Capitalism, Consumerism and Creativity
Boardrooms are where art goes to die.
I think it’s easy for people to forget when most of the art they actively consume is stuff created by big names or big companies, but it’s not easy to make a living as an artist. For every Sandra Bullock or Tom Cruise making millions off of a film, there’s hundreds of extras in those same productions barely scraping by. For every Stephen King or Suzanne Collins, there’s an unknown author working just as hard for a miniscule fraction of the result. Every animation or video game you watch has whole teams of people behind it, most of whom will never see the majority of the profit brought in by their labour.
That isn’t to say that these major productions, smash hit books or AAA titles are bad. Most famous actors are very talented. The musicians we all know and love are gifted. Big name authors work tirelessly, typically starting from nothing just like the rest of us and get where they are through a combination of skill and luck. The purpose of this article isn’t to discredit the achievements of any individuals or question whether they have earned their success.
But I do want to talk about how hyper-capitalism and consumerism fit into this picture. I opened this article with the sentence “boardrooms are where art goes to die.” That’s not because corporately funded art is inherently devoid of creative value. It’s because the system under which most of us create our art is suffocating us of our ability to continue doing so.
Table of Contents:
The Historical Illusion
Before diving into the modern creative landscape though, there is something else that needs to be addressed. In recent times, I have seen a lot of talk on social media about how it used to be so different to be an artist - largely due to frustrations with the current situation. In the past, wealthy patrons would pay to have an artist in residence just creating things for them. In the renaissance, artists were highly respected. Not like today where artists are viewed as expendable cogs in the corporate machine. This is technically correct. However, a lot is missing from this picture.
I’m not a historian. I will not claim to be an expert. However, I think a lot of this discussion is fuelled by romanticism. It really wasn’t easier or better to be an artist in times gone by. For much of human history, most people did not have the time nor resources to pursue art. Most people were stuck being farmers, soldiers, carpenters etc. A lot of people couldn’t even read or write to become authors or poets. Only those who were already wealthy, educated and/or well-connected really had the luxury of being artists for the most part.
As time went on, people did start to have more free time and access to artistic mediums did become more widespread. This is mostly where the idea of the wealthy patron comes into play. A talented artist might end up becoming the artist in residence for some rich lord. However, it was still much easier to end up in that position if you were connected and educated. The majority of creatives were not landing in this arrangement. Most artists were creating as a hobby with their newly discovered free time - limited as it was - or struggling to make ends meet. I expect that sounds familiar to most of us pursuing artistic endeavours.
The difference is that art was more highly valued, in my opinion. While it was still very difficult to make a career as an artist for a whole host of reasons, the lack of corporate mass-production did mean that what quality art was produced was rarer - and therefore more valuable. Successful artists were paid a lot because the rarity of good art and the presence of a resident painter or musician or what have you was a status symbol. In terms of the accessibility of art and ease of distribution though, the modern era wins by a sizable margin.
That isn’t to say there were no benefits to how things used to be or that being a contemporary creative is uniformly better or worse. But before going ahead into the main point of this article, I wanted to provide some context and strip away the romanticism of historical varnish. In a lot of ways, now is the best time to be an artist. However, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the problems in creative industries either.
The Cost of Entertainment
As the decades went on, we moved away from the era of creatives with patrons and started to enter the era of mass-produced and publicly available art. As more people learned to read and write, books became more widely printed for mass-consumption. The growing popularity of public art galleries made the visual arts more available to the general public. The advent of radio, film and television saw a transition from stage plays to radio dramas, movies and television programs that could be widely accessed by far more people. This was a great thing. Art wasn’t just art for the enjoyment of the social elite. Art was now entertainment for mass consumption. Fast forward a few more years and we now have the internet allowing for wider access to both art to appreciate and careers in the arts than ever.
However, somewhere in there something bad started growing too. With more and more people consuming art as entertainment, businesses began realising that art was something that they could capitalise on for profit. Soon enough you had publishers, production companies and record labels with suites of artists working under them, creating the art that the business would then pay for and sell to the masses. More often than not, these companies would retain ownership of that art and could continue to profit off of it for decades to come. Even just selling the rights of a successful property to another individual or business was a source of income - with little to none of that money going to the people that actually made the art.
Historically, the comic book industry is infamous for scamming the creators of iconic characters out of profit. Because ownership of the copyright for Superman ended up in the hands of DC instead of its creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster made very little money off of it. They and their children spent decades fighting to get fairer compensation for the billions DC was making off of their work. Despite doing the majority of the work in creating the iconic version of Batman we all know and love, Bill Finger died penniless with all the credit for the character he created off of a vague concept drawing (to which he made changes) going to that artist, Bob Kane. Alan Moore made a deal in which the rights to The Watchmen would return to him when the comics were no longer being printed, but the comics never went out of print. Meanwhile, over on the other side of the superhero comics isle, Marvel had a tendency to misrepresent the creation of their iconic characters as work done for hire, screwing creators out of copyright ownership of their characters. Things in this industry are a lot better now. Unionisation has played a part and the court of public opinions has helped push companies into creating clearer, fairer contracts. But there is still work to be done here. Movies in the MCU or DCEU make billions of dollars, but the creators behind the characters in those movies and the stories that they adapt see very little of that money.
