Whether it’s in action, drama, romance or reality, our screen goddesses are finally reflecting women in all their complexities – and audiences are fully here for it.
During Women’s Month we pay tribute to the 20 000 women who marched to the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956, protesting against South Africa’s pass laws. These brave women should always be remembered for standing up to the horrors of the Apartheid system.
Today, Women’s Month is also a celebration of the progress that has been made in moving towards gender equality. So we celebrate women leading in business, like Yolisa Phahle, CEO of General Entertainment and Connected Video at MultiChoice, who has been instrumental in driving 68% growth for Showmax in the last financial year.
We celebrate storytellers like writer-director Kelsey Egan, whose debut film, Glasshouse, won five SAFTAs after receiving five star reviews internationally.
We celebrate stars like Sindi Dlathu, who was nominated for Best Actress: Telenovela for the third year in a row at the SAFTAs for her role as Lindiwe in The River, which is, again, the most nominated telenovela.
We celebrate Coming 2 America star Nomzamo Mbatha stepping into an executive producer role on the upcoming epic Shaka Ilembe, where she’ll also play Queen Nandi.
And we celebrate the action stars who show that “hit like a girl” should be a compliment these days, namely Maggie Q in The Protegé, Karen Gillan in Gunpowder Milkshake, Margot Robbie in Birds of Preyand The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman 1984and Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Queen Latifah in The Equalizer, and South Africa’s very own Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road, all of which are on Showmax as I write this.
Action films starring badass female action stars is a trend that has developed within my lifetime, kicking off into high gear in the 1980s with Sigourney Weaver in Alienand Linda Hamilton in the Terminatorfranchise. It’s encouraging to see that the diversity of our female superheroes is finally starting to change too, with the likes of Lupita Nyong’o taking the lead in Black Panther: Wakanda Foreverand Javicia Leslie as the first bisexual Batwoman – we need more of this, please.
Groundbreaking reflections
All these groundbreaking women need to be celebrated. It’s hard to be what you can’t see and it’s wonderful that women can now see themselves reflected on Showmax as presidents (The Republic) and therapists (In Treatment), detectives (Vigil) and comedians (The Sex Lives of College Girls), or fire fighters (Those Who Wish Me Dead) and investment bankers (Industry).
Women on screen can be pretty much anything you can imagine now, a far cry from the highly gendered screen roles of previous generations. There’s no longer a single story of what a woman’s work is, or what women should look like or act like, and this is Very Good News.
Showmax is full of inspirational women, but there is a danger in just telling aspirational stories, in focusing on the exceptions to the rule, in focusing on ‘role models’, in just combatting the misrepresentations that still persist. We’d never expect stories that only talk about the admirable things men do; we shouldn’t want that for women either.
Because, in real life, we are never just one thing. Our lives are rich, but messy; alternatively inspiring and dispiriting. We like ourselves, and don’t; and sometimes we find ourselves wanting things we shouldn’t, that we know won’t be helpful. Sometimes we get it right; sometimes we get it very, very wrong.
We are much more interested in acting like a mirror, and showing the way things are, rather than sanitising life in Africa and creating idealised depictions of how things should be. This applies to our representation of women, but also to our depiction of life in Africa as a whole. Instagram does idealised really well; LinkedIn does idealised career highlights well. People come to Showmax for something else: for entertaining stories that are authentic and reflect the complexities of our lives.
Leading ladies trend
Women were the leads in all of our 10 most watched titles on Showmax in South Africa in 2021. All six Showmax Originals on that list were driven by women:
• Lea Vivier in a SAFTA-nominated turn as Yola in the psychological thriller DAM, the most nominated TV Drama at the SAFTAs
• Cecilia Steyn as the cult leader in Devilsdorp, the most nominated documentary at the SAFTAs, and
• Jana Marx as the investigative journalist narrating the story
• The glamorous ladies of The Real Housewives of Durban, which set a record for first-day views on Showmax at its debut
• Babes Mampintsha marrying a man who the nation saw hit her in Uthando Lodumo – which also set a record for first-day views on Showmax at the time
• Mbalenhle Mavimbela as Hlomu, marrying a man the nation saw hit her in The Wife, up for Best Telenovela at the SAFTA after winning two DSTV Mzansi Viewers’ Choice Awards, topping Twitter and breaking multiple Showmax records
• The women of Temptation Island South Africa, putting their relationships through the ultimate test of dating sexy singles
Similarly, with our top four international titles, there’s Josephine Langford as Tessa in After, a good girl falling for a bad boy; Dakota Johnson as Anastasia Steele in the BDSM-mainstreaming Fifty Shades Darker; Amanda Collin as an android with a violent past, caring for human children in Raised by Wolves; and there’s Poppy, trying to unite six musically diverse tribes in Trolls World Tour.
With the exception of Poppy, who is just adorable, these women do the most, and have been through the most – and these are the women who connect the most with our audience. As a general rule, it seems that our audience will choose relatable messiness over aspirational greatness.
This sometimes creates challenges from a PR and social media perspective, where we need to make it clear that, as a streaming platform, Showmax doesn’t endorse any actions or comments made on any of the content available, be it reality TV or fictional series and movies or documentaries. And that we’re not going to shy from tough subjects because we believe good content should encourage debate on key issues in our society.
In that regard, we are over-achieving. The Wife topped Twitter every Thursday for two seasons. As Mqhele, Bonko Khoza was hailed as ‘The National Husband’ – before he beat Hlomu and broke the hearts of women across the country. This sparked important conversations around red flags – and why Hlomu, like so many South African women, missed them.
Similarly, Showmax Originals like Devilsdorp, The Real Housewives of Durban and Lagos, Uthando Lodumo, Living the Dream With Somizi and Life With Kelly Khumaloall topped Twitter in South Africa. This wasn’t always because our audience agreed with the choices of the cast; often the most heated and helpful conversations were about the ways in which they didn’t agree, and what they thought people should have done instead.
Flawed realities
Stories where the lead character is perfect to begin with are never as interesting as the ones about people confronting their flaws. So we know we don’t need to overcompensate in our depiction of women: we can let them be themselves, in ways that are often worth celebrating and sometimes worth criticising too – or at the very least having a laugh about.
Because since women are obviously the equal of men, then they can be not just equally amazing but equally flawed too.
We work hard to keep the nuance throughout all the work we do, across all our marketing channels. This is helped by the fact that women lead by example in many, many areas of Showmax, from Yolisa as CEO to Nomsa Philiso overseeing our content creation; from Chanda Zulu managing our local content acquisition to Lauren McInnes as our head of marketing. Not to mention our head of product Lize Roelofse; our head of operations Portia Heshu; our head of analytics Aliciela Cinches; Natalia Barros as our executive head of customer management; Philippa Heal as our in-house creative director; Lindiwe Hani and Vuyokazi Mhlope as our marketing leads on Showmax Originals, and Zibuyile Dladla as our talent liaison in PR, just to name a few. These women all make it clear everyday that there is not a glass ceiling at Showmax, inspiring and enabling other women across the company to step up.
Together, we are working to create the world we would like to see, while also reflecting that we are not there yet, in society and in ourselves, and that the struggle continues.
Laura Cooke is head of communications at Connected Video, MultiChoice’s streaming division, overseeing PR, content marketing and social media for Showmax in more than 80 countries. Under her leadership, Showmax won Online Strategy of the Year at the 2021 New Generation Awards, multiple Bookmark awards, and, most recently, the Gold award for Best Arts and Entertainment PR campaign at the 2022 PRISA Prism Awards.
