What’s Next?

The Oscars seem to be the point of focus for a lot of this speculation. That either they must be preserved, or that the studios feel they must be preserved, and therefore this terrible struggle will end. There is an argument to be made for wanting the show to go on: it showcases the artists with whom we are bonded (there’s no award for Best Hiding of Net Profits), and it provides employment and revenue for thousands in the community that has been hit so hard by this action. Having said that, it’s a f%$#ing awards show. It’s a vanity fair. It’s a blip. We’re fighting (fighting, remember?) for the future of our union, our profession, our art. If that fight carries us through the Holy Night when Oscar was born, that’s just too bad.

And the studios? Well, the Oscars provide advertising revenue and a boost for the films that win. But the studios have shown impressive resolve in ignoring short-term losses in order to destroy us. I don’t hear any knees knocking in the Ivory Towers over that night of programming. Hey, I wish I did. I wish, like a lot of people, I could hear anything from in there besides that weird clicking sound Predator makes.

Joss Whedon on the continuing writer’s strike, worth a read in case people have forgotten just how dirty the studios have played this.

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

Gil Scott-Heron

“The revolution will not be televised” was the motto of Joe Trippi’s web-powered 2004 Dean Presidential campaign. His book of the same name is a brilliant insight into the potential power of the web and US campaigning in general. Go read!

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious,
makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part;
you can’t even passively take part,
and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels,
upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.
And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it,
to the people who own it,
hat unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

- Mario Savio, University of California, Berkeley, December 3, 1964

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.”

—William Lloyd Garrison, inaugural editorial in the anti-slavery journal The Liberator, 1 January 1831

I found this week’s quote (which may or may not become a recurring feature) on Daylight Athiesm’s excellent post on the folly of assuming moderation is always the correct position. Some people say 2+2 is 4. Some people say it’s 11. That doesn’t make the answer 7.