From Variety:
“When it comes to acknowledging the importance of writing, I think everybody up here has demonstrated that you can’t do any of this without great writing,” Kennedy said. “You can’t do any of this without great writing. All of us who create anything…I am in full support and I know most people are in full support of the writers getting what they deserve.”
It’s clear from the past few decades in the US that the “free market” does not provide equitable pay for labor unless it is forced by union action. The government is so allergic to wage increases that it punishes them with higher interest rates. The problem is so persistent and ubiquitous that many people have finally woken up to the fact that unionization is the only way out.
Last night, I went to a junior high school production of Beauty and the Beast, to cheer on a friend’s daughter (Go Emma!). At the end of this sweet, modest production, there was a raffle to raise money for the public junior high school. Somewhere, a man paid $44 billion dollars to ruin your favorite social media platform because he felt like it. Elsewhere, public school teachers are asking for a little help to buy books.
This is all to day, the WGA represents a trend we should all support. It’s time for those who are making billions stop treating the rest of the world like their indentured servants. They won’t unless they’re forced. The film and television industry treats creative work as a tax write off (They’ve killed the physical media market so they’re literally making lots of shows unavailable, completely. Whither Willow!) even as they bury the world in ever more ‘content.’ (Ew, the word content is terrible.) It’s a massively lucrative industry that can, and should, pay the people who write what we all enjoy fairly…and agree not to, you know, replace them with a chatbot.
So, just like the President of Lucasfilm, I hope you will support the Writer’s Strike however you can, even if it’s just a social media shout out, so you can feel proud of enjoying Peak TV without reinforcing Peak Corporate Privilege.