The film and TV industry in the US has pretty much shut down following strikes by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) that began on May 2 and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) that began on July 14, both against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the media companies that produce shows.
The main complaint of the writers is that they are being squeezed by being asked to do more, working with fewer writers on shows for shorter seasons, making their profession even more precarious than it already was. Another major issue for both writers and performers is one that has been brought on by the increasing popularity of streaming services that the old contracts did not deal with. This involves the payment of ‘residuals‘, payments that are made to writers and actors when the shows they worked on are rebroadcast later.
For decades, an actor who appeared on a popular TV show like “Seinfeld” or “The Office” even once could count on getting royalty checks when the show appeared in reruns, bringing pay even at times they were unable to find work.
The streaming model has largely dried up that income, with residual payments untethered from a show or movie’s popularity. Actors want a long-term share of that revenue.
The issue is one of many the actors have in common with writers. For both scribes and performers, the move to streaming and its ripple effects have also meant shorter seasons of shows with longer gaps between them, and therefore less work. They say inflation is outpacing the scheduled pay bumps in their contracts.
And both writers and actors fear the threat of unregulated use of artificial intelligence. The actors say studios want to be able to use their likenesses without having to hire them, or pay them.
By coincidence, that last point was illustrated in the episode Joan Is Awful in the latest Black Mirror season released last month where a streaming company uses AI to create content using the likenesses of famous stars.
Because some famous actors get paid massive amounts for their appearances, it is easy to forget that almost all actors and writers earn very little and that their livelihood is precarious with large gaps between getting assignments. They are now being squeezed even more. Hamilton Nolan writes that this illustrates the class war that is always at play between workers and employers, though the few famous celebrities among the actors may obscure that fact.
And that brings us to the second underlying battle here: the class war itself. When you scrape away the relatively small surface layer of glitz and glamor and wealthy stars, entertainment is just another industry, full of regular people doing regular work. The vast majority of those who write scripts or act in shows (or do carpentry, or catering, or chauffeuring, or the zillion other jobs that Hollywood produces) are not rich and famous. The CEOs that the entertainment unions are negotiating with make hundreds of millions of dollars, while most Sag-Aftra members don’t make the $26,000 a year necessary to qualify for the union’s health insurance plan.
In this sense, the entertainment industry is just like every other industry operating under America’s rather gruff version of capitalism. If left to their own devices, companies will always try to push labor costs towards zero and executive pay towards infinity. The preferred state of every corporation in America is one in which all of its employees earn just enough money to survive and the CEO and investors earn enough money to build private rockets to escape to a private Mars colony for billionaires. The only – the only – thing that stops this process is labor power. That comes from unions. The walls that unions build protect not just their own members, but by extension the entire working class. That is what’s at stake here.
SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher, famous for her whiny, nasal voice, gave a fiery speech when the actors’ strike was launched, blasting the company executives for treating the union negotiators like dirt and saying that this was another case of greedy employers squeezing the workers who make things run.
While she excoriated the company executives of the AMPTP for receiving massive compensation packages while squeezing everyone else, the reality is that some actors are among the few people at the top who are massively overpaid while those at the bottom, who constitute the overwhelming majority, are massively underpaid. The top actors will have to come to terms with their role in this inequality.
Yet beyond the philosophical, the nitty gritty of many of the touchstones of the dispute does affect A-listers and Z-listers very differently. Some actors famous enough to qualify as a brand will have already resolved complicated negotiations over use of their image. Some, particularly those in the later stages of their career, will actively embrace AI that enables them to remain rich and famous beyond their working years – or, even, their death.
This is a very different situation to that faced by background extras or bit-parters who, the new deal proposes, will have to sign away rights to their face for a day’s work. They will then have to sit back and see their own image copied and pasted into any film or TV content, in perpetuity – with no residuals.
The current dispute is in most respects no different from that seen across a corporate world which depend for their profits on huge wealth discrepancies. Yet the passion and radicalism this has given rise to on the streets of LA should not, however, be underestimated by those observing from the Hollywood hills.
