Why So Much Crappy Art?

I am not familiar with Helen Dale’s work, but, after reading her recent Spectator article, I will make it a point to learn more about her. Responding to a friend who asked her if she had an “unpopular opinion, Dale responded that our educational system and the media have bequeathed us far too many would-be and talentless artists.

In other words, we are drowning in crap art and in crap writing. Spectators refuse to go to museum exhibits that display junk art that preaches the gospel of political correctness. Readers refuse to buy much of the literary fiction out there, because it is unreadable.

The fault, Dale writes, lies first with the self-esteem movement. Now that schools give everyone a prize, children come away imagining that they have real talent… when they don’t.

Dale writes:

There are too many artists, too many people who want to be artists, most of them aren’t very good, and schools should focus on inculcating self-discipline rather than dopey ‘all must have prizes’ creativity.

Most people are only ever going to be drones. Telling them because they starred in the high school musical or wrote the best poem in the school magazine means they’re going to make it as an actor or writer is a monstrous lie that sets them up for disappointment.

All the arts – but especially literature – have low barriers to entry. Huge numbers of people are attracted to what are seen to be glamorous fields like writing, acting, directing, and painting. Often, this is because one person is plucked from the crowd and becomes a star – there’s nothing quite like a narrative where we get to cheer on the underdog – known in the trade as a ‘winner takes all’ market. However, the economics of ‘crowded fields’ means the larger the number of participants, the more randomness and luck play a role in determining success.

And then, there’s identity politics. Universities encourage writers who can’t write because they believe that a student, by virtue of his or her “identity” must have a great story to tell, especially one that discredits the patriarchy and industrial capitalism. Book publishers have taken to using identity as a marketing ploy.

That is why – in these modern ‘attention economy’ times – publishing houses insist on using identity politics to try to ‘move the merch’. And you read that right – intersectional feminism and mandated racial diversity are marketing and branding strategies, not politics.

Meanwhile, universities (yes, you can go to university, rack up student debt, and ‘learn’ to be a writer) tell some people – depending on skin tone, sex, orientation, or something else – as a matter of routine they have an important and luminous story to tell because of what they are.

Dare we add that university professors and media influencers believe that the only noble profession is producing art. Thus, that if you have a real job, one where you need to get up and go to the office and earn a living every day… you are corrupt and corrupting.

But then, there’s the inevitable wake-up call for young people who have been lied to:

There is nothing quite like seeing a modestly talented person crumple when they think an opportunity has been snatched from them when they have to go and drive for Uber or take a factory job. Even worse is the modestly talented person who persists (and persists) and is paid nothing at all while churning out content for Huffington Post.

These people are everywhere in the economy, living hand-to-mouth and doing idiot things like demanding ‘luxury communism now’ (that’s from Ash Sarkar, the self-described feminist Muslim who had a go-round with Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain recently.)

Feminists, too, live in mum’s basement and call themselves ‘writers’ or ‘artists’. It’s not just MRAs and the sadder sort of gamers. They live there because they think, one day, they’ll land on (literary) Free Parking in Monopoly and thence lay hands on the Big Brass Ring.

That’s not how it works, and worse, all it does is inflict bad writing on the rest of us. No wonder sales of literary fiction around the world have fallen off a cliff.

I take Dale’s word about literary fiction. I wonder how much it applies to academic writing… though academic writing has always been falling off a cliff.

She concludes:

It’s worth noting other writing genres are fine, too – science fiction, crime, fantasy, thrillers, romance – these are selling better than ever. We can’t blame literary fiction’s current parlous state on e-books or Amazon.