This Week’s Insights: A divide between professional artists and everybody else?… Some rules for collecting data on audiences… German philosophers become popular, and serious people worry… Trigger warnings re-contextualizes art… Chinese protectionism comes to the movies.
- Has Professionalization Of The Arts Alienated Audiences? We have developed a professional class of artists and the quality of art has (arguably) gone up because of it. But in the process, did we separate the arts from the everyday every-man experience? Eric Booth thinks so: “For a very long time, the criteria for excellence in the arts have been owned by a particular body of experts who generally have a condescending view of the quality of art developed in community-based and social change programs and projects. These credentialed “experts” hold to a definition of quality largely based in an “art for art’s sake” paradigm. However, this definition loses the connection with the vast majority of people who live in the country, as well as the vast range of arts that is produced here and the range of reasons for which people make art.”
- We Can Now Track Audience Behavior Better Than Ever: But what is our responsibility to audiences for the data now being collected? New EU Big Data privacy and protection laws are coming into force, and these laws will impact arts data collection. “People will be able to request details of the data held about them at any time, and can require its removal in a wide range of circumstances. This is not only fundraising data but information held about everyone in an arts organisation’s database, from audiences and artists to volunteers.”
- German Philosophers Are Becoming Media Stars: So does that mean they’ve sold out? “German philosophy today is not so much the kind of intellectual discipline that Martin Heidegger would practice, hermit-like, in his Black Forest hut but rather a successful service industry competing for customers.” And that – predictably – has “serious” people concerned that the rigor and heft of contemporary German philosophers and their ideas are being diluted in this clamor to be “popular”. It’s a classic question that has surfaced anytime an artform becomes popular with the public.
- Do Trigger Warnings Devalue Art? All art is experienced in context. So does warning a reader or viewer or listener about something potentially offensive lead the audience to consider the work differently? “If you search for ‘books with trigger warnings’ you will hit an interminable list of titles which include, and are not restricted to, suicide; self-harm; eating disorders; grief; miscarriage; addiction; racism; rape; sexual violence; incest. Where do you draw the line?” And how are you changing the art by warning about it in advance?
- China Bans Foreign Movies So Chinese Will See More Home-Grown Films: China has aspirations for making its movie industry a global player. But as long as American movies are available at local theatres, Chinese audiences will go to see them. So the government has taken to periodically blacking out imported movies to give Chinese films more of a chance. “The blackouts — officially called ‘domestic film protection periods’ — have historically given a summer bump to local films.” Many countries have stewed over how to encourage consumption of local culture that has to compete with generic global culture produced elsewhere. Is blacking out foreign competitors an effective longterm tactic or does it just make the banned culture more alluring?
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