They did not personally create a system that rewards its most recognisable stars thousands of times more than its least. They are not as culpable as those studio heads who have raked in huge sums while making decisions that actively disenfranchise others. Yet they have undoubtedly benefited from this system.
This is a class struggle, as are all struggles that pit workers and unions against owners. In such struggles, my sympathies are always with those at the bottom, the workers and unions.
Who gives a damn? Now if it was rubbish collectors’strike….
What do you think would happen in a rubbish collector strike?
Her quote “you share the wealth. Because you cannot exist without us” should make the 1% nervous.
That quote could be used by anyone, in any business.
I hope the visibility of this strike gets people to think about their job and earnings and look where all the profits go: to the 1%
Without new shows to entertain themselves, the underpaid masses might have more time to think about how to improve their lot.
Vote democrat and demand huge tax increases on rich people and corporations or revolution.
With the strike, we know the revolution will not be televised.
https://youtu.be/vwSRqaZGsPw
A general strike is long overdue.
I was very surprised to learn 9 out of 10 actors make less than $26,000/year--that’s the hurdle they have to cross to get health insurance, and the vast majority don’t--they rely on a spouse or other to provide the income. Writers make slightly more, but most are not rich.
Their strikes set a good example to the rest of Americans to stand up for their rights. I’ve been astounded at the number of people who are too stupid to see that.
SailorStar,
Good examples are good. May the good continue.
chigau (違う)
What do you think would happen in a rubbish collector’ strike?
Much like what is happening in Rome, todaayt. The increase of huge rats and wild hogs roaming the city’s streets, lack of hygiene and geneal total degradation.
Actors and actresses are essentally people who pretend and lie for a living. Thjy make no essential constributon to society, except offering fleeting ‘entertainment’. Usually with hugely overblown egos and an overrated option of themselves which is often why they offer opinions about which they know next to nothing.
@Rupert: you sound so jealous of the actors. Are you going to squawk the tired “joke” of “Hollyweird! Hollyweird!” next? That’s usually what the jealous and the know-littles burp out at this point.
rupert:
Well, yes — working class people. People pay them to do their thing.
True for any form or art. So what?
They are not the only ones, are they? 😉
[aside]
Language is interesting, no? “Actors and actresses” is more properly just ‘actors’.
(One does not write ‘drivers’ and ‘driveresses’, does one?
Editors and editresses, oh my!)
actrix?
editrix?
Isn’t it amazing how jealous people get about actors? Or people who work in any of the humanities, but actors in particular. Nobody ever gets on a message board to get all hysterical about (for example) grown men who get paid millions a year to play with balls.
The writers and actors who provide entertainment to billions and provide employment to countless others in the studio, catering, hotel, car rental, housekeeping and janitorial, and other industries realized they were being badly treated and stood up for themselves and their ability to fairly support themselves. Good for them! Apparently this makes lessers jealous.
We’ve heard that song before
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zOjRlVpAOQ
“Money for Nothing”
rupert @7:
‘constributon’. Is that a futon which wraps itself around you before eating you?
If only Shakespeare had your insight, he wouldn’t have bothered writing all those silly, pointless plays.
What about musicians? They only offer fleeting ‘entertainment’ as well. No essential constributon there either, I guess.
Rob Grigjanis:
Like the chair that ate the guy at the plastics factory in Terror of the Autons?
The actors I know, three in the family and the life long friend of Mr J, do make contibutions to society. One of them runs a choir with socialist leanings, does accessibility work at her local theatre and works for MIND (UK mental health charity). The older one gave a lot of time to very funny fund raising politcal satire during the miners strike, had John Smith not died I think he would have made a killing impersonating him, he went on to perform on stage and TV, including in To Kill a Mockingbird (Boo Radley and Atticus Finch in different productions), the series on the olice investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper (one of the two senior detectives) and Early Doors. Another of the young ones one writes and plays their own satirical songs as well as writing songs for others. That ones partner teaches and both of them are raising their child. None of them have had an easy time of it, and have had to do other work at times to support themselves, though the older one has done reasonably well for himself over the years. What they have all done is provide entertainment, some with a political edge, some without, but all good solid work giving the rest of us a chance to forget our problems for a while. Personally I think that is valuable.
