Like many Brown students, I am often too busy to watch my favorite television shows when they air. Lucky for me, I can spend Friday afternoons watching these shows online, legally, for free. Now that network studios replay full-length episodes on their websites, we can enjoy them at our leisure. Technology is a beautiful thing.
As an aspiring screenwriter, I find this especially useful - I can watch episodes over and over to study their content. I can buy them on iTunes or on DVD and access them even after studios remove them from their Web sites. I can show my friends short clips, character blogs and webisodes to get them as excited about my favorite shows as I am. Unfortunately, as an aspiring screenwriter, I will not be doing any of these things for a while.
In her Nov. 14 article "How the writers' strike will affect us all," Salimah Nooruddin '08 laments the Writers Guild of America's recent strike. Soon, she fears, we won't have new episodes of TV shows, and, if the strike lasts long enough, new movies may stop being produced. Nooruddin states that she supports the writers, but that it's time to go to the bargaining table.
Nooruddin's article gets at a major issue facing the writers' strike: The writers are seen as having reasonable demands but unreasonable methods of going about achieving them. We like the idea of unions being allowed to strike, but not when it inconveniences us. In fact, the writers have not resisted going to the bargaining table. They have tried to negotiate. The WGA continues to validate new material, and its Web site calls for studios to negotiate. What's more, the strike is not a surprise to studios. This summer I worked in Los Angeles, where it was common knowledge that the strike was coming. Studios stockpiled scripts in preparation. Part of the reason the strike seems so terrible is that consumers of entertainment are told that they are in for an immediate dry spell of material. This is true where topical late-night talk shows are concerned, but the WGA provided ample opportunity for studios to prepare so that consumers wouldn't go without entertainment.
I was glad to see an article on the writers' strike, but Nooruddin paints us consumers as helpless victims of an unfair battle between writers who deserve to get paid for their work and studios just trying to put out the movies and TV shows we know and love. We are not powerless. Each of us has the opportunity and responsibility to decide where we stand on the strike and to act accordingly.
I side with the writers. We now live in a digital world. What used to be a fair compensation guide is no longer. DVD sales are now a major component of movie sales, and writers only receive 4 percent. Particularly in television, online content is now a huge source of revenue for studios. Writers receive nothing from their material being rebroadcast online and on iTunes and no compensation for character blogs and webisodes that draw on the material they created.
We see entertainment as a dispensable entitlement. Though entertainment is frivolous enough that the writers don't deserve our support the way other unions do, we expect film and television as a given. What Nooruddin gets at is that we need entertainment. We need Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to make politics relevant and relatable. We need a much-deserved break from studying during our favorite programs. We need movies, as generations before us have, as an escape from the real world. We need writers to create this entertainment.
Some who side with the studios claim that TV and movies are vitally different. But if demands are not met now, we may continue along a slippery slope until full movies are shown online for free by studios with no compensation for the writers. The digital age has provided us with countless benefits, and writers should reap those as well.
Acquaint yourself with these issues, then take action. Go to WGA.org, Unitedhollywood.com and www.petitiononline.com/WGA/petition.html for opportunities to understand the strike and take action. Petitions and donation opportunities are available at these Web sites. Don't watch the scab reality TV shows that replace your favorite programs. I have just, for the last time, watched 30 Rock's "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" on NBC.com, and I will refrain from watching online content until the creators of it are compensated. I will not purchase DVD's as holiday gifts until writers are satisfied with the amount they receive from sales.
The strike is not depriving us of entertainment, but rather showing us all how much we should and do value it. In an inspiring move, the WGA has mobilized as a union. These writers want to write. The only way they can go back to writing full time is if they can make a living off of it. The liberty to pursue any profession is one that, as college students, we are lucky to have. The WGA seeks to maintain that liberty for us future starving artists. When I look at it that way, I can bear Thursdays without "The Office."
Instead, I guess I'll just go read a book.
Alison Schouten '08 dictated this article because she's on strike.
