Censorship Series: International Edition
Members of the WGA Are Angry Because They Didn’t Get A Token Statement of Support
I need to say upfront I am not going to say anything about what’s going on in the Middle East right now. I realize that this is an issue that no matter what you say on this, there is no right answer to give and only wrong ones. And I imagine even saying this much will bring out crazies on all sides. So to be clear, this only deals with what’s going on in the Middle East to deal with a different kind of hypocrisy one that I’m relatively sure we can find a greater accord on. Maybe I’m wrong anyway.
I’m sure that while everything was going on last week in the Middle East, we were all riveting by the most important endorsement that Israel got. At the time when the Middle East is in crisis Israel received a statement of support from the most important people in the world — SAG-AFTRA and the DGA.
Because as we all know, you can piss off the U.N. NATO and the entire U.S. military and walk it off. But if you mess with the people who make the Mission Impossible franchise, The Expendables, the MCU and the DCU, you have truly screwed with the wrong people. I’m sure the leaders of Hamas were shaking in their shoes when they learned that they had made mortal enemies of Matt Damon and Martin Scorsese.
This is, of course, utterly satirical. In the midst of the international and humanitarian crisis going on in the Middle East — and honestly anywhere in the world — the last thing any of the soldiers who are fighting or the civilians who are dying give a shit and a shake about what Hollywood thinks. And to be clear, the public statement that they made, like the proverbial verbal contract, isn’t worth the paper its printed out. That’s not really why the guilds made the statement and frankly the fact that SAG-AFTRA was more concerned with making this public statement than helping the actors on strike and the industry that is suffering by their walking picket line speaks volumes to their own narcissism.
These public statements of support, to be clear, are affirmations for the people who make them rather than any actual good. And I’m not just saying that out of pique. As someone who has a disability, there are many things that could make my life better and easier to deal with. Accurate representation on any screen, big or small, is very low on the list but public support from Hollywood is much lower. It does my personal position no good if someone like me is represented in a film or TV series, accurately or otherwise. I’ve argued for years that those groups who spend so much time getting representation in Hollywood are fighting the wrong battles. And if you think at the end of the day a public statement of support from a celebrity in any major problem you have anywhere — including Hollywood — is going to fix your lives, you have clearly got skewed priorities. Words are meaningless if there is no action.
And a statement like this from SAG-AFTRA and the DGA is ‘a mere scrap of paper’ and only serves to show celebrity’s own narcissism. Making speeches for the war in Ukraine is a nice thing to do but let’s not pretend Zelensky speaking at the Academy Awards did anything to help the soldiers fighting in the Ukraine. It really didn’t do much to help Zelensky but it made the people in Hollywood feel important. They had no intention of going to fight alongside the troops or go within a thousand miles of a combat zone. But by wearing ribbons they can appear they are of the people and doing their part. Why not? It doesn’t cost them a dime.
But Hollywood’s inability to perceive how little they matter in the grand scheme of things never ceases to amaze me. Because today the WGA got blasted from its own members for not making a public statement.
On Sunday, an open letter was issued because the WGA unlike SAG-AFTRA and the DGA had not issued a public statement supporting Israel. This statement was signed by several showrunners I admire. Among them Amy Sherman-Palladino, Jenji Kohan, Jerry Seinfeld, and Joel Fields. Fields said in an interview that: “the WGA had failed us deeply. For an organization that constantly puts out statements to make sure that it’s on the right side of history, it has sadly issued its statements through its silence.” Boy that goodwill for the rights you gained after five months on the picket line really went away quickly.
I have little doubt the WGA has spent a century uttering public statements standing for causing that were on ‘the right side of history.’ I’ve sure that the right side of history depends on what side your on in the first place but never mind. I also know that a written statement has no real power. If it had HUAC would have run in terror the first time they told writers to testify before Congress. A statement of support is no good without actual support. The fact that these writers were on strike for five months should have told them that.
And to be clear, the WGA’s statement, for all the power they seem to think it has, has none in the real world, certainly none on the battlefield. I’d go further and say it doesn’t do anything to help those people In the United States who are terrified about what will happen to their families in harm’s way. Your support does nothing to protect their families. They want the support of their friends and family, not the writers of The Americans. Jerry Seinfeld saying he stands with Israel is nice, I guess, but it’s no protection from a bomb or a bullet — and they sure as hell won’t be sitting shiva if they end up dying.
In the grand scheme of things, to paraphrase a different writer, the support or non-support of three little guilds doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. It’s all about the members. You know the people who have spent the last several months striking because they don’t believe the studios care about them. This is about their egos being stroked. They want their union to make them — and not all of them, but some of them — feel better. They know very well these statements have no power and no meaning — Hollywood is the ultimate town for backstabbing — and they’re still angry that they didn’t get the Hollywood equivalent of a Hallmark card. This is the most controversial subject in the modern world, one that politicians have spent three quarters of a century dancing around but never resolving, and they seem to be angry that they don’t want to say something that would be fundamentally controversial. You know, in a town that hates controversy.
But no Fields tells us: they consider Hollywood a ‘safe space’. Well I think the safe space idea is crap. For anything. You’re adults. You live in the real world, you now how unfair it is. I have never lived in a safe space in my life. No such place exists. And to be clear if you think Hollywood is a safe space, you clearly don’t work there. You know how ruthless the place is: you just spent five months on a picket line because you thought your duty was a sacred calling when it’s a job the majority of Americans don’t think about twice. And then you went back to work with a raise so minimal that other strikers would argue about how little you got for your time on the line and got your colleagues to praise as a great victory. That’s the bubble you live in.
So you’re upset that you didn’t get a statement of support. Well, here’s an idea. Why don’t you and your fellow writers draft one? Use all of your skills as writers to write the most thrilling, unambiguous and full-throated support of Israel can managed. Then go a studio set — which because of your good friends at SAG-AFTRA are still deserted — and find a mock-up of the Oval Office. And one of your good friends at SAG-AFTRA can read it in the delivery you expect. Pick your fictional president — Martin Sheen, Dennis Haysbert, hell maybe Morgan Freeman will be available. Then you can film it and release it on a platform to your membership. It will have all the power and moral authority that any statement of the WGA could ever have but it will accomplishment what you really want — it will make you feel better and important.