One Nation comedy “propaganda” screening causes stink at Crown

Pauline Hanson’s 85-minute animated movie, aimed at raising money and building support for One Nation, caused a small storm when it screened at Crown Casino on January 29.

Despite reviewers’ criticisms it was well received by the target audience.

Cinema workers walked off the job, protesters gathered outside, a scuffle broke out and a stink bomb was set off.

The film, a South Park-style satire of “wokeness” called A Super Progressive Movie, which had premiered in Brisbane on Australia Day, was showing at a $100-a-ticket special screening at Village Cinemas that had earlier been cancelled in response to staff pressure but was reinstated after intervention from Hanson herself.

According to the politician, who flew to Melbourne for the event, two 300-seat sessions had sold out at Crown, and she had refused to tell her supporters they had been cancelled.

The cancellations and controversy, she has said, have worked as publicity for the film.

Late last year a planned screening had been prevented from going ahead at Parliament House in Canberra.

The animation, which is available to stream, was made by Fitzroy-based Stepmates Studios, which previously produced a series of short satirical YouTube videos for Hanson, called Please Explain.

It reportedly tells a story about “four progressives” in the deranged, left-wing city of Naarm, who, “when their rainbow malfunctions” journey beyond it into a “real world” led by Prime Minister Pauline Hanson, where they search for “their ideology’s most powerful weapon: the Victim Hood”.

In the film, under Hanson, whose calm common-sense contrasts with the craziness of other characters, Australia is a utopia, where Alice Springs is crime free and its Aboriginal residents become astronauts.

Reviews have variously described the M-rated film as “funny”, “sharp”, “silly”, “crude”, “deliberately offensive”, “unbearably racist”, “outdated”, “preachy”, “repetitive”, “propagandistic”, and “forgettable”.

At Crown it received a standing ovation.

Among other things, the narrative involves the main character being persecuted on the basis of his white cis male identity, Uluru exploding and Hanson firing a rocket-propelled grenade at Melbourne from a Blackhawk helicopter.

It also features a reworked song by former Neighbours actor and right-wing activist Holly Valance, Kiss Kiss (XX) My Arse, which crudely pillories trans people and progressive identity politics.

After a push by Hanson’s camp following its January 26 release, the song went to the top of Apple Music’s bestselling songs chart – though not its most-streamed list.

Under pressure, Apple removed it from the service but subsequently reinstated it.

Supporters of the film seem generally to agree that those who object to its satire are “snowflakes” who need to “lighten up”.

But the protesters who gathered opposite Crown on January 29 saw serious issues at stake, labelling Hanson’s anti-immigration stance dangerous and drawing a line between her party, white supremacy and the bomb thrown recently into an Invasion Day rally in Perth.

Max, a duty manager from Village Cinemas, where workers had walked off the job, said they “could not be more sick” that the rescheduled event had taken place on their watch.

The industrial action had seen senior staff forced to fill in as cinema workers, serving beverages, a union organiser said.

Inside the Crown complex near the cinema’s entrance, protesters intent on disrupting the event reportedly blew whistles and chanted messages such as “Pauline Hanson not welcome here” and “Nazis off our streets” while some cinemagoers responded with counter-chants, including “get a job” and “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie”.

A scuffle broke out, with security intervening forcefully when a cinemagoer apparently got hold of a protester’s phone and she chased him for it.

At least one person was escorted from the building by security.

However, Victoria Police said the only charges they expected to lay were against a 32-year-old man who allegedly set off a stink bomb in the cinema.

Village Cinemas didn’t respond to a request by Southbank News for comment.

A Super Progressive Movie has now screened in all capital cities except Darwin. •