Listening to Labor

Drawing from detailed and quite personal interviews with off-screen labor in Hollywood, this chapter offers three interrelated propositions about the current state and future prospects of craftwork and screen media labor: 1) screen media craftwork exists within an intricate and intimate matrix of social relations that distinguishes it from its corollary on the factory assembly line; 2) craftwork today constitutes a regime of excessive labor that is rooted in a persistent demand for ‘more’ from workers; and 3) this regime of excessive labor represents a distinctive phase of flexible capitalism that is characterized by a mobile regime of socio-spatial relations that a more protean mode of production. This chapter furthermore situates these propositions within broader historical and analytical discussions about creative industries, conglomeration, financialization, and globalization.