1. How do Marx and Engels’ analysis of class struggle, labor exploitation, commodities, and alienation explain the conflict between the writers/actors and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP)? AMPTP is the group that represents major Hollywood studios and streamers including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros. Discovery. In answering this question consider questions such as who are the proletarians? who are the capitalists? why do they exist in an antagonistic and conflictual relationship?
2. Using insights of Marx/Engles and David Kennedy (“The World Cup Football: A Case Study of in Commodity Fetishism”), identify the mechanisms through which commodity fetishism operates in the entertainment industry to obscure the nature of labor exploitation in that industry.
3. In this course, we have theorized capitalism as a political-economic system that is growth oriented, technologically dynamic, and crisis prone. In considering these three aspects of capitalism, how do the four practices listed below reflect efforts by capitalists to intensify labor exploitation and incorporate labor saving and labor replacing technology into the workplace? Why would Hollywood studios and streaming companies be in favor of these practices? Why are Hollywood actors and writers opposed to these practices? What are the contradictory effects of employer efforts to incorporate more labor saving and labor replacing technology into the workplace?
• use of artificial intelligence technology
• self-tape auditions
• use of writing “mini-rooms.”
• residuals
Which concepts and/or theory or theories in Chapter 8 “Varieties of Neo-Marxian Theory” offer the most insight in helping you understand how and why the four practices listed above have generated so much conflict and struggle in the entertainment industry.
4. In his article “Celebratory Capitalism and the Commodification of Information,” Stephen Adair argues that “In Marxist descriptions of social class, celebrities are difficult to situate”; celebrities cannot be described as proletarians; and celebrities are “are not exploited in the Marxian sense” (see p. 19). Do you agree or disagree? Does Adair’s article have any helpful insights (concepts) to explain the nature of the struggle and conflict in the Hollywood actors and writers strike?
Media/Newspaper Articles to Read and Engage (posted at Canvas):
Please do not use AI