Appearances

 First of all, I want to say that the struggle is real. The recently settled writers' strike and the currently ongoing strike by the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists have raised a number of very important questions about the future of creative types working out there in the world. First and foremost, what is a fair and living wage for an artist? Who really deserves the spoils for their labor? Why should producers who never had an original thought in their lives after the one that said, "hey why don't I become a producer?" get all the cash?

For months, issues like these have kept us all in a protracted state of boredom, anxiously awaiting the return of those more clever than us, at least in the ways of telling stories. While discussions raged about artificial intelligence versus the more traditional use of "homage" and straight up stealing ideas for someone else, we in the audience kept digging deeper into our Netflix queue as "original programming" continued to be on hold. With great relief we welcomed late night hosts back from their union-restricted hiatus and the natural rhythms of the world began to bring normalcy back to a land crippled by the lack of jokes about current events. 

But even as scribes began to move past their contractually enforced writers block, thespians continued their holdout. The solution to the problems faced by the ones that write the words was not adequate for those who have to utter them. A settlement for actors is still in the works. Meanwhile, the powers that be in their union have insisted that their members adhere to guidelines when it comes to the upcoming holiday. The Screen Actors Guild encouraged its members to consider “generalized characters and figures” when picking out this year's Halloween costumes. Ghosts, zombies, spiders. That sort of thing. Please don't parade around your neighborhood dressed like J. Robert Oppenheimer, or some girl's action figure. Or anything that might inadvertently promote content for which residuals are currently being negotiated. 

"I look forward to screaming 'scab' at my 8 year old all night," notoriously cheeky actor Ryan Reynolds wrote on Twitter. "She's not in the union but she needs to learn." 

And so the struggle, which is real, continues. In a place where reality, and most everything else, is negotiable.