#glurge

THE GOOD

Kate Hudson is giving a genuinely good performance here. She also looks pretty hot with short hair.

Oh, I guess the music is okay too. Nothing really stands out compared to Sia's big hits, but it's not... awful...

Ok I can't muster up anything else nice to say, let's move on.

THE BAD

The writing in this is utterly incoherent and ridiculous, with the story trying to do so much at once that it leads to massive levels tonal whiplash. It veers from serious drama to cutesy rom com to flashy musical and back again. You’ll have scenes of Zu realistically dealing with her addictions, then she’ll be with Ebo making goo-goo eyes at him, then she’ll have to struggle to deal with Music and we’ll get a number, and then oh look she’s selling drugs to Sia! Oh and now Music’s neighbor is fucking dead! That is genuinely a thing that happens, and it barely has any relation to the plot and receives no resolution.

The glurge is completely off the charts here. For those who don’t know, “glurge” is a word coined by a Snopes reader, and comes from the sound you make when you barf; it is a catch-all term for describing sappy, sentimental, supposedly happy morality tales that contain horrible implications, are overly heavy-handed in their messaging, or don’t make sense if you think about them too much. You have definitely seen a story dripping in glurge before, and Music is definitely up there as one of the most egregious this side of a Hallmark Christmas movie. It’s a story of a recovering alcoholic who becomes better by learning to care for her autistic sister, a sister who is incorruptibly pure and kindhearted despite her simple mind and who sees the world as Sia music videos. The only thing anyone struggles with in regards to Music is her meltdowns, and that aside everything is peachy! It’s so, so disingenuous and treacly that it genuinely makes my stomach churn. As mentioned before, there are darkly realistic moments, but the overall message by film’s end is so overly corny and sentimental it’s hard to take anything seriously.

Now for Ebo… hoo boy, this is a loaded one. The title character was the one I knew going in was seen as a horrific stereotype—and don’t worry, we’ll be on to her in a bit—but I was kind of shocked that Ebo was just as much a mishmash of African tropes as Music is of autistic ones. To wit: He’s a boxing coach, he has HIV, he has a thick accent, he’s from a vague, superstitious village from Ghana that may or may not have killed his brother for having autism, and most glaringly of all his sole function in the film is to uplift the white female protagonist. Beyond that role he isn’t much of a character so much as a walking stereotype.

Oh, but speaking of stereotypes...

THE UGLY

Time to address the elephant in the room.

The title character is easily the most contentious part of the film, and with good reason. You know in Tropic Thunder how Ben Stiller’s character tried to make an Oscar bait movie about an autistic person, but he played him as so stereotypically low-functioning that it was laughed at in-universe? Y’know, the movie RDJ’s character pointed out failed because Stiller’s character went, and I quote, “full retard?” That’s kind of what happened here. Music is the most gratingly stereotypical portrayal of an autistic person you can imagine, with exaggerated facial expressions, exaggerated movements, just everything turned into an over-the-top caricature. It’s an autism minstrel show, something exacerbated by the fact Music sees the world through gaudy music numbers. And let’s not even start on the genuinely lethally stupid methods they use to “calm” her (they physically restrain and pin her down).

But see, while all of that is bad, this isn’t the real reason Music is bad and offensive. I thought that’s why going in, but she’s actually awful for a worse reason: She is not even important to the plot whatsoever. That’s right. The title character has no agency in the story and exists entirely as a living prop to motivate her half-sister into becoming a better and more responsible person. She doesn’t do anything besides exist and act stereotypically autistic so that Zu has to push herself to be better. Music has no arc, no development, nothing. You could cut her from the movie and make Zu’s cherished dog necklace that reminds her of better times the catalyst for her to change and be better and the movie would probably not suffer much and in fact be a great deal less offensive.

To be clear, I don’t blame Maddie Ziegler at all; she knew her being cast in this role was a fucking awful idea, and she apparently broke down into tears over this while filming. No, the fact the title character is the worst aspect of the film is on Sia. The entire character is such a mind-bogglingly offensive creation it’s astounding no one at any point said “Hey, Sia, this fucking sucks actually!” This is like if there was a cute romance movie where everything else was normal, but in the middle of it all there was randomly some white guy in yellowface and buck teeth doing a horrible Asian accent and having little to no bearing on the plot. God, can you imagine how fucking awful that would be?

I think genuinely the only nice thing that can be said here is that Music is a rare portrayal of an autistic woman; the last time I remember seeing one was in Our Guys: Outrage at Glen Ridge, and that was a film about the sexual assault of an autistic woman. At least here she’s happy, though considering her meltdowns are dealt with by forcibly crushing her I can’t say she’s much safer. Funnily, Sia said the “crushing her with love” moments would be edited out in later releases. They weren’t.

