Re: Cap's bad old days :)

blah b b blah (jrovira@juno.com)
Sun, 21 Mar 1999 13:58:20 -0500 (EST) 

>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'.

No, it's not the way capitalism works.  It's not the way it works in
**any** system.  Let me give you an example -- real life, not imagined.

Stephen King.  He didn't have a lot of money when he published his first
novel.  He had to have a bunch of them printed, but in boxes, and he sold
them out of the trunk of his car.  His work is the "blandest and least
frightening" by all literary standards -- his works are hardly
challenging to established modes of thinking, and he's deliberately
written his novels to be more popular than meaningful.  "The Dark Half"
and, from what I've heard, "The Stand," have some literary merit, but
that's about it.  But like everyone else he had to start with nothing and
work his way up, actively going out and literally "finding" his audience.
 **Now** he calls his own shots and has plenty of money, but he sure
didn't start out that way.

See, most writers and playwrights have very little money -- relatively
little -- when they start writing.  I think Shakespeare wasn't completely
comfortable monetarily when he first started writing.  The way it works
in ANY system is that:

1. An author has to actually write good material.  "Good" can mean "of
literary quality" or it can mean "of a high entertainment value."  

2. An author has to promote his material.  He has to convince certain
people his work is worthy of being published.

3. An author has to prostitute himself until he starts getting regularly
published.

4. If he's good and has the kind of talent that lets him produce with
some volume, once he's started making money he can start calling his own
shots.  

Now, whether we're working within a captialist system or a more guided
system every author has to go through this process.  No matter who you
are or where you are, if you're an author you have to sell your work to
someone.  The fact is there's a LARGE market for works on a higher level
than "Baywatch."  If that weren't the case, we wouldn't be sitting here
talking back and forth about Hollywood productions of Shakespeare's
plays.  Hollywood, the land of whores, wouldn't even touch Shakespeare if
he wasn't marketable.  

But they've not only done Shakespeare, they've done movie after movie
after movie that had a great deal of artistic merit.  If you're doing
something that hasn't been proven, well yes, you're going to have a
harder time.  But for that matter if you're in a more controlled system
you're going to have a hard time.  In that case the market isn't
overseeing your work, you have a government and their money overseeing
your work. And then you have to worry about portraying the correct
ideology.

See, no matter what happens, no matter who you are, you bite the hand
that feeds you you'll get cut off.  I'd rather that hand were a free
market rather than a government agency in charge of funding the arts.    
 

>
>> Firing production workers is just a fact of life, and if you had 
>ever
>> been near those kind of decisions you realize what motivates them.
>
>Yes, I have been and I do. My father quit his own managerial position 
>only
>a few years ago because he did not agree that firing people who had 
>been
>working at the firm for 25 years and making the remainder work twice 
>as
>hard was a very nice thing to do. They probably had benefits coming 
>out of
>their ears but what's it all come to? A heart attack at 47 from the 
>stress.
>That ain't living.
>

No, but it's life for most people on the face of the earth no matter
where they are.  And in some places it's worse.

>> Your statements about the homeless sound to me like the words of 
>someone
>> who's never bothered to try to help them :)  I mean, really tried.
>
>You're right. I haven't. But that's not the point I was making - and 
>you
>simply can't stick 100% of them into the `drug addict' or `likes it 
>that
>way' pile. The truth is, in the eyes of capitalism, homeless people 
>don't
>exist. And I don't like any system where homeless people don't exist.
>

If you had read my post closely you'd see I didn't stick them all 100% in
the category of drug addicts, and I didn't do that because I have spent
some time with these people.  I don't know if homeless people exist "in
the system," but they do exist "to other people," and there are plenty of
people out there trying to help.  

>It's clear you don't and won't ever agree with me on this topic, and 
>that's
>OK if you're happy with that. It just saddens me that so many artistic
>people are complicit in a system which, given its own way, would 
>assign
>each of us to a lousy cable sitcom until we're too old and stupid to 
>write
>poetry, if it allowed us to exist at all other than to facilitate the 
>old
>axiom of Bread and Circuses. It's a system that likes to hoodwink 
>people
>into believing they're enjoying what is ultimately an unfulfilled and
>unsatisfying materialistic life.
>

You need to see that capitalism has nothing to do with that phenomena,
Camille.  Capitalism gave us the best productions of Shakespeare in the
world, to date.  It's given us the technology to make these available to
everyone at a pretty reasonable fee (99 cent rental at Blockbuster). 
America's wealth, based upon capitalism, has produced in volume more
theater and created more of a market for the creative arts than has ever
been seen before in the history of the world.  And because it is a free
market capitalism, there is no restriction on content other than what
people are willing to pay to see.  Even works produced in Australia and
Britian can come over here and milk the cash cow.  "The Full Monty" did
pretty well, I believe, and it deserved to do well.  High in
entertainment value and a pretty good social commentary to boot.  

Most artists in America are left leaning if not flat out Marxist, and
it's not uncommon to see their ideology reflected in their art.  That too
is the product of free market capitalism.  Other systems in recent
history have been far more restrictive of content.  

>Anyway, back to the TOTALLY NON POLITICAL annals of Salinger. Let's 
>leave
>this discussion to alt.capitalism.com
>
>Camille

Sure, now that I've had the last word :)

Jim

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