I think, Jazzlet, the better question to be asking is, what is it that rupert is contributing to society? It’s easy for him to sit back and troll, but what is he doing for society? Is he even supporting himself, or just living in his mother’s basement?
When the time comes I shall counsel my children to consider a career in a role that would be missed if people stopped doing it. I’m reminded of this crumb of comedy genius:
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/strikes-supposed-to-be-annoying-say-tube-drivers-2015070999992
And specifically its final line: “He added that people like Tom Booker could strike all year round and it wouldn’t matter because nobody gave two shits about digital marketing”.
If I and everyone with my qualification (chartered chemical engineer) stopped work overnight tomorrow (so wildly unlikely as to be functionally inconceivable), the likely scale of the impact would be felt economically and socially within hours. There are enough of us in vital positions that manufacturing of food, drugs and petrochemicals would be forced THAT DAY to cease, just to name three things. See how long y’all get along with no flour, paracetamol or petrol. I don’t think a chemical engineers’ strike would last long, because for that very reason I don’t think a chemical engineers’ strike would get going in the first place.
Broadly, things people do for money could conceivably be categorised by how vital they are to the continued functioning of society, and how easily they can be done by someone other than those doing them right now. You might also factor in how much those people are admired. The sweet spot is, I think, nurses -- who doesn’t admire nurses? You can’t do without them, and they’re not easily replaceable with some yahoo off the street or an AI. (Disclosure: my wife is a nurse).
My own roles hits two of three -- in my experience fewer than 1% of people even understand clearly what it is I do for a living, despite its being vital to the continued function of some tiny area of their lives. One advantage of this I’ve found is that, unlike the teachers I know, I never have to cope with people thinking they know how my job should be done under the delusion they know what it is having been on the receiving end of it. (Teachers also arguably miss out on the “admiration” factor, although possibly less so since lockdown and parents being forced into the role….)
Actors, and to a lesser extent writers, have a problem. I consider myself atypical in that there are writers I admire. Most people I know couldn’t tell you who’d written their favourite show -- they don’t care. A fair few don’t care about the actors, either -- “did you know the lead in your favourite show was also character X in this other show you watch?” quite often elicits a “no way!”, which makes my nerdy brain blow a fuse -- how can you not notice? That bloke who got killed in the first few minutes of “Secret Invasion” was BERIC DONDARRION!!! And so on.
But how vital are actors to the continued functioning of society? I mean, people will piss and moan that Deadpool 3 might be delayed, and obviously all those people who aren’t the actors and writers are also suffering as the work dries up. But this has happened before, and what we ended up with was reality TV -- limited “writing” and “talent” that was literally brought in off the street. It is verifiably absolute shit… and the masses fucking lap it up. Expect more going forward -- thanks, actors and writers.
And finally -- the people suffering the most are the “actors” at the bottom, the ones who, be honest, aren’t really acting. The camera is not lingering on them, they’re filling space in the frame. The writing has been on the wall for them for a long time (do you remember that sweeping shot of the Titanic in 1997 with the robotic dudes striding down the deck? It’s only got better since then, and the machines are coming for the main characters soon enough -- Peter Cushing’s ghost convinced my non-Star Wars fan wife, and that wasn’t even particularly good). They’re incredibly easily replaceable, the background artists, and pretty much always have been. How much do peope admire them for what they do? They say themselves that the majority of their job is hanging around doing nothing -- no working stiff who has to e.g. flip burgers has much sympathy that they’re not getting a living wage for it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m on their side… but I think they’re fighting a losing battle in an industry where the machines have been coming for them for decades already. They’re going the way of the artisan weaver, or Phil Tippett (Tippett, the master of stop-motion and inventor of Go-motion declared “I’m extinct” when he saw the test footage of the CGI dinos in the original Jurassic Park. He pivoted to inventing the input devices for the animators to use directing the dinos, but not everyone has his talent…).
