2023 has been weird. This is the second time that I’ve had to scrap the blog post I was working on to address a seismic shift in an industry that interests me. Technically two industries in this case, but two that are very much interrelated.

I’m talking, of course, about the current strikes involving the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA).

Before I get too far into this discussion, I should point out that I am not a member of either of these organizations. I am a professional writer by trade, but I’m a copywriter. So, more of a marketing/branding writer. I write books and games, but that’s all just a side hustle for now. I am not a screenwriter, though that field does hold a certain draw for me. And while I was a theatre kid in high school and a bit in college, I realized early on that I was not cut out to be an actor.

Let me be absolutely crystal clear on this point: I will always be in favor of the artist over the corporation. That goes for the current situation as well as any more that might come about in the future. With that in mind, I thought I would lay out my thoughts on the subject, and why I think strikes like these are important and necessary.

The Eternal Squeeze Play

Corporations, with few exceptions, will almost always seek the path that reduces costs and maximizes profits. It’s one thing to run a company efficiently, but it’s quite another when both the reducing and the maximizing are taken to extremes.  

That’s why I have little patience for CEOs who make more in a day than most people make in a year (and more in a year than most folks will make in a lifetime) saying that there’s not enough money to pay their creatives for their work. These are some of the same executives who were recently reported as saying that they would drag out negotiations until union members started losing their homes, describing it as a “cruel but necessary evil.” 

Bear in mind that the biggest hubs of entertainment production are also situated in some of the most expensive places to live in the nation. Google how much the average rent is for a basic apartment in Los Angeles, I dare you.

So, we have a situation where media corporations are raking in enormous profits, but the people who help create all that value are not able to adequately share in it. All the while, these creatives face limited work protections, a crushing lack of health care, and a shortage of the basic safety nets that other industries have gained only through organized labor.

Once again, I trust a corporation to do only what it considers to be in its own interest, and nothing more. Anything beyond that will require direct action for them to, grudgingly, loosen the purse strings. These companies could not, and cannot, exist without the labor of these writers and actors, pure and simple. So, just for the industry to continue, the people involved must be allowed to make a living wage, rather than being relegated to the iffy world of gig-economy/contractor status.

Skin in the Game

Now, what is or isn’t decided at the negotiating table will not affect me financially, but it will affect me. It will affect you, too. We all have a stake in these strikes to some degree. Unless you sequester yourself in some sort of remote area, chances are you stream movies or TV shows as entertainment. We all consume media in some capacity.

Can you imagine how much more miserable the pandemic would have been without streaming? And yet, as much as streaming services saw huge increases from that time, a trend that continues on to today, streaming has not proven itself to be a sustainable model for all the folks who contributed to its success.

The fact of the matter is that if we as the public want to continue enjoying movies and shows, we had better hope that both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA negotiations are successful. If not, there will be fewer people able to lend their talents to that end. Fewer people will mean fewer shows and fewer movies for us to enjoy. So, this isn’t just an issue for screenwriters and actors; we all have skin in this game. 

No Dice, Skynet

Another sticking point in all this is corporations’ use of AI-generated content. This goes well beyond just actors and writers, but the use of AI will have enormous repercussions throughout the entire sphere of creative endeavors. I absolutely don’t blame actors and writers for wanting protections from AI written in their contracts. I would as well were I in their place. 

AI is a creative shortcut, and right now a pretty mediocre one at that. It has the virtue of being pretty cheap to employ, though, certainly much cheaper than a living person who constantly needs money for food, water, and shelter. It’s the relative cheapness that has most corporations’ mouths watering. It’s yet another way to cut costs and maximize profits. 

The use of AI brings up a whole host of moral and ethical questions. I won’t discuss those here, as they are far too numerous and complex. Rather, the point that I would like to make about AI used in a creative endeavor is this: Creativity is a human expression. Using our imagination and creativity constitute perhaps the most human things we can do.

There is no culture without creativity. If we decide to outsource our creativity to a machine, then we are, by extension, allowing an algorithm to dictate our culture to us. That diminishes us in ways I can’t even begin to fathom. Yeah, no thanks, Mr. Terminator — hard pass.

Conclusions

I think what these strikes boil down to is trying to get the major studios to acknowledge and accept that writers and actors are humans — with needs and aspirations, deserving of dignity and protection. It might be easy to point to a few rock stars in both fields as being super successful, but they are the exceptions, not the rule. The vast majority of creative people on the picket line nowadays do not fall into that category. They just want to be able to make a steady career in the industry.

It might be hard to see entertainment as a “product” in the same way that we view tangible products like steel girders or cars, but these creatives deserve to be compensated even if the work they produce is highly subjective. Really, when it comes down to it, if our auto manufacturers and steel workers have been able to secure legally enforceable assurances from their own corporations, vulnerable workers in the entertainment industry should be no different.

Think about the moments that have moved you the most on the big or small screen. One that comes to mind for me is seeing Tony Stark give the snap in Endgame that simultaneously defeats Thanos and saves the universe. That scene was written by the Russo Brothers and the movie’s editor, Jeff Ford, and then acted on screen by the peerless Robert Downey, Jr.

Each moment like that — each time it feels like all the air has gone out of the room and we feel the story resonate in our very bones — an actor and a writer brought that to life. If we don’t allow these creatives a path forward and a future they can aspire towards, we risk not having an entertainment industry at all. Or, at least, not much of one.  

Thanks for reading.