Tim's Toons: Will the real Jem please stand up?
Saturday, October 24, 2015 at 8:00PM 
Tim here. You might be aware of the new release Jem and the Holograms, but it's probably likelier that you're not. According to The Wrap, the film wrangled $34,000 from Thursday night previews on 944 screens, for an awe-inspiring average of thirty-six dollars per screen. That's like a group of four friends per location.
In lieu of mourning the quick demise of an unwanted property, I would instead turn back to the series that inspired it, in the loosest conceivable sense of the word "inspired". The original Jem and the Holograms cartoon was one of the glories of manic Reagan-era TV animation, a transparent attempt by Hasbro to do a show for girls that would match their popular toy commercials disguised as television for boys, Transformers and G.I. Joe. What it lacked in having an equally successful toy line to keep its memory secure in the public imagination, Jem made up for in being totally absurd and tacky in the most exquisite manner possible.
It is one of the most '80s of all '80s properties. The show's focal point, naturally enough are Jem and the Holograms, a synthpop group by Jerrica Benton, the owner of Starlight Records. In order to keep her identity safe, Jerrica uses a computer called Synergy to disguise herself and the rest of the group in holographic projections that turn them into a glamorous-by-'80s-standards rock group, all while running a girls' foster home. There can hardly be anything more perfectly mired in the specific excesses of an era than a hologram-projecting computer that makes everyday women look like this:
Objectively, Jem is no better than any of the many '80s cartoons that one might want to compare it to. I mean, objectively, it might even be worse, on account of being more than a little pandering. Not only is it obviously an attempt to make entertainment for girls that starts from the assumption that girls, as an audience segment, are some kind of abnormality about which we can know nothing beyond their affection for the color pink, it's not even willing to commit fully to it gender stereotypes. The show frequently reverts to halfhearted action sequences that leave it with an incredibly confused personality, an attempt at doing barbarically stereotypical "girls" entertainment using the exact logic of equally barbaric "boys" entertainment.
Still, what no other '80s cartoon had that puts Jem so very near the top of the heap is the songs. Here's one conveniently keyed to Halloween.
Everything about that is amazing. The music itself is on the generic side, sure, but the acid trip imagery of flying pumpkins is magically weird. Hell, even the fact that it's hobbled by the characteristically stilted animation of Hasbro's go-to studio, Sunbow Productions, only makes it more delightful: the palpable sense of artists reaching beyond their limits and just not caring makes it all the more dazzling. Not every Jem music number – of which a thrilling number are available on YouTube – is quite this enthusiastically nuts; but they all have in common an enthusiasm for bigness and busyness.
The best thing about the show, however, was absolutely the villains. The Holograms had a rival band, the Misfits, and they were the absolute best thing to happen to American children's television in the '80s.
The Misfits' shtick was a kind of corrupted form of girl power – "we think it's awesome to be selfish bullies, so let's sing about it!" – but their music is way more awesome, and their style incomparable. Their lead singer, Pizzazz, wears war paint in the most casual possible way. Her name is Pizzazz, for God's sake. Even with the theatricality of '80s rock permeating every aspect of culture, this kind of fierceness was rare or nonexistent anywhere else in children's entertainment.
So it's strengths are camp and kitsch, and a pandering attempt at something vaguely shaped like female empowerment. That's better than having no strengths at all, like the remarkably tedious G.I. Joe. It is, by all means, ill-made and preposterous, but Jem and the Holograms had its own kind of awesomeness – "radical", I believe we called it back in those days – and it deserves a much better modern-day reboot than what is by all accountsa YouTube-addled piece of incoherence; but then, could this perfect embodiment of an era truly be modernized? Jem is ebullient excess of '80s pop culture embodied, and perhaps it is best that it stay there.
Reader Comments (8)
The Misfits! All the fucking way!
Tim: There IS actually a comic book version that looks like a MUCH better attempt at doing what you describe at the end then this film version.
I love 80's cartoons. Which came first Tim --- Jem and the Holograms or Barbie and the Rockstars?
I am surprised this post doesn't reference the famed internet re-dubbing of this series, entitled "Jiz and the Mammograms"
Jem and She-Ra were everything!!!
They are the Misfits, and their songs *were* better.
The Misfits? Goddamn, Glenn Danzig can't make friends with anybody.
If only Joe Reid could have made the movie adaptation instead!
http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2014/04/a-definitive-casting-primer-on-jem-and-the-holograms/360066/
I'd see that version in a heartbeat!!