Hell is 'Fan Support'
Thought experiment: a man is starving. Should the man be fed only by people who like him best? Of course not. And yet, we approach the ‘starving artist’ in this way: you are expected, as a creator, to be supported solely by your greatest fans. This paradigm is self-defeating, benefiting only the industry, as it creates inadequacy where none should exist, driving creatives towards an entity to alleviate the situation: the devil, holding a contract.
The worth of an artist should never be determined by the size of their fanbase, much as it should not be measured by whether or not the system wants to own them. You are not ‘better’ when you have a lot of fans, or a contract, than you were when you didn’t—you just obtained both, or either, somehow. Furthermore, we are not responsible for the swells and currents which inexplicably influx fans to us—we simply do what we do, and sometimes a phenomenon occurs. It never makes sense why, though it is endlessly possible to come up with ‘reasons why’ after the fact. In truth though, it is like a hysteria spreading through a crowd such that everyone is suddenly rushing towards the emergency exits, fleeing the previous ‘current thing’ for the replacement which you can allegedly provide—pop culture is sinking ship hopping.
Popularity and innovativeness have nothing to do with one another. The uninitiated should not be expected to determine anything related to the worth of ideas—only fellow experts within the craft can tell ‘new and interesting’ (and even then, they can be biased or jealous). An audience is at the least advantage though, as they can only react to perceived newness, perceived interestingness—they are wholly one-step removed. Their headcount cannot be used to determine the best and brightest minds of a particular culture. In music, for instance, they cannot be expected to know the names of the producers and songwriters who truly create that which their body moves best to—they react only to the finished product, the pop idol gelcap. In film, they react to the film itself—the finished implementation and instance of creativity, whereas true connoisseurs, few and far between, react to the idea behind the film, the doors in which the innovative style or approach unlocks. (Rodriguez and Tarantino’s ‘Grindhouse’ was a box office bomb, yet sparked a specific retro-cool aesthetic for filmmakers and ad agencies to ape for the next decade.)
If anything, we should measure worth by how few people ‘get’ something—the worth of Apple was more determined by how few people invested in it initially than by how many people eventually used Apple products. This is not to say that everything heady or impenetrable to the masses or the layman is innovative and forward-thinking—it is just an illustration of how backwards our standard for determining value is, that it can be upside-downed and instantly be more useful as a metric.
A proper model for supporting artists, and solving the ‘starving artist’ problem, would be for artists to be stared into much like Magic Eye paintings—we should blur our vision such that we can see what exists past the mere surface. ‘How’ an artists creates is more important than ‘what’—and by ‘how’, not just their method, but their ethos. We must shed the limiting idea of ourselves as only ‘fans’ or ‘not fans’, and instead realize that we can be direct participants in the shaping of the cultural philosophy which surround us, as opposed to merely choosing the specific art which lines the walls of the museum that is America.
Beauty and adornment are but one small aspect of the health of a society—an attractive woman is more than just a pretty outer shell. The Devil can come to us beautifully—it is smart enough to not hand us a dotted line and a pen while looking like a ferocious monster. The puritan hyper-obsession with ‘facade’ that we must ‘return to’ will in fact create more monsters than it will slay—until we ensure our best minds are not dead in the streets, all is moot. A culture in which there is nothing the devil can offer or entice an artist with is one that we should strive for.
It should be no secret to you by now that I accept two dollar monthly support for my film studio, Kill The Lion Films. You should support me if you like my movies, sure, but you should support me if you merely like where I’m coming from intellectually. The fact that for nearly no money per month, you can ensure that I am alive and sheltered and fed is a beautiful thing. Our great country, and its uniquely independent spirit, are helped by me thriving. Not all artists need to be intellectuals as well, but we should foster and encourage all artists with distinctly American souls, and save them from an industry which seeks only to puppet them towards the goal of destroying everything we hold dear. Thank you for reading.