SAG suggests actors not dress as scabs this Halloween with strike-friendly tips and tricks
It may be a Jokerless Halloween in Hollywood this year
Aux News halloween
As SAG-AFTRA’s strike continues through the fall, the actors union is preparing for Halloween. Since Halloween is typically the time of year when celebrities load up their Instagrams with photos of themselves dressing as other actors’ characters, SAG-AFTRA is encouraging striking workers to dress in anything other than costumes inspired by struck work. And while there are easy workarounds, such as dressing as the Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family animated film series instead of Netflix’s Wednesday television series, it’s not really in the spirit of solidarity to use them.
Halloween has become a good measure of what year’s most popular pop-culture properties were and, by proxy, some easy consumer-level advertising for studio tentpoles. It’s why striking actors should take a page from Paul Rudd, who dressed as Weird Al in 2021, instead of his daughter, who dressed as The Wasp. The Wasp would be a no-go these days.
Additionally, SAG-AFTRA encourages dressing as “generalized characters,” like ghosts, zombies, and spiders. This could also mean things like hammers, water bottles, or even products that have yet to be turned into cinematic universes, like Wet Wipes.
If one simply has to dress as Barbie or even Barbenheimer, SAG-AFTRA gets it. The union simply requests that Barbies and Kens not post photos on social media, which defeats the whole point of Halloween, but hey, no one ever said strikes were easy. Trick-or-treaters can also dress up as characters from non-struck work, like animated TV shows. This means Heidi Klum can still move forward with her Peter Griffin costume, a relief to all, we’re sure.
There’s also the hope that maybe the strike will be over by the time Halloween rolls around. However, earlier this week, talks broke down last week after SAG and the AMPTP ran against a $480 million gap in streaming residual pay. SAG’s demand will cost the studios $500 million a year, and the AMPTP is offering $20 million in payouts. With that in mind, nothing is stopping SAG-AFTRA members from dressing up as their favorite studio executive, a costume sure to live in the nightmares of children for years to come.
25 Comments
How delusional are these people to think that “regs” are gonna care enough to not dress however they want? Shit like this does not help their cause.
OMG it’s a Barbie-themed costume-pocalypse
Blood sucker Ted Sarandos? Zombie David Zaslav?
I was thinking of dressing as Zaslav and carrying a knife to slash all HBO characters so I don’t have to give them candy.
“I don’t get this costume, dude. It’s an off-putting brown colour and kind of slimy-looking, but there’s a big gaping cavity in the chest. Help me out.”“Dude, I’m David Zaslav!”“Oh, of course! A gutless turd, I get it!”
So…Ted Sarandos and David Zaslav, then?How about Dr. Robert and Mr. Iger, to show how two-faced he is about creatives since he came back to Disney…?
SAG-AFTRA encourages dressing as “generalized characters,” like ghosts, zombies, and spiders.Can you really dress as a zombie? There’s probably a struck zombie movie out there.
instead of his daughter, who dressed as The Wasp. The Wasp would be a no-go these days.
This seems silly.
You can dress as a zombie, you can’t dress as an Infected or a Walker.Completely different.
The Wasp would be a no-go these days.Most Marvel and DC characters are probably free game if you resemble the comic book character and not the movie property, but I’m guessing at that.This Superman would probably be ok:While this one would be problematic:
There are thousands of unadapted book characters that would be perfect for cosplay. For example:
You’d have to spend most of your time dressed as one character ,then reveal you were in fact another at the last minute for the third one.
I just discovered this book series this year and sweet lord, do I fucking love it. The outfits are super specific and well described too. (And hot. So hot.)
Why stop there? It’d be nice if parents just explained to their children that their favorite branded intellectual property is largely just an insidious attempt to sell fragile minds a sense of identity through merchandising in the first place.
The Addams Family animated film is also struck work. Only animated TV series aren’t on strike. Perhaps the original Charles Addams magazine cartoons would be suitable?
Or maybe, you’re (for the most part) grown ups, so leave Halloween for the kids?Sorry, that’s just crazy talk.
Watch out, last year I implied that Halloween in the 21st century United States is a children’s holiday and got a surge of people angrily asking if I’d ever heard of (insert much earlier, non-US tradition). Obviously the ancient druids dressed up as pop culture figures, and Medieval farmers celebrated the harvest with gimmicky ghost-themed cocktails. Those aren’t just adult riffs on trick or treating or anything.
I mean , in the much older non US version in Ireland and Scotland , it was only kids that dressed up. There may have been a party/festival that adults would be at , but the dressing up and collecting door to door was a kids thing .(and traditionally superstition was because the barrier between the living and the dead was traditionally thin at that time of the year , so you’d dress as a ghost or whatever so they’d leave you alone ,but even then that was really just for kids).Somehow immigrants bringing that to the new world eventually gave us adults dressing up as “Sexy John Oliver” and awful “its that thing from the news” costumes.
What’s kind of annoying is that the version of it I grew up with in Ireland is gradually being overwritten by the American version which is way more commercial .
Oh let people have some fun, nerd.
Paul Rudd going as Weird Al again might also be questionable since people might thing he is dressed as Daniel Radcliffe from Weird: the Al Yankovic Story.
Or people might confuse him as George Newman, which would be problematic.
Honestly this ruling is dumb , and whoever came up with it and tries to enforce it is also dumb.
You know how in some dystopian media there will be rules for things that seem problematic, but they say it in a sweet and friendly way? That’s this.
Striking is completely a work-related act. Celebrating a holiday is not. But they’re puling it under that umbrella by telling people what they can and cannot wear and what they can and cannot post. All in the name of the union (itself an institution). We’re the good guys, we just want to control what you do on your own personal time. Is that so wrong?
All the stars.
They’re asking (and yes, it’s asking—they’ve made that clear in a more recent statement) because most of the IP costumes are made by companies that pay the Producers and Studios a fee for selling them, so they can profit off those characters while the actors can’t. Don’t be a scab, man.
The union simply requests that Barbies and Kens not post photos on social media, which defeats the whole point of HalloweenI don’t want to live on this planet anymore.