Why Unions Are Destroying Our Entertainment (Satire)

reposted a year later, in solidarity with the Chicago teachers

Television has degenerated into a series of really bad reality shows.  Let's run a show on a bunch of teen moms and then mock their own personal crises.  Whatever happened to the good ol' days when we would create comedies based upon soothing positive racial stereotypes, drunkards escaping their lives or aliens who were trying to eat cats?  Pop culture has degenerated since the eighties.

Movies have become a jumbled mess of special effects.  Do we really need to remake Tron?  We can't let that one fade from public memory.  I miss the days when we had deep-thinking movies like Flight of the Navigator or Back to the Future that dealt with the time-space continuum paradox or even further back to the days when we had flying nuns.

Who's to blame?  It's certainly not the audience's fault.  Social context has nothing to do with it.  After all, I've seen some nice anecdotal evidence that some people love thoughtful indie films.  Is it the fault of the executives who push drab entertainment on an unsuspecting public?  No, the power brokers are wise executives whose acumen should be emulated in other social institutions.

I blame the Screen Actors Guild. If they would stop protecting such mediocre writers and actors, we wouldn't be in this mess.   It's the fault of the socialist entertainment regime that we end up with such horrible blue-state comedy shows as 30 Rock while Palin's propaganda show is relegated to basic cable.

I know, I know.  It's not the union's job to change the quality of the work.  But we're past the days of sweat shops and mangled arms on a factory floor.  The union seems more interested in ensuring that some half-baked, low-quality ten-liner gets a working wage than in preventing movies like Tron to get past the cutting room floor.

It's clear that the union continues to protect the sub-par, mediocre actors at the expense of the audience.  How else could one explain the barrage of bad Brendon Fraser movies?  It has to be tenure.  Someone has to protecting that man's job and it sure as hell isn't the public.

Meanwhile, the rising cost of hiring actors has led to quality jobs being outsourced by technology.  Take a look at all three Matrix movies.  You can't possibly expect the audience to believe that someone so choppy and wooden is actually human.  But with the right amounts of CGI and a few decent explosions and we convince ourselves that maybe Keanu Reeves might not be an android.

So, for the sake of humanity and the recovery of the American, patriotic ideas, it's time we stand up and demand the demise of the Screen Actors Guild.

wallyg via photo pin cc