Elitism, Inaccessibility and The Pedestal: an Idealist’s Gripes on Capitalistic Art

Written by Mia Liang
Edited by Kristin Cho
Cover Image by Leyao Xiao

Art moulds us. We are moved by melancholy films and raunchy rock songs that define our teenage years. The art we make reflects how the meaning of life has shifted through history. That being said, art in our society is also a business that follows the laws of capitalism: To have the means to continue making art, a threshold of demand must be met. Unfortunately, the artistic industry’s need for demand moulds the nature of the work it produces. Art that “succeeds” under a capitalist model lacks authenticity and purpose in multiple facets, while art that may have otherwise found profoundness in audiences often never reaches a sustainable level of consumption. This model gatekeeps the ability to create art, the most innate form of self-expression, from many people. 

Corrupt structures within industries make becoming a full-time artist in any practice a gruesome process. To have a chance at being successful, an aspiring creative would need some combination of financial leverage, connections, privilege and luck to bypass metrics enforced to weed out people whom record labels, production companies or film studios consider being unprofitable. To be accepted into an actors’ union, the average actor needs to work odd jobs on film sets until they have collected enough valid tokens that are distributed sparsely and randomly in order to qualify for union status. However, “nepotism babies” are able to pull strings to get direct job offers. Artists on Spotify are paid fractions of cents every time their songs are streamed, and only some artists who can cover extensive costs are able to make money by touring. Playwrights have to compete for grants given on biased criteria to potentially get their plays workshopped, nonetheless, produced. Many artists often end up pursuing “real jobs” in other fields, because these corrupt structures tell them they are simply not cut out for making art.

For those who remain in the industry after jumping the initial hurdles, a unique challenge arises: profit incentives stifle unique artistic expression and limit art’s ability to be culturally additive. Many musicians are policed by the labels to which they are signed. These labels often choose to omit songs that do not conform to Western pop standards. Music of diverse cultures are promoted considerably less often as they are deemed too exotic for mainstream consumption. This exclusivity severely limits the average listener’s musical range. Many wonderful musical qualities, such as microtonal intervals found in traditional Indian pieces, sound strange and uncomfortable to many Western ears for this reason. A negative feedback loop is formed, whereby the less consumers are exposed to diverse musical styles, the less they are likely to consume them and the less record labels wish to create and promote these styles. BIPOC artists are signed much less often, and their works are forced into the shackles of palatability. 

In general, this censorship applies to all artists in the field. Artists struggle to simultaneously conform to palatability and elitist standards of complexity as well as the actual ideas they wish to express, which makes creating art as a living more exhausting than liberating most of the time. Conformity to palatability is the reason many people think all mainstream pop songs sound the same, or that all new television shows are just spin-offs of older shows–because they do, and they are, simply because songs or television shows that are easier to consume will be consumed more. If artists choose not to conform to palatability, they must instead create an intricate piece that begs to be dissected like Middle Schoolers dissect Shakespeare. In fact, some English curricula emphasize Shakespeare over modern texts partly because we have internalized a narrative that complex work equals good work. This idea undermines the importance of simplistic self-expression (not everything we feel needs to be complicated) and the importance of accessible art. Books, plays, and songs that are easier to understand are not inherently elementary or poorly written, the same way that art that is complex does not necessarily mean it is valuable. 

"We don't like to think of our favourite musicians as complicit in corporate greed.… Instead, it's much easier to find a villain," (CBC, November 29) says Eriq Gardner, a journalist specializing in the entertainment industry. There is a tiny percentage of artists that become rich and successful, and we know them by name. They have a tremendous amount of influence on our culture, creating the art that we value so much as a collective body that we associate this art with an extension of ourselves. Celebrities are put on pedestals that falsify the idea that they are superior and should be admired. This pedestal is damaging not because it is bad to be influenced by other people, but because it is built on the hard-earned money we pay them and allows many artists to exploit the humanity and the individual value of their audiences. Technically, their work ethics abide by the laws of capitalism–the money they earn is proportionate to the quantity demanded. However, it is how they accrue this demand that is the problem. Perhaps it is wrong that Taylor Swift markets herself on a factor of relatability, but she spends the money we pay her on real estate that is worth more than people’s life savings, and “gatekeeps” music from her fans to make them pay for her fifty-dollar vinyls. Perhaps it is wrong that little girls of colour who watch shows like Ms. Marvel believe that the MCU cares about them, but they are actually another demographic that the company panders shallowly to in order to maintain a diverse image while expanding their profit margins. Of course, not all wealthy artists behave in such a manner, but the fact still remains that there are hundreds of thousands of people with empty Go-Fund-Me’s that need to be filled in order to pay rent, leave abusive relationships, or pay for life-saving surgeries Yet, quite a few artists that claim to care about human connection and empathy, and who actually have the means to help do not, or at least not to an acceptable extent. 

Art is a performance, but the calls to action and morals presented in these performances should not be performative. Both aspiring artists who need to jump through hoops that are far too small to stay afloat and people on the top who need to keep a pretence of relatability often fall into the trap of creating performative art. However, inclusivity, variety, and authenticity in art have come a long way. Every year, we make bounds in representation as audiences fall in love with stories that encapsulate the world in ways we have not seen and tell stories about people whom we have not previously heard of. After all, while art should not be performative, it is foolish to classify any piece of art as entirely authentic or inauthentic–we leave pieces of ourselves in everything we make and everything we do, regardless of which versions of ourselves we choose to present.

Work Cited

McQuillan, Laura. “Who's really to blame for Taylor Swift's Ticketmaster fiasco?” CBC, 29 November 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-responsibility-1.6667244. Accessed 6 December 2022.