RE: Cap's bad old days :)
Sean Draine (seandr@Exchange.Microsoft.com)
Mon, 22 Mar 1999 15:35:54 -0800
The relationship between art and capitalism is strange and complex.
It's true that schlock art can become commercially successful by shamelessly
pandering to the mob. It can also be stuffed down the market's throat by a
a well-funded marketing effort.
Thankfully, it's also true that great art can become commercially
successful,
although once it does, the 'legitimate' art community will dismiss it as
schlock that panders to the mob, while cursing the capitalist system that
rewards this kind of crap. Poor capitalism - when it comes to legitimate
artists, it's damned if it does and damned if it doesn't.
Alas, the market often fails to reward deserving artists. Or, it just waits
until they're dead.
But thankfully, the market turns it's nose from most of the schlock that
humanity squeezes out. After all, none of you have heard of me before I
joined this list. ;-)
Quoth Camille:
> So ... just because I have no money to produce my plays, they aren't any
> good? Because my books are not designed to be picked up in an airport for
> someone to read between New York and Vegas, it's no good? Because `The
> Wizard of Oz' took twenty years to recoup its original costs, it's not
> good? That's a lotta crap, in all examples. But that's the way capitalism
> works - it's *not* a case of `the best stuff rises to the top' - more
often
> it's `the blandest, least challenging and least frightening rises to the
> top'.