James Corden has been skating on thin ice for a while now. I don’t mean he has a segment on his show where he and a celebrity dress in matching outfits and perform an ice-skating routine, although it’s something he would do. I mean it in the metaphor way. There has been growing resentment toward Corden for a long time, and it gathers steam with each foul crime committed. His performance in Cats. His performance in The Prom. The allegation that he attempted to lower writer’s salaries. The allegation that he’s really a dick. But this week, it was his real dick that had people talking.
To promote the release of the new live-action Cinderella movie, the stars (and James Corden) performed a flash mob in traffic to a cover of “Let’s Get Loud.”
When I first heard about the video, I almost felt sympathy for Corden. “Go perform a flash mob in traffic” is something that I would say to someone I wanted to die. But upon watching, my empathy was lost. Besides the fact it is footage of a flash mob, an inherently evil premise, I can almost guarantee that nowhere in the brief given by Disney was “James make sure you thrust your dick towards people sitting at dick-level in their car.”
It wasn’t just the thrusting that disturbed me to my core. It was that he pointed at the people in the car first, picking his target.
It was that he put his hands behind his head, as if lying down in a hammock on a restful spring day. It was his eyes, looking down at his own dick as he swung it back and forth, desecrating the words once sung by J-Lo.
How dare he desecrate the words once sung by J-Lo. It’s time. This musical-ruining mouse-dicked bitch must be stopped.
Unfortunately Corden can't just immediately be fired and deported from America. He has become a load-bearing wall in the media landscape, and can’t just be ripped out. But he can be replaced. To make sure we don’t spook middle America with too much change, his replacement must share some of his qualities, while being superior in many other ways.
That’s where I come in.
AC-CORDEN TO ME: WHY REBECCA SHAW SHOULD IMMEDIATELY REPLACE JAMES CORDEN
I’m fat.
He’s chubby, he’s tubby, he’s round. Me too! It’s his least-offensive quality. Whoever replaces James Corden must also be fat, because it will be comforting to the viewer, but also because we can’t lose another one (fat person on TV). If Rebel Wilson hadn’t recently gotten thin, she would have become his replacement as one of three fat women allowed on TV at any one time. But she lost weight, and so too this opportunity.
I have an accent.
I believe 45 percent of why James Corden has a career is because he has a funny little accent that Americans like. As an Australian, I have a different foreign accent that I believe the American audience will love equally.
I am annoying.
This one is the trickiest qualifier. On my most annoying day I am nowhere near as annoying as James Corden on his least annoying day. But this is my career. I will do the work, I will study theatre kids, I will watch musical improv. I promise, I will become annoying enough.
I am gay.
This is where we swerve into the ways I am an improvement on James. His role in The Prom, where he played a flamboyant gay man in the year of our lord 2020, was criticised for being “homophobic” and “gayface” (an objectively funny term, sorry). My issue with the movie was not that he is straight. It was in that in the movie he absolutely sucked, and not something cool like a dick. I think he would have gotten away with it if he wasn’t so unbelievably bad at being a f*g. Me? I am great at it. Won’t be a problem.
I won’t sing or dance in public.
James Corden froths singing and dancing in public, as we have seen. The man can’t get enough. I cannot and will not sing or dance in public, at anyone’s request, be it Disney or my loved ones who just want me to be fun for once in my life. No.
I can’t drive
Under my reign, carpool karaoke dies.
There you have it, that is my James Corden replacement application. I look forward to hearing from you, in the meantime I will be getting stoned and watching the live action Cinderella movie. Thank you.
Bec Shaw is a writer for TV and heaps of places on the Internet.
