (a story that was also circulated among many international media outlets), ‘[m]ore than 20,000 [Christian] supporters’ signed a petition to have the series removed, arguing that the series was ‘another step to make Satanism appear normal, light and acceptable’ and that it ultimately ‘mocks God’s wisdom’. In particular, the signatories were outraged that God was voiced by a female actor (Frances McDormand); that one of the series’ protagonists, the young antichrist (Sam Taylor Buck), is depicted as a mere ‘normal kid’; and that ‘this type of [series] makes light of Truth, Error, Good and Evil, and destroys the barriers of horror that society still has for the devil’. The protest made headlines – not so much for its religious objections, but rather for a finer piece of detail: the petition was
126 • Metro Magazine 202 | © ATOM
addressed to Netflix, not Amazon Prime. As a result, it was met with mockery rather than debate or any kind of official response. Gaiman himself even tweeted: ‘I love that they are going to write to Netflix to try and get #GoodOmens cancelled. Says it all really,’ and ‘This is so beautiful… Promise me you won’t tell them?’ Notwithstanding the importance of such specifics when trying to incite change (it is, in fact, very important to direct complaints to someone who can actually do something about them), the incident again reminds us of the thorny relationship between religion and the screen. Famously, in 1965, a George Stevens film declared the four Gospels’ plot to be The Greatest Story Ever Told – although, both before and since then, a variety of religious parables, char acters and doctrines have been turned into film, television and ondemand works. From the duelling biblical musicals Jesus Christ Superstar (Norman Jewison, 1973) and Godspell (David Greene, 1973), to parodies like Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979) and Dogma (Kevin Smith, 1999), stories incorporating religious elements have proven to be equal parts crowd-pleasers and thought-provokers. Sometimes, such works elicit serious opposition as well, but what remains curious is why stories using religion or religious ideas, particularly based on Christian doctrine, keep being made. Perhaps one obvious explanation is the leap of faith (sorry) that religious stories require. That is, the necessary unknowns of religion leave plenty of room for ambitious screen content producers to take creative licence. These are also stories and characters that have been so widely circulated that even non-theistic members of society are likely to have some familiarity with them. A month before Good Omens was released, Philip Almond, an emeritus professor in the history of religious thought at The University of Queensland, returned to the topic of religion on screen using the then-upcoming fortieth anniversary of Life of Brian as a lead-in. Reviewing that depiction of religion and the subsequent backlash at the time, he argued: The virtue of [Life of Brian] today is its capacity to offend a whole new generation of viewers for different reasons. It is now more likely to be criticised for breaching the boundaries of ‘political correctness’ around issues of gender, race, class and disability than blasphemy. While Almond’s dismissal of blasphemy as a contemporary concern doesn’t hold up against the case of Good Omens, it does raise another interesting question: one relating to representation more generally. Depictions of religious stories on screen tend to require the ‘translation’ of non-human entities into human form – which, by extension, brings into focus power relationships that human representations encompass. Not only are issues of gender, race, class and ability included here, but also sexuality, taste and cultures of spirituality more broadly. Returning to Good Omens, what is on offer here is a particularly refreshing take on older debates, like witchcraft versus religion. In the series, an important ‘saviour’, for instance, is Anathema (Adria Arjona), a woman whose practice would once have seen her killed. Yes, we’re talking about stories on television and other screens. But, with these media only becoming more ubiquitous in our lives, we have to heed the insights they provide as to how times have changed in terms of visibility and visualisation – and in what ways we’re willing to let wisdom preside.
