"It seems pretty clear to me that I'm the creator of the series: that means I'm the creative part, I write the story, I design the characters, I dub the voices. I'm not the one who hires, decides, or pays those who work on the production . I have absolutely no access to that information, about the budget, about the contracts." This is how Michele Rech, aka Zerocalcare , responds, with an Instagram video, to the recent controversy over the compensation of workers on "Due spicci," his new series, released on May 27 on Netflix . The controversy was sparked by an article published by Il Giornale, picked up by Forza Italia Senator Maurizio Gasparri , who also announced a question to the Minister of Labor, Marina Elvira Calderone, because "some workers who collaborated on this production are complaining about unacceptable work rates and pay. They're talking about six euros an hour and also about an increase in the workload due to a greater number of episodes produced than expected."
Now comes the cartoonist's response, explaining: "The two or three times I've met someone at their studio, no one has ever complained or said they were working in a critical situation . It's obvious that in industries where they make contracts for one project at a time, it's very difficult to assert your rights and organize disputes or protests, because people are rightly afraid that if they appear to be the one causing trouble, they won't be called back to work on the next project. But precisely for this reason, excuse me, it seems absurd to me, if the whole situation described in the stories is true, that no one has ever thought to write to me and ask for help. " "I'm sorry," the artist continued, "that they didn't think I could be an ally, because I could have been the one raising the issue. It's just that I'm not exactly a telepath. If no one tells me there's a problem, what the f...k do I know?" Again: "I've taken on every cause over the years, and when necessary, I've even blown things up by arguing with everyone. I've become a caricature of this country's lost causes, but now you can imagine me not doing it for something that has my name on it. After all, I may be a 20th-century figure, but it works for me if we have a meeting, explain it to me, and then decide how to proceed. If now, one morning, I find myself commenting on a series of accusations from a carousel of anonymous Instagram stories that I've never heard before," with "all of it exploited by the jackals who pin it on me ," and "so they can write a hundred articles that piss me off about Gasparri acting like a vigilante in Parliament and then voting against the minimum wage , how the f...k can you do that?"
"There's something actually true in all this nonsense," Rech concluded. "I'm part of this production chain like any other author, so I think it's right that we too make ourselves available . I say this hoping someone else will take it upon themselves, because it seems to me that no one ever asks anyone else a damn thing. Maybe for once, this exploitative use of my name everywhere will even lead to a good thing."
(Unioneonline)