Their other problem is that they’re appealing to quality -- we need them to produce the quality content we all love. The problem they’ve got is I have heard, over and over again, recent observations that we’re drowning in a sea of content. Not all of it is great, but I reached a point long ago where I’m now struggling to have time to watch the TRAILERS just for the good stuff, much less be able to watch all of the good stuff all the way through uninterrupted.
There’s a glut of product, and the people who are churning it out at record rates are perhaps unsurprisingly doing a very convincing acting job when they look surprised that the price of their labour has gone down.
Other industries will arise to take their place. I hope they get what they want, this time, and that they hold out for a few decades more… but nobody with any sense would see acting in films and TV as a sustainable, reasonably-paid career fifty years from now, would they?
Sure @ 18. Nobody knows who Sean Connery or Sir Alec Guinness or Tom Hanks or Julie Andrews or Betty White or Angela Lansbury even are. Complete nobodies, I’m sure I hear you saying. Judy Garland? Lucille Ball? Who even remembers her, right?
As for authors, nobody knows who Jane Austen or Charles Dickens were. Edgar Allen Poe, Margaret Atwood, Isaac Asimov, Agatha Christie, Gabriel Garcia Marques…who cares what they had to say, doesn’t matter to you, does it? According to your opinion, anyone whose work is in the humanities is utterly worthless.
How sad for you.
SailorStar #19
(note my ability to address you by name and comment number)
Why do you give Alec Guinness his title but not Sean Connery?
Well, the strike goes on.
Amusing snippet: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jul/23/hollywood-a-listers-to-quit-british-chatshows-as-us-actors-strike-hits
SailorStar #19
also Julie Andrews and Angela Lansbury?
@ Weeaboo Boi (違う)
Re #20 one might reasonably assume it’s because one was knighted about 40 years before the other and thus is better known by the title.
In contrast, what the fuck is your problem with Julie Andrews and Angela Lansbury? Why single them out?
sonof makes a point about “actors at the bottom [of the acting world, obviously]” and SailorStar counters in #19 with Sean Connery, Alec Guinness, Tom Hanks, Julie Andrews, Betty White, and Angela Lansbury. And then the same again for writers.
Um, okay dude.
#23 sBob “In contrast, what the fuck is your problem with Julie Andrews and Angela Lansbury? Why single them out?”
Bell end, they too have titles that were omitted by SailorStar, and chigau came back to include them in her question.
@24: I was just spitballing actors whose names came to the front of my head and had no idea I had left off titles. In other words, you’re off hunting zebras when the horses are grazing in the paddock.
Despite the first troll’s insistence and someone else’s boosting the idea that people in the humanities are utterly useless to humanity and therefore utterly forgettable, I just quickly typed out notable people with careers lasting decades.
As to those bit-part actors, the thousands in the “cast of thousands”, the people who flesh out the crowd scenes: it’s the same as any field. Harrison Ford’s first on-screen role was as a bellhop in a hotel. The surgeon who first separated conjoined twins had the supporting doctors, nurses, anaesthesiologist, etc. in the operating room--are they utterly worthless. We had the moon landing in 1969; are all the engineers, mathematicians, computer programmers, non-moon-going astronauts, and other scientists utterly forgettable and of no value because they didn’t step foot on the moon?
Of course not.
Argument: Actors are writers are useless, a very drain on society! Not a one of them has done anything, who would even care if they’re gone?
Response: Many have done great things and are household names, including A, B, C, D, etc. etc.
Counter-argument: consists of nit-picking, attacking strawmen, and moving the goalposts.
Goddamn, you can’t even keep track of who is going after you for what.
@SailorStar, various -- you’re really not very good at this, are you?
