Week Seven of the WGA Strike: The Real Single Point of Failure
Here is a comic by Randall Munroe that illustrates one aspect of a single point of failure in terms of software and hardware.
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| The Original Comic |
As a former member of the military and Department of Defense employee, a "single point of failure," was always something to be wary of from platoon operations to programming computers. Have a backup and a backup to that backup.
It has become increasingly clear to me that there is an obvious single point of failure throughout the private sector, and it is wealthy people who won't negotiate with unions or workers.The WGA strike has reached week seven. To refresh, here are the demands and the "offers" to meet them.
The current narrative still being pushed by studios is that the writers are the single point of failure for the entire studio system.
If the public accepted that narrative on its face, there is no reason to accept that studios are NOT the cause of it, since at least one studio has posted record profits after pushing a narrative - with action to back it up - that they had been consistently losing profits.
If they were really losing money at the top, that would mean, boards of trustees, boards of directors, or what have you should be willing to negotiate and they still aren't.
Regardless of your feelings on capitalism, it has one very clear requirement: money must be moving constantly. If capitalism were a body money would be the blood and any individual organ that hordes the blood is effectively harming the rest of the body.
Who could have predicted this disaster? Anyone of the underpaid or laid off people someone in an air-conditioned office thought was unnecessary.
What's happening now with studios is a pattern so persistent and pervasive that whatever the WGA does, other unions must follow suit, and any union that forms in the future should take detailed notes as much of what is happening has not only happened before but will happen again.
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| What the studios claim is happening |
Should you be in a position where you need to make the argument, here are some useful links:
Here is Ed Soloman, who wrote copious screenplays for decades: "...films I wrote have generated over $ 2 billion. Studio accounting has us believe NOT ONE is in profit even though they've spawned multiple sequels. Thus I've gotten exactly $0 of my 5% of net points. The residuals I get are only cuz 50 yrs ago writers went on strike."
A thread from Twitter about the on-set functionality of a writer: WHY HAVE A TV WRITER ON SET? Since they already wrote the script (and rewrote it 8 times, and tweaked it after the table read)? Glad you asked.
Here is a 99-page report called Answering the Call of Automation: How the Labor Market Adjusted to the Mechanization of Telephone Operation which suggests quite a lot but due to the nature of telephone networks and should be considered because of how much studios are lording "AI" over writers now. It's been made clear they will surely do the same with as many aspects of film and television production as possible in the coming years.The most irritating part about "AI"? It's not ACTUALLY AI, it's more like a compiler that is course-corrected by humans every time makes a mistake and those humans are usually making minimum wage.
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| What is actually happening |
And finally, Klaudia Amenábar pointed out that part of major strategic communications from studios is weaponizing fandoms.
And if you think fandoms don't matter, remember "proof of concept" using fandoms to change something well outside of that fandom? It was The Last Jedi: "The study finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments. The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation."
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