The video games industry is similarly notorious for overworking and underpaying the creative minds behind our favourite games. According to Professional Australia, game developers can expect to be paid as much as 43% less than developers in more traditional technological industries. A survey conducted by UNI Global Unions indicates that 66% of game developers across nearly thirty different countries are underpaid. Of those developers, 43% also reported being overworked or receiving inadequate work benefits. A big factor in all of this is the infamous “crunch time,” in which developers are forced to work gruelling overtime periods to meet - often unreasonable - deadlines imposed by their corporate bosses. During crunch periods, developers can work an additional twenty hours a week and end up doing work weeks of as much as 80 hours - frequently this overtime is unpaid. If you’re wondering how that happens, it’s because this overtime work is frequently “voluntary.” I use quotation marks because internal pressure and manipulation can make it very clear that it is only voluntary in legal terms, not in the functional.
When it comes to books, things aren’t much better. If they’re lucky, a first-time traditionally published author might receive an advance of $10,000 US for a novel they spent years working on. Realistically, they will probably make a lot less of that advance. They would then receive royalties for each sale somewhere in the 5-20% range once the publisher made back that ten thousand. Essentially, this means that even authors who end up doing well off that first book are going to make 80% less than the company selling their book. And, in the meantime, those authors are forced to depend on other streams of income, while still spending hours working on their next book - all while hoping that their book sells well enough for those royalties to be worth it, if they come at all. Independent authors, like myself, theoretically make more. Amazon pays royalties of anywhere from 35-70% of an eBook’s sale. However, print books pay less (with no advance) and you also pay the cost of printing the book, which drastically whittles down that income. While that is in theory a pretty good rate, I’m confident Amazon does not need to take that much of a book’s purchasing cost to make a profit. It can be even trickier to go it alone without the support of a platform like Amazon though. Although, you also then make 100% of the profit. Every option you choose has its risks and benefits, but none are as lucrative for the creators as the corporations behind them. It is a rare author that makes even a living wage off of their writing alone.
In the animation industry, the problem is a bit more layered. While workers who are not unionised can definitely expect to be paid poorly and worked to death, things have improved a lot on this front. In western countries like Australia and the US, animators can expect to be reasonably well paid. However, in countries like Japan - despite Japan being famed for its animation industry - animators are paid a pittance and are dangerously overworked. This is largely because of a very anti-union, corporate culture and a steep passion tax. This has an effect on the animation industry in other countries too. Rather than pay western animators and deal with unions, companies will simply outsource to Japan, South Korea or elsewhere for much cheaper labour, contributing to the unhealthy conditions in those countries while also making it very hard to find work for western animators.
The advent of generative AI is only deepening all these issues as well. By utilising AI, a company can give less work to creators - giving them fewer hours if not outright replacing them. AI is generally also trained on the creations of artists, writers, voice actors and musicians who are not compensated at all for the use of their work. This means that, even when not actively working for a company, an artist might still be having their work used by that company without any compensation. And yes, you did read correctly. Actual human voices are being replicated without the consent of their owners. That is uncomfortable for more reasons than I care to list.
What Can Be Done?
After that wall of textual despair, you might be wondering what can be done about this situation. The good news is that there are definitely actions we can take to improve this situation.
The first is for creators to unionise and for consumers to support unions - to support creators who are fighting to be paid their worth. Unions give artists a collective voice that they would otherwise lack. That gives them power to stand their ground in the face of the overwhelming financial and legal power held by corporations. Vote for candidates that support unions and workers rights in elections. Next time creators are striking, consider why the content you love is taking longer to get out or isn’t being produced to the same quality. Voice support for those actors, animators, artists, developers etc and hold the corporations victimising them accountable instead of lamenting the strike. One of the best tools we have to improve creative industries is to wield our voices and turn them in the correct direction.
The second thing is to support independent creators. Being an independent artist gives you a lot more freedom to create the work you want without having corporate overlords pulling your strings and scalping away most of the money earned by your creations. It also means competing with those same big powerful companies and, largely, going it on your own. Don’t pirate from small/independent creators. Support your favourite artists on patreon or ko-fi, if you can. Buy directly from artists instead of through third parties where possible. Encourage people to charge what they are worth. Definitely do not try to pay someone “with exposure” - chances are you don’t have the following for that to be worth it. And, if you’re an artist yourself, do what you can to support your fellows.
Finally, stand against the continued use of generative AI. Do not pay for work created with AI. Do not use it yourself. Be vocal. Stand by real creators and their rights and do so loudly. Once again, use your vote. Put people in power who will pass legislation to protect the artists being victimised by generative AI.
In Conclusion
Early in this article, I made a point of dispelling the romanticised version of the historical artist that lives in some people’s minds. That is because I wanted to remind you that, despite all the problems we face, there has never been a better time to be an artist - whatever your medium. Thanks to the internet, the arts are more accessible than they have ever been. Independent creators have more reach than they have ever had before. We have never been more aware of the downsides to working in creative industries - more in a position to take action against bad actors.
However, it is important not to let this lead to complacency. Artists do real work that is integral to all of the media we enjoy and love. Our culture is built on the work of artists. While I - like most creators - take pride in knowing that a tiny little speck of that landscape is mine, we can’t survive on pride alone. In a consumerist world where capitalism has run rampant and it is getting more and more expensive for the average person to live, artists of all kinds need support and respect more than ever. Whether I’m lucky enough to be counted in the number or not, do what you can to support your favourite creators. Make the future for artists even better than the present.