If you’re going to just make shit up to argue with, you really don’t need to go to the extra effort of posting it here. Just shout out of your window, it’ll save time. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/straw%20man
A real rebuttal of the argument I actually made would be evidence that wider society is suffering already because the actors and writers aren’t working, the way you’d be suffering if I and everyone in my field downed tools, or if all the nurses stopped work. I look forward to you providing such evidence. The existence, globally, of a dozen actors you can name who’ve had long careers is not a rebuttal, or even related really in any way. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/non-sequitur
I see what you did there. Most amusing. The humanities are a societal luxury. Piss and whine about it, sure, but prove it’s a wrong assertion with evidence, e.g. show the actual harm caused by a strike of history professors. Good luck.
@sonofrojblake
Why the measuring contest though ?
And its funny you demanded evidence when you provided none yourself (other than a hypothetical) -For e.g. why did you choose the impact of the disappearance of the set of people rather than say how much happiness is contributed by each profession ?
I am a software engineer and if all of us disappeared , ther e would be plenty of impact right now , probably more than the impact of all the chemical engineers disappearing , but so what ? Society did just fine without software engineers for a long tim might even do better if we could get rid of some of the social media sites. What you really need to provide is the relative value of each profession -- and entertainment has been around from a long time , much before there were chemical engineers. Make of that , what you will -- but humanity has always needed fiction to survive and to dream and to inspire.
Ironic argument going on here, as sonofrojblake has long proven himself to be a true example of a worthless person whose life or death would have no meaningful impact in the world. For the record, I want him to die anyway, painfully. I would like to piss on his corpse, I would like to stand and laugh at the very few people who would mourn him in their faces, even if they harmed me in return.
Anyway, can I get banned already? Was that enough to qualify for this blog’s shitty (lack of) moderation policy? I think I’ve earned it and I don’t want to be able to post here ever again. Any comments section that allows trash like sonofrojblake, Holms, John Morales and me to participate isn’t worth it for serious discussion anyway.
@Deepak Shetty, 29:
Because the effectiveness or otherwise of a strike is somewhat dependent on how much support it has from wider society and how much and how quickly that society misses the service provided by those who are no longer doing so. That’s rather the point you seem to have missed.
It’s hard to know how to respond to this, as it doesn’t make much sense. I’m demanding evidence that the actors and writers strike is hurting people other than the strikers themselves already. I can’t provide any, mainly because I don’t think there is any. I can’t provide evidence of what the harm was when I and everyone in my profession went on strike because it’s never happened and likely never would for the reasons I gave. I’m not in digital marketing. As for my wife, who has herself been on strike this year, it didn’t seem necessary to provide evidence of the harm a nurses’ strike causes, because if you can’t see and understand what that is it’s probably a waste of time trying to communicate with you at all.
Er…. because a strike is “the disappearance of a set of people”, intended to have an impact? If all the writers were doing was continuing to do their work but shouting about how much happiness they contribute to the world, how well would that go, do you think?
What a bizarre argument. Society did “just fine” without a Covid vaccine for tens of thousands of years. Actors more important/valuable than epidemiologists/virologists?
I really don’t.
—————————-
@No Respect, 30 -- always fun to read your “contributions” when you’re off your meds. Good one.
“I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member” -- Groucho Marx, who had the discipline to not attend something if he didn’t want it.
List of productions impacted by the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike
Every single one of those productions was intended to make money for somebody, and most (if not all) of them will still be incurring costs (particularly financing costs) during the delays caused by the strike. Even if the overall profitablility of a project is unaffected (which is unlikely), money later is still not as good as money now. The entertainment business is a business.
Well, yeah, fair enough -- the employers of those writers and actors are being harmed by losing some money. (Or are they? After all, famously Warner Bros. have, somewhere, a completed Batgirl movie. For reasons I don’t really understand , they went all the way through post-production, then just went “nah”, and shelved it, and don’t intend ever to release it. If they can do that, is a delay due to industrial action really that much of a financial inconvenience? Sincere question: I don’t know, I don’t really get how “tax break” explains anything.)
