Maybe they'll turn it into a made-for-TV movie.

There was a milestone in narrative history this week. Do you know what it was? And more importantly: Did you celebrate? Well, if you weren't aware, as of Wednesday February 13, the Writers Guild of America (our Hollywood screenwriters, et al) went back to work, after 100 days of being on strike. Hooray! ...Right?

It's interesting to analyze the situation from a narratological perspective (specifically, Chatman's) - who/what are the narrators, the events, the existents? The narrators of the 'strike narrative' are really just anyone who has written about it - the news media, some of the writers themselves (like John August, who blogs at www.johnaugust.com), etcetera. The events are the negotiations, the picketing, the vote to end the thing. The existents in terms of 'characters', are obviously the writers (represented by the WGA) and the film studios, but also, as David Carr of the NY Times points out, the audience - the consumers of the 'stuff' that the writers write. He says (with my added italics):

Well, that's an interesting spin to put on things. So the story is Writers vs. Hollywood, but the discourse is about viewer apathy. (Right...? Maybe...?) And just who are the authors of our 'text'? I think the writers are - after all, they started the strike, created the narrative.
Curious - because creating narratives is what they get paid to do. (And sad, because here they got very much not-paid to do this.)

Thinking of the games and gaming we've explored this week, it's interesting to revisit Carr for another moment. His article that I quoted from is called 'Who Won the Writers Strike?' - as if the whole thing was just a game. The writers are the left paddle, the studios - the right paddle, and the amount that the writers get paid for digital media downloads is the ball. Pong, pong.

What if we then incorporate Huizinga's 'Nature and the Significance of Play'? Hollywood becomes quite problematic. The careers in the television and film industries are often the epitome of 'play' - but wait, they get paid for it? Not really fair, it seems. And if the strike was just a game to be won (as inferred from Carr), then it was all just 'play' by the writers and studios - something essential to human interaction. Except that it was missing the fun element that Huizinga champions as part of play.

Anyway, I really just wanted to say 'Hooray, writers!' so... Hooray! To conclude in a way that doesn't add anything to anything else I've said, here's a good fun quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald: