Our uncultured society places a low value on culture and art. We pay CEOs millions to remove jobs from America and strip us of everything worth a penny but we grouse at having to pay for a story, a song, or an image.
The commodifiers of art have always devalued the intellectual property and emphasized the physical art delivery units — books, CDs, DVDs, etc. — because that is how they kept track of and controlled profit. They never allowed art to be separate from its delivery system. Now, with ebooks and so on, we’re entering a new era of direct-to-reader stories, songs, and images. Consumers are trained to think of the art as separate from the form it comes in. Like porn, it doesn’t matter much to them how it’s delivered, they expect it to be free or the next thing to free. After all, it’s not a unit they can sample and hold, to cite the old Neil Young song. It’s not “real” to them anymore.
Therein lies our problem. It’s the singer, not the song; famous artists sell better. Yet the song matters, too, and the skill and artistry it takes to compose should be rewarded as least as well as the crooner who delivers it. Hollywood’s the model we seem to be aping. Writers are “schmucks with [typewriters]” * and only the product made from their typing matters. It’s a ludicrous view considering everything depends on the writing, but that’s their attitude. Now it’s everyone’s attitude. As writers, composers, and artists we’d damned well better figure a way to change that, and make our audience appreciate what we do, or we’ll continue to be marginalized.
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*Jack L. Warner of Warner Bros. said “shcmucks with Underwoods”, using a brand of typewriter as a synecdoche meaning any typewriter.