Scope SCREEN INDUSTRY VIEWS
Above: Good Omens
WHEN RELIGION AND THE SCREEN MEET (AND CLASH) Liz Giuffre
In May 2019, Amazon Prime released Good Omens, a six-part series based on the 1990 book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The show follows the adventures of an angel, Aziraphale (Michael Sheen), and a demon, Crowley (David Tennant), who were originally sent to wait on Earth until the end of days. However, when it seems the end is nigh, they decide instead to intervene – upsetting the divine plan (be it that of Heaven or Hell) so that they can maintain the lives they’ve come to enjoy. And also to save the world’s population. The series was a success for the streaming service, gaining favourable reviews and, to date, three Emmy nominations. However, support was not universal, with a notable group particularly opposed to the production and its release. According to a June report in The Guardian (a story that was also circulated among many international media outlets), ‘[m]ore than 20,000 [Christian] supporters’ signed a petition to have the series removed, arguing that the series was ‘another step to make Satanism appear normal, light and acceptable’ and that it ultimately ‘mocks God’s wisdom’. In particular, the signatories were outraged that God was voiced by a female actor (Frances McDormand); that one of the series’ protagonists, the young antichrist (Sam Taylor Buck), is depicted as a mere ‘normal kid’; and that ‘this type of [series] makes light of Truth, Error, Good and Evil, and destroys the barriers of horror that society still has for the devil’. The protest made headlines – not so much for its religious objections, but rather for a finer piece of detail: the petition was
126 • Metro Magazine 202 | © ATOM
addressed to Netflix, not Amazon Prime. As a result, it was met with mockery rather than debate or any kind of official response. Gaiman himself even tweeted: ‘I love that they are going to write to Netflix to try and get #GoodOmens cancelled. Says it all really,’ and ‘This is so beautiful… Promise me you won’t tell them?’ Notwithstanding the importance of such specifics when trying to incite change (it is, in fact, very important to direct complaints to someone who can actually do something about them), the incident again reminds us of the thorny relationship between religion and the screen. Famously, in 1965, a George Stevens film declared the four Gospels’ plot to be The Greatest Story Ever Told – although, both before and since then, a variety of religious parables, char acters and doctrines have been turned into film, television and ondemand works. From the duelling biblical musicals Jesus Christ Superstar (Norman Jewison, 1973) and Godspell (David Greene, 1973), to parodies like Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979) and Dogma (Kevin Smith, 1999), stories incorporating religious elements have proven to be equal parts crowd-pleasers and thought-provokers. Sometimes, such works elicit serious opposition as well, but what remains curious is why stories using religion or religious ideas, particularly based on Christian doctrine, keep being made. Perhaps one obvious explanation is the leap of faith (sorry) that religious stories require. That is, the necessary unknowns of religion leave plenty of room for ambitious screen content producers to take creative licence. These are also stories and characters that have been so widely circulated that even non-theistic members of society are likely to have some familiarity with them. A month before Good Omens was released, Philip Almond, an emeritus professor in the history of religious thought at The University of Queensland, returned to the topic of religion on screen using the then-upcoming fortieth anniversary of Life of Brian as a lead-in. Reviewing that depiction of religion and the subsequent backlash at the time, he argued: The virtue of [Life of Brian] today is its capacity to offend a whole new generation of viewers for different reasons. It is now more likely to be criticised for breaching the boundaries of ‘political correctness’ around issues of gender, race, class and disability than blasphemy. While Almond’s dismissal of blasphemy as a contemporary concern doesn’t hold up against the case of Good Omens, it does raise another interesting question: one relating to representation more generally. Depictions of religious stories on screen tend to require the ‘translation’ of non-human entities into human form – which, by extension, brings into focus power relationships that human representations encompass. Not only are issues of gender, race, class and ability included here, but also sexuality, taste and cultures of spirituality more broadly. Returning to Good Omens, what is on offer here is a particularly refreshing take on older debates, like witchcraft versus religion. In the series, an important ‘saviour’, for instance, is Anathema (Adria Arjona), a woman whose practice would once have seen her killed. Yes, we’re talking about stories on television and other screens. But, with these media only becoming more ubiquitous in our lives, we have to heed the insights they provide as to how times have changed in terms of visibility and visualisation – and in what ways we’re willing to let wisdom preside.
