2023 : Real Life Wins and Fictional Losses for Anti-Cap

Since a shockingly young age I’ve been an annoying little commie leftist - I guess that’s what empathy will do to you. That means I’m always hyper-aware of the messaging in everything I read and watch, making 2023 a rather complicated year for me. On the one hand, there were the WAG and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which were absolutely beautiful displays of the power of collective action… but on the other hand, did anyone else notice how pro-establishment film and television was this year?

I want to be clear that just watching the strikes was amazing. We got to see big-name celebrities band together with those starting and struggling in the business, fighting to make a career in media actually sustainable. Listening to the powerful speeches was inspiring, though I’m not afraid to admit that the cuter moments were what really got to me. Seeing Brennan Lee Mulligan host Dungeons and Dragons on the sidewalk was tooth-achingly sweet. Rather than lashing out when studios started pulling some questionable moves (like when they cut off tree branches so the picketers wouldn’t have shade), the strikers just banded together and kept going - it was spectacular.

It wasn’t just nice to see, of course - it was successful too! WAG got better pay and residuals, guarantees that there would be more people in writing rooms (for longer, too!), and stronger regulations on the use of artificial intelligence. While SAG-AFTRA’s deal hasn’t been fully confirmed yet either,they seem to have similarly won better pay, residuals and protections against AI, but the deal really shines for some of its smaller details like requiring intimacy coordinators and control over hair and makeup, the latter being a huge win for POC especially.

Despite all of these wins in real life, though, I was unbelievably disappointed by how economic equality and anti-capitalist sentiments were portrayed in the content that studios actually produced. I shouldn’t be too surprised, I guess, since they’d have to portray themselves as the bad guys which isn’t a great look. Still, this year somehow managed to be worse than it has been for a while. There are the typical culprits, of course, like the blockbuster franchises that get more and more formulaic and bland as the capitalists funding them try to distil their essence until there’s no creativity, just profit (this disease has unfortunately contaminated even non-franchise films like Dungeons and Dragons now). The painful losses of quality shows cancelled before their time is nothing new either.

No, what made it all feel worse this year was just how blatantly pro-capitalism some projects were. Take Squid Game: The Challenge as an example. I am completely unable to bring myself to watch it because what in God’s name did the creators think they were doing??? The whole point of Squid Game was how poverty drives people to terrible extremes when they’re in a cold uncaring capitalist society, and someone out there thought “yeah, let’s make that nightmare a reality”??? This must be the darkest timeline, there’s no way that a person can think like that unless this is the worst possible reality there is.

Not only were anti-capitalist themes in fiction deeply misunderstood, but real-life anti-capitalist movements were misrepresented as well. I’ve already written about Dumb Money, but I still can’t believe that it’s portrayed as though the big win for the characters was that they became rich. Like sure, we all need money so we don’t starve (thanks capitalism), but from my memories of the movement, most of the people buying GameStop stock were excited to punish those in charge, not make it big themselves. This sentiment was almost entirely washed away in the film, though, and unsurprisingly so given that the rich Winklevoss twins were the executive producers.

Anything I watched which touched on economic issues this year was just so disappointing, and unfortunately, I don’t think the writer and actor strikes will change the final products all that much. After all, it’s still the studios who call the shots about what gets made in the end. It’s not impossible to make economically progressive media - Newsies might have flopped in 1992, but its Broadway adaptation has been a huge hit. The issue is that studios have no reason to want that content, and even arguably every reason not to. The only way to get more progressive content would be yet another wave of collective action, this with consumers boycotting the industry asking for more critical media to be made. Unfortunately, though, I can’t imagine that many people care enough to bother.

So happy continued suffering under capitalism, I guess.