Being Blue at PSU

By Tim Klaum You may have noticed in the past few months that, rather suddenly, movie and television productions have been shutting down at a moment’s notice and not picking back up. And while some shows have continued, almost all others (aside from news talk shows) have not. While the big studios, with all of their money and power, will try to convince you that it’s not that bad, trust me. It’s that bad. Early this year, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) began fighting for a fair deal of their contract, asking for a higher base wage (to match the cost of living in 2023) as well as residual payments for writers and more protections for them. The studios were unable to grant these very basic requests, and thus the WGA voted to go on strike. All writing for major productions, from studios such as Disney, Paramount, Universal, and others, immediately came to a halt, and those same studios tried to continue without their writers. Then, later in the summer, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFT...

By JT Thomas Helloooooo College Democrats! Did you miss me? That’s right! After my lengthy sojourn across the Pond I’ve returned to you, my beloved captive audience. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is JT and I’ll be serving as your Communications Chair for the 2023-2024 school year. For this iteration of Being Blue at PSU, we’ll be continuing with our theme from last year, bringing you a mixture of fun, whimsical pieces (which are still in some way connected to Democratic values) and more traditional articles based on important political issues. Let’s start things off on a fun note, shall we? Last year for our first post of October, I wrote a review of Casey McQuiston’s 2019 bestseller Red, White and Royal Blue. The novel itself is fantastic; McQuiston manages to seamlessly integrate a sensual, steamy queer romance with a compelling storyline full of real world issues. So, imagine my surprise and delight when I heard that Prime Video was working on a screen adaptation of ...