MARKET MINESWEEPER: SURVIVING IN THE VIDEOGAMES INDUSTRY Dan Golding
Building sustainable businesses in the videogames industry has always been hard. Few studios persist for sustained periods of time, and even fewer survive long enough to build a legacy. It is simply a volatile industry, characterised by global technological boom and bust, fickle industry trends, and demanding fans. This is certainly true of Australian videogame companies. The first local videogame studio, Beam Software, is a case in point. Although it was founded in 1980 and had made many big hits in that decade (including what was likely the most successful text adventure game of all time, 1982’s The Hobbit – an adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s novel of the same name), by 1999, the studio was sold to French company Infogrames. Infogrames held the famous Atari name – though it had long since stopped referring to anything that resembled the videogame pioneers of the 1970s – and Beam became known as Atari Melbourne House. In 2006, Beam and Melbourne House was sold again to Australian studio Krome, where it remains today; by that stage, however, it was an entity in name only: what once had more than a hundred employees now had maybe two. Beam Software’s trajectory tells us an older story of Australian game development, of the highs and lows brought about by international investment. Other companies have similar stories. Take Adelaide’s Ratbag Games, for example: after twelve years of successful development, it was sold to American company Midway Games in 2005, and closed its doors less than six months later. Recent events take on a different, but no less complicated, pallor. Independent Australian-owned studios have, over the last decade, become the dominant force in local game development, with a significant number forming – and thriving – following the mass withdrawal of international investment after the global financial crisis of 2008. Studios like Halfbrick, League of Geeks, Defiant Development and The Voxel Agents built themselves up from handfuls of hopeful workers to dozens of full-time employees. They capitalised on the growing smartphone market and made smaller, cheaper games that worked smartly with people’s busy schedules. Yet familiar problems persist, and it was a great shock when Defiant Development announced in July that it would be closing, ending nine years of successful videogame making. ‘The games market has changed in ways both big and small in the 9 years we’ve been in business,’ said founder Morgan Jaffit in the closure announcement. ‘We have not been able to change quickly enough to continue with them.’ The Brisbane-based studio was best known for its Hand of Fate series, and was working on a new project called The World in My Attic at the time of closure. Defiant’s dissolution underscores a particularly complex moment for Australia’s independent videogame makers. On the other end of the spectrum are some smaller studios that have recently found financial stability through exclusivity deals with videogame platforms. The major force here is American company Epic Games and their PC online shopfront, the Epic Games Store. Epic is in the middle of mounting a challenge to the long-running hegemony of Valve’s Steam storefront. The biggest tool in its arsenal is signing highly anticipated games as Epic exclusives, providing plenty of cash for the developers in the process and gaining an artificially
Above, from top: Ooblets; The World in My Attic
loyal audience. One of these exclusive games is Untitled Goose Game, made by Melbourne’s House House (disclosure: I’m working on the soundtrack). Untitled Goose Game was announced as an Epic exclusive in June. ‘[A] partnership like this gives us a means to make games sustainably for the foreseeable future,’ House House tweeted, adding that ‘in an industry like ours, this kind of stability is huge.’ But financial stability can come with other risks. House House has so far been lucky to escape the reaction met by Glumberland, developers of upcoming game Ooblets, for its similar e xclusivity announcement, which has escalated well beyond opprobrium and to something more like a sustained campaign of harassment. Ben Wasser, a developer from Glumberland, wrote in August that the studio is ‘totally unprepared for the attention [it] got from the broader gaming/internet community’, which ranged from angry tweets and comments, to threats of violence and faked screenshots of the developers making anti-Semitic insults as retribution. All this for daring to sign a timed exclusivity agreement with one online store. ‘We’ve been told nonstop throughout this about how we must treat “consumers” or “potential customers” a certain way,’ Wasser continued. ‘Whenever I’ve mentioned that we, as random people happening to be making a game, don’t owe these other random people anything, they become absolutely enraged.’ Videogame making is not easy, and neither is making any sort of sustainable, long-term, work–life-balanced business out of it. How do you make a living making games? From the beginnings of the Australian videogames industry to today’s minefield of pitfalls, profits and frequently enraged audiences, it is only getting more complicated, more risky and, sadly, ever more unsustainable.
