“Everything is an engine” by Linda Holmes. (h/t Laura Olin)
“…anything you make – a podcast, a book, a TV show, a business, really any endeavor that you undertake – is not just the thing it is, but it’s also an engine that powers, directly or indirectly, other things and other people. And that’s more true the more success you have. The best example I can think of is Saturday Night Live, about which I would say that it’s an incredibly uneven television show on the whole across decades, but it’s one of the most important engines in the history of American comedy. It generated power, but then it also took that power and used it to make other things go – and while that’s related to the show itself being good, it’s a slightly different thing.”
“…not instead of but in addition to it, it’s on the engine side – who you listen to, amplify, talk to, advise, reassure, retweet, reply to or quote in conversation – that you serve a whole different function, sometimes quieter but more crucial, as a creative person.”
Holmes talks about how this helps accelerate inclusiveness. She talks about this work as being powerful and largely invisible.
I loved this idea of an “engine” because the ripple effects of our work is what resonates so much and yet can feel so invisible but maybe that’s in-built into the work itself. It’s what we’re trying to do with Mt. Caz.
Then I read these couple articles dissecting the interview between Tina Fey and David Letterman on his Netflix show, where she refused to play along with existing dynamics of chummy misogyny. I found this exchange in their interview the most interesting: Letterman tries to downplay his power in increasing the diversity of his writing staff by saying that he really didn’t know why he didn’t have women writers on staff .
The article’s author Nell Scovell shows how Letterman is the exact opposite of the engine effect (emphasis mine):
When the cameras weren’t rolling, Letterman’s answer was less sympathetic. “I don’t worry about that stuff,” he told me. And that, I believe, is the truth.
Letterman may think he deserves points for raising a difficult topic. Instead, he gets points for offering a perfect illustration of what women and people of color are up against. If in the previous three decades, Letterman had hired greater numbers of diverse writers, he would have transformed the comedy world. He chose not to, and that’s part of his legacy.
So what kind of legacy do you want to have?