Strike Days: Agitprop Versus ...FAQ's?

Agitprop can be a loaded word in a sphere where the Hollywood Ten are still an active memory; to be sure, it's not used here to call the WGA stalwarts socialists, but to point out what better use of propaganda (to use another Russian coinage) the writers have made than has the AMPTP. What they're doing with online viral videos, dog-and-pony celebrity show-up's on their picket lines, endorsements from politicos and blogs so laden with comments they land on your desktop with a thud, is simply outpointing the studios on the PR front.

A spokesman for the AMPTP responds:

We are committed to negotiating a fair and reasonable deal for everyone and are trying to do it at the bargaining table, not the court of public opinion. Our strategy is transparency and truth and the media that appreciates both have reflected that in their coverage. We are not about theatrics. We are about substance...It is shameful that the purpose of all of their T-shirts and slogans and appearances on local TV and radio is, and I quote the WGA leadership, to inflict as much "economic damage" as possible.Our purpose is to keep the industry working and growing...which may not be as colorful as theirs, but it is certainly much more responsible.

What public opinion may be worth remains to be seen, but as the WGA readied what's billed as a call-out-the-membership rally for Friday morning at Fox Plaza in Century City, the writers' campaign reminds me of what historian Paul A. Smith described in his On Political War, as condensed here online:

After the Bolshevik revolution, an agitprop train toured the country, with artists and actors performing simple plays and broadcasting propaganda. It had a printing press on board the train to allow posters to be reproduced and thrown out of the windows if it passed through villages.

The writers, with such snackable snippets as the winningly smart-alecky improv from the writing staff of The Office, their clearly slanted (but first of all, clear) Why We Fight analysis of the issues in the strike, and such video moments as Patrick Dempsey and the scrubs-clad vixens of Grey's Anatomy lobbying for the writers' cause, have taken the entire spotlight. It didn't hurt that underneath The Office's stand is that thriving but still ascending star Steve Carrell, much beloved by the common folk, refused to cross the picket line, just as the not-so-secret weapon of Grey's showrunner Shonda Rimes, weighed in on the WGA side.

Up against this, the AMPTP site offers a pale blue, cinder block-basic site with...FAQ's.
I'm still distilling a tape crammed with intelligent and witty commentary that poured out on the picket line yesterday from Oscar-winner Paul Haggis, ER and West Wing veteran Carol Flint, and strike captain, screenwriter (and sometime Seinfeld contributor) Larry Levin. All have projects--lucrative in varying degrees-- they've laid aside for the strike .

The key drama since negotiations stopped has been the rush of various clout-heavy show runners to invite the network Cossacks (watch the pronunciation on that) to bring it on, even as their adversaries begin to clean house by telling those defiant writer-producers that payments to their staffs are being suspended. Subsequently, 20th Century Fox and Paramount sent breach-of-contract letters to the show runners themselves. Yesterday also brought word that reps from the five major talent agencies held a covert meeting with the adversaries to try to sek a solution.

It's hard to give up this duct-taped political analogy, because the shifting ideological ground (just watch The Artful Writer's Craig Mazin squabbling with the harder-line unionists on his blog) is making a whole class of show runner-level studio employee (in Czarist Russia, they would have been the hard-partying warrior nobles--except this gang is mostly with the Bolshies, not the czars) wake up everyday and renew their union vows, often at considerable cost to themselves and their staffs. Indeed, it feels like a class war, at least as far as the agitprop goes. And without claiming too much importance for this tempest in Tinseltown that doesn't really play in Peoria, it feels like history.

(Russia, 1917; photo by Keystone/Getty Images)