Hybrid Assignment 2 – Jessie Salfen
The economic activity associated with straightforward selling of goods or labor implies that, and supported by NYU professor Clay Shirky, that to be paid you should be engaging work that you do not enjoy. Thought she is opposed to it, Rebecca Solnit has made a similar observation in that the “conventionalized notion of work as the forty hours of submission to another’s purpose snipped out of your life (and leaving a hole in your heart and mind).” Why do feel that to make money, our efforts should not be toward something fulfilling, or is it that we make excuses for our own choices? Those who enjoy their work, bakers, firemen, and others who create but not categorized as “Artists” seem to be exempt from criticism as those who write, create, play, implying that their crafts are not “work.”
The elevated forms of value we associate with art and culture, we need to promote that our culture needs support through the arts and tear down the misconceptions that artists do not work hard and that their efforts are important and worthwhile. By setting the economic bar lower and lower for artists, it is creating a new expectation on the part of the artist and, particularly those who titter between amateurism and professionalism, as there is no clear divider other than the continuation of not being paid. This pattern leaves the artist to feel that their work should only be beheld as amateur, or that the industry has changed so that they should just be happy with what they can get. And this new expectation does not only sit on the heads of the artists, but on the viewer/reader/listeners as well. The more that media users feel they are entitled to the free reproductions of art that the internet makes so easy, the more they distance themselves from understanding that making the art costs a great deal.
Though the argument for “the little person” to have the support over the “professional” is valid at a glance, when it comes to the people who do their work to help other people and contribute to our culture, I believe their work, their art, their teaching, their helping, should be supported. If the economy isn’t sustaining their practices, we need to have another look at the distribution of wealth and to our government and start to make change that makes a difference.
