Boy Movies #44

On striking

Welcome back to Boy Movies, a weekly newsletter. If you like it, consider a subscription! If you LOVE it, perhaps consider pledging a paid subscription.

Drew Barrymore got in trouble last week. Maybe you heard about the flailing, scrambling flurry of rage that sprung up when she announced the return of her daytime talk show amid the ongoing SAG and WGA strikes, got absolutely dragged through the mud, released and deleted a couple of meaningless statements, and finally tried to save face by deciding that, actually, taping will be paused until deals are reached. There are plenty of detailed explanations of exactly what happened with Barrymore and what makes it such an embarrassment for her, but the heart of the matter is that our girl Drew was scabbing until she caved to the pressure of public shame. The reason there was so much pushback on her specifically is because she is beloved enough to disappoint people. Hers is a persona that relies on approval and likability; when she does something that upsets her fans, they are going to take it personally. This is ultimately a good thing: Scabs should always be shamed, and rich people should always be a little afraid.

Barrymore reversing her decision prompted other talk show hosts, like Jennifer Hudson and the wretched Bill Maher, to do the same. In the context of the strikes, talk shows occupy a murky area; if she had returned, Barrymore wouldn’t have been in violation of SAG rules, but it would have been truly stupid of her to allege that her show could have continued without writers. Sherri Shepherd (who, real heads will remember, took over the Wendy Williams time slot — we miss you every day, Wendy) defended the return of her own show, which she insisted doesn’t cross the picket line because “I write the jokes. I’m the writer … Producers help me shape my words … We don’t have WGA writers at Sherri.” This, of course, isn’t quite the serve she thinks it is: The whole concept of “producers as writers” is part of what the WGA is currently striking about. You don’t need me to tell you that no show exists without writers, it’s just a question of whether the people doing the writing are being recognized and compensated as writers.

This past weekend, I was in New Jersey visiting my family, and overheard some sincerely brain dead takes from a middle-aged man and his wife in line at the grocery store. They were complaining about the auto workers strike, which quickly turned into a lamentation of the SAG strike — I won’t get into specifics, you can imagine what they were saying. Clearly, these two thought leaders weren’t paying attention to the Venice Film Festival, where the lack of star power resulted in a handful of fascinatingly bizarre displays. On one side, you had that little freak Caleb Landry Jones, one of the few actors in attendance, torturing the attendees of a press conference by speaking exclusively in a ridiculous Scottish accent; on the other, you had Jessica Chastain evidently experiencing some confusion about the meaning of an interim agreement. From an outside perspective, the mood seemed alternately anxious and dour. We need movie stars so badly at these things, or else they just land with a thud.

Despite what some of the idiots in my hometown would have you believe, support for labor unions among Americans is pretty high right now. It’s no coincidence that the Hollywood strikes have prompted a greater understanding and general backing of labor unions, and it’s significant that the Hollywood strikes are happening at the same time as the UAW strike. VFX workers at Marvel, who have been making noise about just how overworked and underpaid they’ve been for years, just voted to unionize. And as an avid Real Housewives fan, I even have to give it up to Bethenny Frankel for calling for a reality stars union. I frequently wonder whether there is any ethical way to watch reality television, and this would be a step in the right direction. (Also, can you imagine what those union meetings would be like…)

I’ve been thinking about the strikes in tandem with another cultural shift that has been brewing: the sneaky rise of gender essentialism. I wrote about it a bit in August’s Barbenheimer issue, and remain increasingly disturbed by the things I’m seeing and hearing in relation to gender these days. The latest trend is this “men are always thinking about the Roman Empire” nonsense, which has gained so much traction online that Boy Movies sister publication The New York Times even wrote about it, saying, “Many women have been shocked by the enthusiasm men display for the ancient empire.” Okay. Can we stop? Because here’s what it sounds like to me: Men think about ancient Rome all the time because history is an inherently male interest, and women don’t do that because we’re busy thinking about, I don’t know, makeup, I guess? This, yet another inane instance of separating interests by gender and re-packaging them as cute trends, isn’t all that different from the Barbenheimer spectacle, or the glorified eating disorder known as “girl dinner.” It is so phenomenally trendy to be a “girl” right now, and one of the most important things about being a “girl” is that being a “girl” is different from being a “boy.” They’re opposites — do you understand? In the same piece, the Times notes that one of the most prominent Roman Empire scholars is a woman, Mary Beard, and neglects to point out the irony.

Look, men don’t respect women. We know this; we’ve known this. Much like the AMPTP has zero respect for writers and actors, we don’t exactly need to continue teaching these people that it’s cool to further diminish our worth. It’s not funny or subversive for women to talk about other women as if they’re incapable or incompetent. It’s all the same antiquated misogynistic dribble that’s been plaguing society since the beginning of time, except now it’s cloaked under layers of idiotic memeable TikTok language. Men don’t hear things like that and get the “joke,” if there even is a joke. Men hear things like that and laugh at us. And when Drew Barrymore and Sherri Shepherd peddle anti-union rhetoric by insisting their talk shows can go on without writers, that tells the billionaire executives luxuriating away on their yachts that they were right all along, that resolve is crumbling, that they only have to wait out the poors for a bit longer. Maybe I sound like an alarmist hag, but if we — workers, women — can’t find any semblance of solidarity among ourselves, what hope is there for the future?

It’s audience participation time

If you can even believe it, Boy Movies will celebrate its first anniversary (!) (?) (?!) in October. I literally cannot wrap my mind around the fact that I’ve been at this for a whole year, but I thought, in honor of my baby officially becoming a toddler, I’d do… a Q&A?!?!?! This is very nerve-wracking to me, as I don’t live in a reality where anyone actually reads this newsletter and would therefore never expect anyone to have anything to ask me, but I’m going to take a risk by opening the floor for questions anyway.

The idea was inspired by the great tradition of the StraightioLab podcast’s Earnestness Bonanza, and it’s very simple: If you’ve ever had anything to ask me about Boy Movies the newsletter, boy movies the genre, movies in general, my opinion on some stupid shit, or basically whatever else, now is the time to ask, and I will answer it to the best of my ability in the upcoming anniversary extravaganza issue. Imagine I just hosted a screening of a film and now I’m seated in front of you in a stiff chair, holding a microphone that keeps cutting in and out. You can submit questions by responding directly to this email, dropping a comment below, or DMing me on the platform formerly known as Twitter for as long as Elon allows us to exchange DMs. Keep in mind that if nobody writes in I’ll be forced to come up with questions to ask myself, most of which will probably revolve around Jeremy Strong.

• Loved Haley Nahman on the Hollywood strikes in Sunday’s Maybe Baby.

• Miscellaneous things that have been keeping me going recently: a reminder of Mark Wahlberg’s certifiably insane daily schedule, this cover of The Social Network trailer, the Mitski album, the surprise National album, my new favorite Kendall edit, this Kirsten Dunst Instagram post 🥺