And just when you think this couldn’t be worse, here’s a double whammy: Not only is the character of Music based on a non-verbal autistic man Sia had befriended, but Sia herself ended up being diagnosed with autism! I don’t doubt she had mainly good intentions making this movie, but you know what they say about the road to Hell. Autism or no, autistic friend or no, she made a movie steeped in horribly offensive stereotypes that is actively demeaning and ignorant and uses the autistic character as a prop to push the narrative of the neurotypical lead.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Yes.

I thought for sure I wouldn’t see anything worse and more offensive than Blonde, at least not this soon, but boy was I in for a shock! What amazed me most was how this movie was offensive in entirely different ways than what I expected going in. The cringeworthy portrayal of autism being The Birth of a Nation for the neurodivergent was one thing, but the fact she’s only half of a stereotype sandwich with Ebo and much like him is little more than a one-note prop to further the story of Zu is just a whole new level of tasteless. The fact Sia was just unrepentant about everything, with knee-jerk reactions to criticism and just genuine displays of ignorance, make me pretty happy she has faded away for the most part.

Maybe it’s because I’m neurodivergent/autistic myself, but I genuinely think this movie should be in the Bottom 100 on IMDB and the fact it’s rated high enough to avoid it is yet another grievance I have with that damn list. This should be a 1, and even that is way too high; Hudson’s genuine good acting doesn’t make up for how bad, stupid, pointless, and/or offensive literally everything else around this movie is.

I have two separate cracktheories, so let's establish some terminology and some common elements, first.

The Vanessaverse differs from our own in that much of Eastern Europe is controlled by an incredibly powerful, reality-warping entity that I call the Eldritch Master of Secular Christmas, or EMOSC for short. Who or what this entity is, and what its purpose is, differs between cracktheories. I call EMOSC's domain the Christmas Realm.

The Christmas Realm extends across southeastern Europe and possibly parts of western Asia. Outside this area, EMOSC's power to warp reality is severely limited. This is why Scotland and the US are (relatively) similar to the way they are in the real world. Montenero is a special case, it seems: an independent country on the fringe of EMOSC's influence, highly analogous to real-life Montenegro, and the location of choice for diplomats from the Vatican, or the rest of the world, to interact with EMOSC.

Native subjects of the Christmas Realm, however, and those around them, may be influenced by EMOSC wherever they are. This is one explanation for why seemingly unaffiliated protagonists and other characters wind up experiencing effects and narratives that should only occur within the Christmas Realm (but that commonly occur in highly sentimental straight-to-video movies). It's possible that EMOSC is able to psychically influence people whose ancestors came from the Christmas Realm, and those close to them.

So much for commonality. Let's get into the individual cracktheories about what's actually going on in these narratives.

Cracktheory 1: The characters of the Gaffer and the Crone are both aspects of the Eldritch Master of Secular Christmas, which manipulates its subjects according to strange and inscrutable whims, mostly revolving around matchmaking and the concept of secularized Christmas. Within the Christmas Realm, it is considered taboo to speak of Them or Their powers. Instead, one should pretend that events are entirely ordinary. It's possible that the Gaffer and the Crone are able to alter people's perceptions, so that they don't notice any contradictions. The latter would explain how the Gaffer and the Crone are able to create bizarre secular-Christmas situations ouside the Christmas Realm.

This version of EMOSC is fairly benign, actually, at least as far as we know. It seems to be managing Its own affairs, for the most part, occasionally calling a child of former subjects home, but little more. It seems to just like to mash the action figures together and make everything Christmassy.

In this theory, the self-referential Netflix Christmas movies are "based on a true story" or actually dramatized documentaries of some kind, made for an audience interested in EMOSC, but they respectfully obey the Christmas Realm's taboo and pretend EMOSC doesn't exist.

Cracktheory 2: EMOSC is, in fact, Vanessa Hudgens: a vast polydimensional, chrono-dynamic entity that can manifest a possibly infinite number of avatars of itself into multiple timelines broadly similar to our own. This is a more malevolent EMOSC, obsessed with stage-managing complex, WandaVision-like scenarios for its avatars and whoever catches its attention. It is even able to manifest avatars outside the Christmas Realm, although sometimes they end up looking a little less like EMOSC's chosen appearance as a human. The power and selfishness this implies makes this version of EMOSC seem like an incredibly dangerous entity to cross.

In this theory, the Gaffer and the Crone are avatars of a far older and more benevolent polydimensional entity, that is trying to contain Vanessa Hudgens and limit the damage It can cause to the Multiverse. This entity can't face EMOSC direcly, and has to resort to subterfuge and redirection in order to keep itself safe while still mitigating EMOSC's machinations. It seems to only be able to manifest one avatar at a time, although understanding how these entities interact with linear time is difficult for baseline humans.

Also in this theory, the self-referential Netflix Christmas movies are produced directly by EMOSC Itself, in furtherance of Its goals. They may actually have some sort of esoteric effect on baseline humans, but are also useful in reinforcing core Vanessa Hudgens characteristics on avatars that may be diverging from EMOSC's consciousness. It's also highly likely that they are EMOSC's way of creating an audience for the scenarios It likes to act out.