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You might be a señora if you remember an earring that was actually transmitter.
Jem (Jem is excitement)
Ooh, Jem (Jem is adventure)
Ooh (Glamour and glitter, fashion and fame)
That sounds familiar yeah?
There was a full on Jem concert at Comic Con last month, where the original Jem singer did a live performance on stage.
What were they announcing? It turns out that Amazon just picked up a live-action Jem and the Holograms series, produced by the team behind Fallout, more than four decades after the original cartoon first aired. Somewhere, a millennial on her way to work just put down her coffee.
Jem and the Holograms centers on Jerrica Benton, a Nepo baby who runs a record company (Starlight Music) left to her by her father and also uses its resources to fund and manage the Starlight Foundation, a home for foster girls. Using an advanced AI/hologram-projection technology called Synergy (built by her father), Jerrica transforms her appearance into Jem, a pink-haired rock star, letting her live a double life as both music executive and lead singer of her band, Jem and the Holograms.
The show follows the band’s rise, their rivalry with a competing group called the Misfits, and the ongoing tension of Jerrica keeping her Jem identity secret — including from her boyfriend, Rio, who’s in love with both halves of her without realizing it. Each episode built around original songs and music-video-style sequences, riding the early MTV wave of the mid-80s.
And 80’s it was. Over the top rock outfits, the big hair that we saw on 80’s hair bands like Motley Crew or whatever, and included alt characters like the Misfits – wanna be punk girls that were more glam than Sex Pistols. To me, it seems like Jem was actually pop music, but presented as a hair band star.
The show was created by Sunbow Productions, in a push to try and make toy-friendly cartoon series for kids like us – essentially, make things that sold out at Toys R Us. Writer Christie Marx created the universe; she wanted to create something that was part MTV and part Soap Opera, full of fashion, that appealed to young girls. It was a show full of secret identities (likely the origin of Hanna Montana), chaos and love triangles.
The character was voiced by a voice actress, but her singing voice came from Brita Phillips, from the indie band Luna.
I remember loving the show because of the fashion – it didn’t look like any show on my weekend line up. It also showed an entire new world that I didn’t see anywhere else, as a little girl watching from South America. The songs were legitimately catchy and the storylines were enough to make me look forward to each episode every week.
I recently watched it with my daughter and wasn’t sure how she would react, because of the cheesy factor. But she liked it! She was hooked! She called it “silly” and “a little weird” but she sat quietly as Jericka set out to get her father’s management company back from the evil record producer Erick.
Forty-one years later, they’re rebooting it for an audience that will watch it on a phone during a car line pickup. And we, the original audience, are now the ones doing the car line.
For the reboot to work, they need to stick closely to the kitsch – a strategy that worked really well for the Barbie movie, which leaned into the bright colors, the over-the-top fashion and hairstyles and personality. They 80’s and 90’s are very much back, and if they keep that alive, they’ll win over the smug millennials and Gen X old fans, who will likely want to share it with their kids.
Are you gonna watch?