I was really more thinking of what “harm” there might be other than to whatever complex financial instrument or shell company the millionaires and billionaires who run the industry use to finance their projects.
For instance: if Tube drivers go on strike, yes, as in your observation, there’s an impact on how much money the Tube makes that day, because the stations are still there even if no tickets are sold. Rather the point, though, is that there is an immediate and much larger impact felt by people who actually depend on the Tube to get to work, which is why Tube driver strikes tend to be short and successful. French air traffic controllers are notorious in the UK, not because everyone in the UK has shares in a company that makes a profit from their work and they lose their dividends when there’s a strike, but because there’s an immediate and drastic impact on people’s ability to fly away on holiday.
The traditional aim of industrial action is to impact the people who are profiting from your labour, preferably right where it hurts (i.e. in the wallet,) and to make the point that they can only profit for as long as you supply that labour, because they are the people you’re in dispute with, and they are the people with the power to decide how much your labour is worth. Secondary effects though inconveniencing the wider public are a much dicier and more complex proposition, because they aren’t actually able to resolve the dispute, and it hands ammunition to right-wing commentators to complain about radical leftists holding ordinary hard-working people to ransom. Most strikers in for-profit industries try to avoid that sort of thing.
@sonofrojblake
That may be a factor but it isn’t the only factor -If there is a monetary loss to a few rich and powerful people they may deal -- the wider support may not matter.
You stated a “real” rebuttal of your argument would involve evidence and you alluded to the impact that your profession on strike would have -- but you didnt actually provide any evidence for your statement -- you made a assertion and went ahead (Seemingly that because its so obvious it doesnt need any evidence!). Whats bizarre about asking you to present your evidence?. The reality is neither you nor any rebuttal can present *evidence* (Atleast as traditionally understood) -- I just found it funny how you demand it. Or are you still saying that if you take away all the actiors, the productions, the shows, the movies, the writers and that no new content is ever created that society would not be harmed ?
Like I said , I dont need to compare the relative value of professions -- its enough for me that they provide value- Its you who insist on this assessment. You tried to call out how important your profession is by stating the immediate impact it would have if all of you went on strike. And you are using immediate harm to weigh the scales as opposed to say what would happen long term. Im just stating that humanity did fine without your profession or mine (though our professions do provide value currently) -- but acting as a profession has been around much much longer. What you need to see is what gap that fills for humans that has made it sustain for so long.
I think the issue here is that sonofrojblake is coming at this from a UK perspective, where the labour movement has been almost completely crushed except in the public sector and a handful of public-facing natural monopolies like the railways -- so industrial action here generally is much more about public opinion rather than the traditional conflict of labour vs capital over who gets what proportion of the spoils. But that’s a symptom of both Britain’s de-industrialisation and the effects of 4 decades of anti-union legislation… Plus of course the whole thing is then filtered through the British press, who have some history of their own in this area.
@37 -- that is true.
Commentators sonofrojblake and rup are spot on.
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There are strikes and there are strikes. There are jobs and there are jobs. Some jobs are Keystone Species of the economy. Keystone Species = a species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend, such that if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically and for the worse.
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There are 2 strikes going on. One relating to the movie industry. Another one relating to trucking.
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Movie Industry is Not a Keystone Species of the economy. Trucking IS a Keystone Species of the economy.
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Movie Industry being movie industry, the strike of movie industry workers gets bigger press coverage than the impending truckers’ strike. I wish the movie industry strikers the best for they have mortgages to pay, children to clothe and feed. Fran Drescher’s speech is so much boiler plate, un-informative, non-persuasive to the outsider. Fran D. can learn from a former SAG-AFTRA president, POTUS Ronald Reagan, how to give an effective speech.
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The movie industry strike has been going on for, what?, 3 months? OK. Given that many big-budget movies (woke movies in particular) are bleeding red at the box office, the longer the strike, the better the bottom line for the industry.
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This movie industry strike reminds me of a 2-week strike of physicians in NYC in the 1960’s. During the 2-week strike, the city mortality rate went down.
