New York Times critic James Bailey takes offense on behalf of his pals in the Writer’s Guild, whose expensive strike is about to end, with a lament called “Emma Thompson Is Right: The Word ‘Content’ Is Rude.”He took off from a statement by Oscar-winning actress (and apparently now screenwriter—at least enough to put her in the union) Emma Thompson, who told the Royal Television Society conference in Britain last week,“To hear people talk about ‘content’ makes me feel like the stuffing inside a sofa cushion.” She continued, “It’s just a rude word for creative people.I know there are students in the audience: You don’t want to hear your stories described as ‘content’ or your acting or your producing described as ‘content.’ That’s just like coffee grounds in the sink or something.”

You see, the main impetus of the writer’s strike is the threat of artificial intelligence generating “content” and putting “creative people” out of work.

Writes Bailey (in part), applauding her indignation,

 She’s right about the real-world impact of what is, make no mistake, a devaluing of the creative process. Those who defend its use will insist that we need some kind of catchall phrase for the things we watch, as previously crisp lines have blurred between movies and television, between home and theatrical exhibition and between legacy and social media.

But these paradigm shifts require more clarity in our language, not less. A phrase like “streaming movie” or “theatrical release” or “documentary podcast” communicates what, where and why with far more precision than gibberish like “content,” and if you want to put everything under one tent, “entertainment” is right there. But studio and streaming executives, who are perhaps the primary users and abusers of the term, love to talk about “content” because it’s so wildly diminutive. It’s a quick and easy way to minimize what writers, directors and actors do, to act as though entertainment (or, dare I say it, art) is simply churned out — and could be churned out by anyone, sentient or not. It’s just content, it’s just widgets, it’s all grist for the mill. Talking about “entertainment” is dangerous because it takes talent to entertain; no such demands are made of “content,” and the industry’s increasing interest in the possibilities of writing via artificial intelligence (one of the sticking points of the writers’ strike) makes that crystal clear.

Perhaps the finest example of this school of thought can be seen at Warner Bros. Discovery…The “content”-ization of that conglomerate’s holdings is the only reasonable explanation for the decision to rename HBO Max as simply Max — removing the prestigious legacy media brand that most clearheaded, marginally intelligent people would presume to be an asset. It lost 1.8 million subscribers in the process, but that’s merely the battle; it won the war, because when you visit Max now, the front-page carousel is a combination of scripted series, HBO documentaries, true crime and reality competition shows. It’s all on equal footing; it’s all content. But “Casablanca,” “Succession” and “Dr. Pimple Popper” are not the same thing — and the programmers of a service that pretends otherwise are abdicating their responsibility as curators...

The way we talk about things affects how we think and feel about them. So when journalists regurgitate purposefully reductive language, and when their viewers and readers consume and parrot it, they’re not adopting some zippy buzzword. They’re doing the bidding of people in power, and diminishing the work that they claim to love.

This is, to quote a word that arose from past Hollywood “content,” gaslighting. Reality show writers marched shoulder to shoulder with the “artists” Bailey is extolling, and what they were striking over is money, not art, as the unionized writers try to fend off the threat of robots who are either capable or soon will be of producing the kind of swill I see in 80% of the TV and Hollywood content I watch ….and I watch a lot.

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