News from within the empire - From a leftist perspective
Picketing has been suspended and writers are returning to work. The rank and file will be voting on the contract from Oct. 2 to Oct. 9.
While the language was being finalized, the union asked its members to join a picket line of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. The actors represented by SAG-AFTRA are still on strike.
The new agreement reportedly addresses writers’ demands for a livable income, minimum staffing levels and guarantees their jobs will not be eliminated by artificial intelligence.
Here's their summary of their gains in the new agreement.
The required 2nd step, guaranteed 10 week employment and the minimum writers per episode bits are fantastic, as a big complaint that was often glossed over was the "mini-room" thing where they used hire series writers for the episodes and fire them before the series was even shooting.
Obviously I'm not a writer, but the agreement seems to address most of their complaints very well.
So, um, are you guys interested in buying a shirt?
https://www.sagaftra.org/official-sag-aftra-strike-swag-available
I find it hard to muster up any feelings of solidarity with this particular group of American imperialist propagandists.
Solidarity shouldn’t be a quid pro quo deal. Some workers and other lower‐class people that you meet are going to have reactionary ideas—that’s simply an inevitability—but that isn’t a good enough reason to let them suffer. In fact, if they’re desperate for help then they’re more likely to reconsider their reactionary ideas. If a houseless American finds out that she’s been regularly receiving food and shelter from a communist, it may be hard for her to process at first, but she’ll almost certainly reeaxmine her anticommunism.
I completely agree here. Do you have a comment to make relevant to this topic?
It's not very fair to lump all of them under that banner. At the end of the day they're still artists trying to pay rent, and I don't think "imperialist propaganda" describes the vast majority of low-pay low-prestige writers.
For every Avengers New Game+, there are plenty of small B movies, romcoms and other low success things that are pretty harmless and provide some happiness to somebody, for which these writers will be better compensated now.
There's also the occasional good stuff, like the new She-Ra (which is a netflix original so it's very relevant here), and I'm genuinely happy that the people who made that will get better compensation for future similar projects. I doubt anybody here can genuinely say they think every single contemporary work produced by a Yankee writer is a net negative, or that they don't have a couple hidden gems that they enjoy.
artists trying to pay rent,
This is sounding like the Waffen-SS apologism doing the rounds lately. The Nazis were just people trying to survive, right? These are people who work in fucking Hollywood. Are you at all familiar with American movies?
and I don’t think “imperialist propaganda” describes the vast majority of low-pay low-prestige writers.
Why are you trying to paint these people as poor? Why are you focusing on these people?
For every Avengers New Game+, there are plenty of small B movies, romcoms and other low success things
And they will continue to be low success because they don't toe the line. The only things that will be successful are things that further the interests of the American empire. Manipulative propaganda about how great America is and how its soldiers feel sad after they murder around the world.
There’s also the occasional good stuff, like the new She-Ra...I doubt anybody here can genuinely say they think every single contemporary work produced
This is a cartoon from my childhood forty years ago. These scumbags can't even come up with anything original anymore, not even a new vehicle for Bono and Sean Penn.
Tell me, how poor was the writer who wrote this She-Ra shit? Do you even know?
Are you at all familiar with American movies?
It'd be hard not to, yeah. Hundreds of TV shows and movies per year, a lot of them glorifying the war machine, but also a lot of them about some talking dog getting lost in a big city, as well as documentaries, educational entertainment, and stuff like that. It is very simplistic to assume that their profession in their entirety or maybe even majority work at propagating imperialism, jingoism or white supremacism. In my experience with artists in general, and writers in specific, they seem to have a larger portion of them critical of those things than the broader public. The comparison to literal Nazis is simply not apt there.
Why are you trying to paint these people as poor? Why are you focusing on these people?
I'm focusing on them because they're the focus of the thread and the strike. Due to the mini-room system a lot of them had to be working for 3 or 4 production at any given time just to make ends meet. Not exactly about writers, but only 2% of actors manage to make a living exclusively out of acting. The vast majority of TV and movie writers are not rich, as usual in most artistic professions (or professions in general).
And they will continue to be low success because they don’t toe the line.
The success of B movies doesn't matter. They're specifically not meant to be blockbusters, they're just small projects that some people might enjoy, the artists might want to produce, and helps keep them alive. A lot of my favourite movies are random B movies I stumbled upon, and the purpose of art is not only to become massively rich.
This is a cartoon from my childhood forty years ago.
I recommend you watch it before disregarding it. It's much better than the old one, and very different too. It's not some great work of communist art, but it was neat.
Tell me, how poor was the writer who wrote this She-Ra shit? Do you even know?
Sadly I don't have access to their bank accounts, but I can make some inference. Let's pick Sonja Warfield who wrote 6 episodes of the first season, and is not credited for anything else that year. The listed median rate in the WGA website is $15,750 per episode, so taking that one times 6, she made $94,500 that year. AFAIK that is a significant amount even for living in Los Angeles, but keep in mind that she wrote almost half of the season, and that series was on the front screen of Netflix for like 3 months. From what I understand, writers barely got any residuals from streaming, so she wouldn't be making much more than that.
Now, it's possible that she is already very rich outside of her writing earnings, but that has no bearing on whether writers are inherently rich. And, since it's median, at least half of the writers make less than that, specially since they have way less episode-writing credits. No wonder the strike authorisation vote got over 90% approval, rich people don't usually go on strike.
I don't want to be mean, but Mao's quote of "no investigation, no right to speak" seems pretty apt here. Just because you assume something (i.e. that writers are all rich), doesn't make it true, and I recommend you take some time to read and learn about worker movements, their plights and demands, before throwing them all under the bus.
Initially, pretty poor. ND Stevenson was a webcomic artist. The show was remade in order to reclaim a shitty toy commercial and make it into an examination of identity and self-worth, against a backdrop of (cartoonish) empire.
Look, if you write off the whole industry, you create a massive cultural gulf between yourself and everyone who watches anything. Meanwhile, movies like Snowpiercer or Sorry To Bother You manage to speak to people you would never dream of reaching out to.
A bit broad to paint every single one of them as an imperialist propagandist.
And there we have it. Workers are only worth anything if their production is things, not ideas, eh comrade? Anyone who disagrees with your ridiculous, narrow ideology isn't a true "worker," is that it?
The ideas they produce are imperialist apologism, warmongering jingoism, historical revisionism, bigotry, hate and supremacy.
Not supporting these things is a "ridiculous narrow ideology" according to you.
isn’t a true “worker,”
What does this even mean? Do you think all workers everywhere should be supported no matter what they do?
That's not what he said at all. Probably like 90 percent of Hollywood doesn't openly or even partially glorify the military. You're being a right-wing tool for no reason.