Be Mused

Editor’s Note: This essay was originally written and published in January 1998 as part of a series. Visit theLogBook.com for part one, and then bug Earl here on the forums for the still-unpublished part three.

From time to time I’ll run into someone who asks me what I do. Simple – I write and produce promos and commercials. Scriptwriting, filmmaking, and occasionally a smidgeon of voice acting all in one. Not a bad package. Until this hypothetical someone – not entirely hypothetical, though – says “Oh, so basically, you sold out.”

You betcha.

Be prepared to hear this line of total B.S. if you plan on extending your creativity into your professional life. Trust me – you will hear it at least once.

Aside from my perhaps too-pragmatic belief that the satisfaction of a full stomach beats the romance of a bohemian freelance-artist lifestyle any day of the week, let’s get one thing out in the open, friends. And this may very well be the moment at which you decide to keep traveling down this road…or back up to take the other exit you just passed.

The moment you make the arts or the media your profession, you are being exploited.

Go back. Read it again. I’m not joking.

You are being exploited. You are allowing yourself to be exploited. It is what you do.

Think about our society. Teachers struggle to keep food on the table, their meager reward for teaching our children. Members of the military, in return for waiting for opportunities to protect our borders – opportunities which may never actually arise in their lifetimes – are lucky to break even. Police officers try to make ends meet…a paltry compensation for their profession, which may be called upon to make sure that the rest of us do not meet our end.

Where is the money in western society?

Recently, NBC renewed the Warner Bros. hour-long hospital drama ER for a staggering, history-making (and, I fear, history-breaking) $13 million an episode.

Until now, million-dollar-per-job fees have only been commanded by major film stars. Now, there’s a good chance it will become de rigeur for television actors as well.

These people aren’t being paid millions to educate your kids. They’re not leaping in front of you to keep a random bullet from kissing you. They’re not even poised for action should a hostile international power try to challenge territorial rights or common sense.

These people are sitting around, eating free catered food, smoking a lot, and pretending to be teachers, police officers, soldiers, and, yes, doctors.

In our society, despite the NEA’s gloomy prediction of what will happen without federal grants, we throw our money – liberally – in the direction of the arts. Think about how much movies and music cost. Books are rising in price. Artwork, even when reproduced for mass consumption, isn’t getting any cheaper. That’s where the money is. (Well, there is medicine and law, but this isn’t a series of essays about medicine and law, is it?)

The sad thing about the state of the arts today is that they are largely guided by committee. Especially in the mass media. Other people will be telling you what to do. You can come up with variations within a given theme, different angles of attack to common problems, but in the end, it’s not going to be your glorious solo flight for a very long time.

Actors will always read the writers’ lines. The writers themselves suffer the dictates of their time and their society. In the business of – supposedly – expressing yourself, originality is relative, and for most, independence is an illusion.

Getting back to the analogy of spectator sports, the object of an artistic endeavor – aside from expressing your idea – is to see its reaction on others and, with any luck, to gain patronage. Great playwrights and painters through the ages have had patrons who financed their flights of fancy. Often it was not so much because they wanted to influence the outcome, but instead was simply a status symbol – “ah yes, like that painting? He does these for me.”

Patronage has evolved over the years. There are still endowments in the form of federal grants and posthumous gifts, and in a very, very few cases, even a few old-fashioned examples of the old patronage system. But these days, my patron is the corporate world, as it will be for many.

Did I sell out? Hell yeah, baby, you better believe I did.

Beyond the question “What do you want?” lies the question “Why do you want it?”

If you want to make a living expressing yourself, why do you want to do that? Why act? Why write? Why do design work? Sure, you hope to express yourself to millions or perhaps dozens, but more than that, at the heart of it, is your belief or hope that you’re good enough that people will pay for your services.

You’re exploiting yourself. Plain and simple. You are putting your skills on the table. You’re saying, in essence, “Yes, I can write/draw/act.” And in order to make a living, you will have to write what other people want you to write. Draw what they need you to draw. Act the role that they put in front of you.

You might want to write stage musicals instead of writing local news. You may want to draw sprawling landscapes instead of architectural sketches. You may want to do Shakespeare instead of landing a walk-on, no-dialogue bit part as an extra.

But these are the trade-offs you make to get there.

You’re being exploited. We throw all our money at the arts – but the arts don’t stay well-funded unless they’re already producing goods or services that have the approval of large portions of the general populace. Your idealism can only be maintained by selling out . . . while still keeping your original dreams tucked away safely, waiting for the day when you do have the autonomy to revive them.

Along with that sense of exploitation, you can also expect your creations to be picked into tiny pieces by people who have no idea what you were trying to do. It goes with the territory.