Let’s Reclaim The Language Of TheFKAFilmBiz

20+ words we should drop from our usage

there’s another world within our reach. step out of the darkness and through the wall.

Okay, let’s start at the beginning. Or at least the core.

Most of us say we work in the “film business”, yet we rarely even use film – you know, actual celluloid -- in our process (as much as we may love it). But then again this is a world we watch the sun rise and set… and drive on the parkway, while we park in the driveway. A nickel is bigger than a dime. Still though, words matter. And meaning more so.

We should use the words we choose to clarify and not confuse, but then again our industry is particularly adept at calling things the wrong thing.

As much as “film” is an abused word, I hear even more complaints about the use of “content” although with the latter it is not so much the word but what that word replaces. Film, cinema, series, even television are all words that summon passion and love. No one is going to fall head over heels for “content”. The choice of that word reduces an important act of engagement to both consumption and a transaction. “Content” reduces the value of all it holds, but most particular the labor we invested to bring it into being.

Can we just call things what they are? The Strikes in the FKATheFilmBiz did require the creative class to stand up & exclaim "we are mad as hell and...", but the strikes themselves were not truly due to "labor issues" as our media reported; they were due to "overlord disregard & greed". Did the media ever adopt that “OD&C” phrase to drum a message home? To help us see things a bit more accurately? Nope.

Let's use our words to clarify reality, not obscure it.

Having worked on Vanessa’s documentary on Taiwan, INVISIBLE NATION, as well as many other films dealing with issues of autonomy and democracy, it is easy to spot how power attempts to erase recognition of people, communities, nations, and ideas to help obscure its efforts to conquer. Words are a tool. Power believes its version of things become truth… if they say it often enough. So words can also be weapons. It is a proclamation of our right to exist to use the language we have so it doesn’t obscure the truth or our existence.

There is no shortage of examples of how we in the cinema industries obscure or ever erase things through the language that we use.

In that same vein, another not-so-distant-past example comes from America’s cinema industries’ corporate money grab against labor. They called themselves AMTMP where the last"P" that supposedly stood for "Producers" but they weren’t that; they were the Global Streaming Platforms & Studios. They are not producers. They are not production companies. You could easily see how they embraced the producer term to their advantage when they were negotiating against the WGA&SAG/AFTRA. That organization was called out to change their name from AMPTP to AMPTC: they are "Companies" and not “Producers”. But the damage was done and the public was confused.

Time now to get our words correct before the next face off occurs.

One can easily see how the gradual degrading of meaning leads to a total destabilization of craft. Can anyone even explain what a “producer” is anymore? Producers have had decades of credit degradation fueled by opportunists’ credit grabbing. It is greedy and cruel.

Our leadership organizations have tried to be polite and considerate; one could argue that credit stabilization has been the PGA’s main pursuit for decades, and yet it has only gotten worse. It is hard to advance things when all meaning has been sucked out of it. Producers United has rapidly made some progress by modifying the phrase to “Career Producer” and abandoning the more generic. Long ago we should of seized ownership of the “Producer” meaning and term as the other cinema job categories did theirs.

But it doesn’t end there with “Producers”. I brainstormed the list below so you’d have something to stir in your morning coffee, but I am sure there is a list of even greater measure that I neglected to notice. Please let me know what I missed.

---

20 Words/Terms We Have Stop Using To Describe What We Actually Do In The Cinema Industries

1. Content – just read what Alex Berg wrote on the subject in Underexposed.

2. Creative – don’t use it as a noun; be brave about what you do – you are an “artist”. Creatives are those that don’t make art but use the tools of art to sell you the things you never wanted anyways.