Commercialism and Art
Here is something I wrote today about judging hip-hop music based on the mainstream rappers who go on about sex, violence, and money:
Commercialism and art never mix well, in my opinion. That’s why the type of music, be it hip-hop or not, on the radio, on MTV’s TRL or on BET’s Rap City is not generally considered high quality. It is to music what McDonald’s is to food. It’s meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I do not mean to insult mainstream art or those who produce it, but I just mean to point out that it is meant to appeal just enough to large groups, but not to be artistically deep or beautiful. From a commercial standpoint, it is preferred to have a whole lot of people like your work a little bit than to have a few people love it a lot. What sells is sex, violence, money-talking, and light-hearted fun; and that’s true not only for music, but for movies, books, TV shows and so forth. And that’s fine because every so often we all like to sit down and watch a relatively superficial but fun movie or go to the club and dance to some silly new song.
From an artistic view, the greatest art is generally not the most popular, mainstream or commercially successful.
What do you think?
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I think that your view is correct. Most of the mainstream entertainment today is simply meant to give us a few minutes of pleasure instead of invoking us to think, to use our mental abilities. But i would have to say that some of the mainstream entertainment can also be thought provoking. But in order to do that you would have to search very hard.