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Before the phonograph, there were many musicians and singers were employed in all venues (small and large) and families bought plenty of pianos, guitars, violins, and such. Then the phonograph came. Family pianos were replaced with record players and fewer musicians were employed.
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Before the moving pictures, there were many theaters in towns (small and large) and plenty of actors being employed in said theaters. with movie pictures, many theaters had to close down but many theater switch to show movies instead.
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Before television, people had to leave their homes and go to movie theaters.
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With DVD’s, movie theater business is going bad.
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With Internet streaming, movie theater business is getting worse. The Internet democratizes Entertainment: Mr Beast, PewDiePie, and many others made millions and do not need access to Hollywood to make their moolah. Hollywood is no longer the Entertainment Gateway. One can say the same for various Record labels. Technical advancements have been most disruptive of the Entertainment Industry which will undergo many changes in the years to come. In many ways the actors’ strike is the Luddites’ cry.
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Sic transit gloria mundi. Some commentator writes: “Nobody knows who Sean Connery or Sir Alec Guinness or Tom Hanks or Julie Andrews or Betty White or Angela Lansbury even are. Complete nobodies…” Walk around the Hollywood Walk of Fame. You would not recognize half the names. Quick, who was the 1948 Nobel Literature Prize Winner? Do not cheat, no “googling” allowed. Quick, what is the best-selling novel in France in 1961? Do not cheat, no “googling” allowed. Truth is, industries such as Entertainment and Sports are not Keystone Species of the economy. Luxembourg has a high per capita GDP; does its prosperity depend on Movies and Sports? (sarcasm on) And Liechtenstein is well known for its movie stars and sports giants (sarcasm off). If anything, Entertainment and Sports are Indulgences of Rich Nations.
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Look at Human History. Stone Age to Bronze Age to Iron Age to Industrial Age to Atomic Age to ComputerAge to etc., etc., etc.. Music, Painting, Acting were not the driving forces of the Human Societal Evolution; Music, Painting, Acting may REFLECT on Societal Evolution. Theater Arts did not build the pyramids. Whatever the evolutionary stage of human society, the Arts are an ever present appendage. There is always free time (Stone Age humans have more free time than us in the Computer Age). What to do? Some play with themselves. Some paint. Some sing. Some meditate. Some build toys. Some invent tools. Some do Science and Math.
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I do not care personally care about the actors’ strike. I have seen no movies made after 2010 and I am fine. I am not fine if deprived of food, energy, and other material essentials made available to me by truckers and engineers.
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About the teaching profession (re: sonofrojblake comment). It is a bit over-rated. Homeschooling is becoming more and more popular for low-income and high-income families alike. Online Instruction and home-schooling eliminate at least 2 of the most serious problems: bullying and marxist indoctrination of students. Going back in History a few centuries, home schooling was exclusive to the Elite: you are not having the young princes and princesses rubbing elbows with the Great Unwashed. And a good part of the homeschooling was done by MOTHERS. There was no anti-woman sentiment in the education of the female elite. Industrialized Education started in the 1700’s in Europe and further boosted by Napoleon Bonarparte for he needed first-rate soldiers (illiterate soldiers make for bad soldiers). In the 1900’s the goal of Industrialized Education is to produce properly indoctrinated workers for Industry (identical goals for Capitalist, Socialist, Communist systems alike). Industrialized Education by the Chinese started centuries before Europe and their goal was to produce Mandarins: ideal bureaucrats for Big Central Government.
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About the teaching profession. The hardest, the most difficult part of educating a child is done with 99% success by the parents themselves (with or without formal education, let alone a teaching credential): teach the children how to speak. Most of said parents (at least those who are literate) are successful teaching their children how to write!!!
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About the teaching profession. A few years ago, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, told a large audience of teachers:” good effective teachers ought to be paid $1,000,000 per year”. The audience cheered very, very loudly. Then Mr Ellison continued: “And I need only 1,000 of you.” Dead silence in the audience.
[Such ignorance, friedfishe!]