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Above: The Show Must Go On
MENTAL-HEALTH CRISIS IN THE SCREEN INDUSTRIES Rochelle Siemienowicz
The glaciers are melting, your income is insecure and critics panned the last thing you worked on: that precious slice of your soul dished up for public consumption. Within wider society, anxiety and depression are rife. But, for those working in the arts, including the screen sector, there are particular challenges to maintaining good mental health – and the statistics suggest we are in the midst of a crisis. A world-first study conducted by Entertainment Assist and Victoria University in late 2016 found that the number of suicide attempts in the Australian entertainment industry was more than double the national average. Suicidal ideation was six times more likely among entertainment professionals. Anxiety was ten times higher; depression, five times higher; and sleep disorders were rampant, along with greater rates of alcohol and drug consumption. It’s not a pretty picture, and certainly at odds with any notions of glamour outsiders may associate with the industry. The survey took in around 2400 respondents from all s ectors of the entertainment sector, covering all states and territories. Its respondents were divided into three groups: ‘Performing Artists and Music Composers’ (including actors and TV presenters), ‘Performing Arts Support Workers’ (including media producers, video editors, directors and production assistants) and ‘Broadcasting, Film and Recorded Media Equipment Operators’ (including sound and light technicians, camera operators, projectionists and roadies). A key finding was that the majority of respondents expressed ‘an overwhelming passion for their creative work’. This is especially poignant when you consider that 35 per cent of all Australian entertainment-industry workers earn an annual income below A$20,000. So much love, so little money. Apart from the problems posed by poorly paid, insecure work, the survey found there was a ‘powerful negative culture’ within the industry, including ‘a toxic, bruising work environment’ with extreme competition, sexual assault, bullying, sexism and racism. These are deep structural problems that won’t be fixed by a couple of counselling sessions and a mindfulness app. But talking about mental health and destigmatising our vulnerabilities are certainly important first steps to bringing about change. The findings of the research were included in a submission to a House of Representatives inquiry into the growth and sustainability
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of the screen industries, conducted by the Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts. In its report, tabled in December 2017, the committee recommended that the Minister for Small Business liaise with relevant professionals regarding ways in which mental health could be better catered for within the screen sector. In other words, more talk, but still no real answers. At least it’s on the agenda. A more concrete offshoot of the disturbing findings is a new feature documentary, The Show Must Go On (2019), produced by Sue Maslin of The Dressmaker (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 2015) fame, and directed by debut feature filmmaker Ben Steel. Available on ABC iview, the film traces Steel’s own journey as an actor – he is best known for his work on Home and Away – living with depression and anxiety, and grieving the sudden death of his acting coach, David O’Connor. Wanting answers to the questions of why mental wellbeing is so much worse in the entertainment industry and what we can do to stop losing people to suicide, Steel interviewed professionals and experts as well as many of his colleagues. Their answers were heartfelt and candid. Screenwriter and script producer Sarah Walker, for example, shares this to-camera: ‘Writers are writing from their soul. We’re not just moving numbers. We’re in a business where our personal and professional lives are extremely mixed.’ Acknowledging this reality will be part of the specific healing that’s required for arts workers. Another step in the right direction was the establishment on World Mental Health Day (10 October) 2017 of the Australian Alliance for Wellness in Entertainment (AAWE). Screen Producers Australia and the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance are among the founding members. AAWE seeks to develop a ‘prevention-first’ framework that emphasises education and awareness. Members commit to the values of respect, empathy, courage and collaborative leadership, as well as to developing industry-specific courses and resources. Research is underway about what exactly is needed, and you can have your say in a survey accessible at <https://www.research.net/r/FKJK78Z>. Perhaps one idea could be a free counselling hotline specifically for the screen industries, much like the one launched in July by the Arts Wellbeing Collective for performing artists and arts workers. As always, however, it’s friends, family and colleagues who work the frontlines in dealing with one another’s fragile hearts and minds – not to mention their own. We are all in the midst of this crisis, and it’s okay to ask for help. If this story raises difficult issues for you or someone close to you, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit <http://www.lifeline.org.au>.
••• Dr Liz Giuffre is a senior lecturer in communication at the University of Technology Sydney as well as a freelance arts commentator and journalist. Dan Golding was, from 2014 to 2017, the director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival, and is a senior lecturer in media and communications at Swinburne University of Technology. He is also a freelance arts and videogames journalist, and the co-author of Game Changers: From Minecraft to Misogyny, the Fight for the Future of Videogames with Leena van Deventer. Rochelle Siemienowicz is a writer and critic with a PhD in Australian cinema. She is a journalist for screenhub and was co-host of the long-running film podcast Hell Is for Hyphenates.
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