The Mary Sue: SAG-AFTRA released some “tips & tricks” last week for celebrating Halloween during the strike and caused a bit of a stir among its members. A lot of actors and even the former president of SAG-AFTRA, Melissa Gilbert, had something to say about the guidelines. The union instructed members to avoid characters from struck work this spooky season. That includes no Barbies, Kens, or Oppenheimers in their futures.
2 comments:
This is really pretty stupid. I am a union girl all the way but this is immensely dumb. It almost seems like something a union buster would want to spread to give the union a bad name. This is a thing that I see very commonly in a lot of different movements honestly. Throughout history, movement’s major battleground has been on the front of public opinion. Public opinion moves mountains. In the past though this could be mitigated at least a bit due to the fact that newspapers had to take time to write and print and disseminate. Now, however, information, and more importantly, disinformation, can be typed out in a minute, posted, and seen by millions in an hour. This is especially a problem for unions as they rely heavily on the opinions of the common people. A reliance that is often hurt with overreach or poorly thought out plans like the one discussed in this article.
When I first saw the Tweet about not wearing Halloween costumes to promote the strike I was a little shocked. I now understand that what the committee was trying to say was to not support the companies that are continuing this strike but it really came across as not that. good idea bad execution as we like to say in the industry. However, the skathing comment from the former SAG-AFTRA president was overdramatic. It does not make the negotiations look infantile: what we are trying to do is not promote characters from problematic studios. This is the same thing as not buying fast fashion when you can afford to. though the guidelines should have included that you can go as other characters. Something that I hadn't considered before is how many actors are also content creators and cosplayers. I don't know how big that overlap is, but I'm sure it is a side hustle actors invest time in.
I think it would have been hilarious if a kid dressed up as a wound scab so then they could go around shouting scab at any adult dressed up as “banned” characters.
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