“‘How did you get here anyway?’ ‘Producer’s a friend of mine, had a Teamster drop me off.'” – Daffy Duck and Bill Murray, ‘Space Jam’
The Met Gala was this week. I don’t like being a complainer about what everyone’s talking about on Twitter—it’s very fun when everyone’s talking about, say, the NBA playoffs, and if I don’t enjoy, say, the Oscars, I can and should log off and do something else—but Met Gala night really makes underneath my eyeballs itch. Fashion is dope! Functionless fashion that costs more than a boat is a sign your society should re-acquaint itself with guillotines.
Last week, Defector reported the story of Nieshea Walker, a 34-year-old mother of three and full-time McDonald’s night manager who is currently homeless after being evicted. She makes $33,000 a year (slightly more than my starting salary as a copywriter at [Unnamed Chicago-Based Tech Company] in 2017). Rent got hiked up $100 a month at her apartment, bringing it to an unaffordable $1,200 per month, which is still below Cinncinnati’s market-rate of $1,273. Again, Nieshea is a manager at that McDonald’s, not that it matters. If the minimum wage isn’t enough to afford to live, then it’s not a minimum wage.
Yesterday, The Marshall Project reported that grocery prices have gone up by 8.4% in the last year. Have you ever gotten an 8.4% raise in your life? Do you even get annual raises at your job? I’ve had exactly two jobs where I got annual raises and they were 3% if I was lucky. The independent bookstore I worked at only ever gave us a raise because the city of Evanston, IL increased minimum wage. I’m burying the lede on this Marshall Project story, which goes into depth about how much worse inflation is in prisons. Prisons! Imagine being in prison, working for $2 an hour or whatever, and you can’t even afford basic dignity stuff like deodorant.
We do not live in a sane society. Not much about the United States of America is good, it turns out. No sane society, with the riches the US has, would allow price gouging to this degree. No sane society, with the riches the US has, would allow such runaway income inequality.
(Not to mention the Met Gala was this week)
You have to step back and wonder how people at the levers of power think things, like just in general things, are supposed to function.
If housing is so precarious, how can anyone be expected to work?
If groceries are so expensive, how is anyone supposed to eat?
If work is two or three full or almost-full-time jobs that can’t even cover rent, how is any workplace supposed to function?
If no one’s making enough money to cover rent or food, how is anyone supposed to buy things, which is supposedly the engine of the economy?
If I’m going to do this anaphora a fifth time, how is it possible I haven’t even mentioned the U.S.’s garbage healthcare system?
The Met Gala was this week.
It’s now time to come to the writer’s strike. WGA East and WGA West hit the picket lines Tuesday. I think maybe there’s this perception that working on a TV show or selling a movie script automatically vaunts you into the “housing-secure” class, but it does not. Writers are overworked and underpaid and the ubiquity of streaming combined with pandemic lockdowns have made things worse.
I won’t get too into the nitty-gritty, but rest assured that studios are reporting record profits while trying to cut corners on paying writers. Here’s Ashley Nicole Black (Ted Lasso, A Black Lady Sketch Show) talking about “mini rooms,” which is a way studios are subverting traditional writers’ rooms and rates. Josh Androsky (Townies, SpongeBob Squarepants) details about his experience working for a day rate (what studios are pushing for) on SpongeBob: “while my day rate was ok, they only had us in the room one day a week, and every friday i would find out if i was coming back or not. i made $14k that year…” Sal Calleros (Snowfall, The Good Doctor) correctly points out that “…Mad Men put AMC on the map. House of Cards put Netflix on the map. Writers did that…Know what you get when you put CEOs in creative lanes? You get Quibi.”
Speaking of CEOs, it’d sure be nice if I could embed those tweets.
The Met Gala was this week. Abbot Elementary creator Quinta Brunson was there, and I guess some people were giving her a hard time on Twitter (won’t dignify them with a link). This is the problem: Quinta Brunson being invited to the Met Gala doesn’t mean she’s rich. It means the perverted freaks who run the Met Gala sent her the kind of invite you’re not supposed to say no to, I guess (skip to the 50-minute mark for Met Gala discussion, stay for Miles telling the hilarious story of Aziz Ansari begging Vanity Fair for Met Gala tickets). By all accounts, Quinta Brunson advocates hard for writers’ increased pay. But none of this is the issue: studios set pay rates, not showrunners. None of this is Quinta’s fault, but chuds love to blame a Black woman for shit, don’t they?
Not to mention rich people love when the proles are slinging mud at each other. Writing and night managing a McDonald’s are looked at with about the same amount of respect, if you ask the business school crowd. It’s just that writers sometimes get their pictures in magazines, so even my own inner editor is yelling “ARE YOU REALLY COMFORTABLE EQUIVOCATING A HOMELESS MCDONALD’S MANAGER AND THE WGA STRIKE.” I’ve been a fast food worker and a writer who’s been late on rent before, so yes. No one reading this is a billionaire, and we’ll never get anywhere if we spend our time slap-fighting the “who’s poorer” game.
The first thing I ever saw Quinta Brunson in was a BuzzFeed series about being a broke writer. My guess is she’ll hold a picket line.
The writers are also demanding some AI regulation, which studios are refusing, because of course. This is the end goal: use algorithms to decide what shows/movies to make, replace the writers with ChatGPT, re-cast dead actors, and count on the proles being so beaten down that they’ll take whatever slop helps them unwind after back-to-back 10-hour shifts doing Amazon deliveries or whatever.
I mean, they won’t kill every human being’s job. Enough people have to fill that red carpet at the Met Gala, which was this week.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris