The strike rules felt extreme at the STLV convention last week in Las Vegas.
Strikes are extreme by their nature. They happen because things have already gotten so extreme that no other option remains. Honestly, I'm surprised the actors even went to the convention. Just being there without talking about struck work seems like threading a needle.
Some actors got around it by saying “a show I had a significant role in the ran from year X to year Y,” while others really avoided mentioning specific shows. In the worst case they would talk about words that rhymed with episode names or characters. I thought if they’re going to go that far, they might as well just say the name aloud.
That seems like violating the spirit of the rule while staying within the letter. They probably shouldn't have talked about it at all, even elliptically.
When Beltran kept defying the rules on purpose, at first I agreed with him. They’re really upset with him saying Voyager!? But then he kept doing it gratuitously very time he spoke.
The success of a strike depends on solidarity. However arbitrary a rule may seem, for a member of the union to violate a rule he agreed to follow when he joined the union is inappropriate, hypocritical, and an affront to his colleagues in the union. If he wanted to violate the rules, he should've quit the union.
Some of the actors said the strike was to prevent AI from replacing jobs. I respectfully disagree with them on that point. Nicole de Boer lamented that a third of jobs will be replaced by AI, so we should all be worried about this. I think technology will replace most jobs. Most jobs that existed a few generations ago are gone, yet the world way more prosperous and peaceful. I think that positive trend will continue. If the goal is to reduce the use of AI, I think that's wrongheaded and hopeless. I understand, however, the need for new contract terms to deal with situations arising from new technology.
That seems like a spurious argument. If you're talking about automation replacing drudgery and hard labor and dangerous work, I agree entirely. But it's bizarre to argue that should apply to creative or artistic work as well. The individual human effort, talent, and imagination that goes into the work is the entire point of it, unlike a job that's just screwing widgets into gizmos or moving numbers between spreadsheets. You can't "replace" that kind of work with automation, because that doesn't replace creativity or talent with something equivalent, it merely eliminates it.
In other words, the reason technology replacing drudge work makes the world better is
because it frees the human mind to be more active and creative. Replacing artistic jobs with AI does the exact opposite of that.
Now, if there's a way to use AI
in service to human artists' ideas and expression of their talent, that's fine. But that's not what the studio heads want. They want to reduce "content creation" to a mindless automated process with no individual will behind it.
