DAILY MEMO: CULTURE:

Value economists can’t measure

Art shouldn’t have to be justified by return on investment

Friday, Sept. 11, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Chris Morris

Joe Brown Reviews

A week or so ago, I wrote a review of a show playing out of town. Way out of town. About 600 miles away, in San Francisco.

The show I traveled to see was the musical “Wicked,” by the way. My review for the Las Vegas Sun stressed that it was “well worth the trip,” that the flight is cheap, and the ticket costs much less than something comparable on the Strip.

After the review was written, but before it was published, I read an essay in the September issue of Harpers Magazine, about how education has been monetized and our whole cultural language has been modified and co-opted and viewed in terms of its value to the GDP.

It got me thinking about how I think and write about the arts, and whether that had changed since I moved to Las Vegas. I realized that I had written that “Wicked” review, in a way, to justify writing about something happening out of our readership range, to make a case to my editors about its value to our readers. I was coming at this cultural event from a “worth it” economic basis, perhaps at the expense of exploring the essential value of the show itself.

In that Harper’s essay, titled “Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School,” Mark Slouka describes how state and federal planners are now discussing the teaching of writing skills and the arts in terms of “return on investment,” increased efficiency and national competitiveness. “From the local PTA meeting to the latest Presidential Commission on Education, the only subject under discussion, the only real criterion for investment — in short, the alpha and omega of educational policy — is jobs.”

And we’ve fallen into thinking about the arts and culture in this same monetized, relentlessly vocational way.

“It can be touching to watch supporters of the arts contorting themselves to fit,” says Slouka, quoting a brochure that posits that supporting the arts in our schools is a good idea because “state and local leaders are realizing that the arts and culture are vital to economic development.”

It’s depressing and demoralizing to think of education, not to mention the arts and culture, in this reductive, money’s-worth manner.

And I wonder if I’ve perhaps been subsumed into that reflexive mode of thinking about shows I review: Will such-and-such survive economically? Will it pay off? Will it make money for the producers? Will it win?

That’s not what the arts and entertainment are really about, of course. For the producers, it is, sure, and as this town’s economy is based on entertainment, art can come to mean “product” to some.

But not for the artists and not for the audiences — that’s us, the consumers of art and entertainment, if you must. We can — maybe we must — remember to consider art from a larger, deeper perspective.

“Wicked,” for instance, although it is a huge commercial success, is not just a financial winner. It’s beautiful, too, and thought-provoking and surrounded by a sense of occasion. All those things that a cultural event is and should be.

This is not to say that we have to leave town to experience art. There are plenty of shows presented here in Las Vegas that should be treasured, not just measured or otherwise rated by how much they’ve made or how popular they are or how many have been served.

What, then, if we’re not looking at the bottom line, is the worth of a play, or a concert or a painting?

The arts should be not valued just for return and reward, but because, as Slouka reminds us, “they complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties ... Because they expand the reach of our understanding (and therefore our compassion), even as they force us to draw and redraw the borders of tolerance.”

This, Slouka suggests, is value — “and cheap at the price ... Considering where the rising arcs of our ignorance and our deference lead ... given our fondness for slogans, our childlike susceptibility to bullying and rant, our impatience with both evidence and ambiguity, what could earn us, over time, a better rate of return?”

Discussion: 4 comments so far…

By Patrick_R_Gibbons

9/11/09 at 8:35 a.m.

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Yes, everything can be measured with a dollar value. Dollars are merely a representation for the happiness our efforts create for others. The more happiness you create, the more dollars you get in return.

Of course, you could earn lots of dollars by stealing it, in which case you aren't creating happiness but for the honest masses we earn our money by making life better for others.

And btw, the more wealth we are able to produce the more wealth we have to spend on luxury items like theatre and art.
By GrandmaCrabby

9/11/09 at 3:41 p.m.

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Theatre and art aren't luxuries, any more than logic or introspection are luxuries.

Art doesn't just make people happy. Sometimes the best art makes you angry or sad. Sometimes, it makes you ask questions, it makes you challenge your assumptions, it makes you see things in a new and different way.

It may even cause you to think that maybe money isn't everything.
By odeman

9/11/09 at 9:50 p.m.

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Art and culture is in the eye of the beholder. The difference between "good" art and the rest is what the rich and the intellectuals tell us it is. It's time to stop cramming liberal arts garbage down our throats and let us decide what is art and what is not. At least the poor mans art pays for for itself while the intellectuals art needs government subsidies.

You can have all the art you want but it doesn't pay the bills or keep the economy going. While we are studying and viewing liberal arts garbage the rest of the world will bury us with their science and engineering skills. The next time some doctor gets sued for killing someone on the operating table, as a defense he can say that he was so busy studying his liberal arts he had no time to study medicine.

This is why this country is on the decline. The intellectuals have deemed us too good to do actual work. We will be the brains and the cultural leaders of the brave new world. The rest of the world is saying no way, go away. In response to the challenges from abroad our esteemed education secretary wants to lengthen the school day and year so we can study more arts and music. It's time to end this fantasy about culture and let the educaters educate while real people, not ivory tower sequestered intellectuals, decide what is to be taught. It's time to bring the education industry out of the incestuous dark ages.
By LVPaco

9/12/09 at 5:52 a.m.

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It is without any doubt that the arts are indispensable to the economic and social vitality of a community especially that of a nation state. As one suggests above that liberal arts is garbage only degrades there argument to the heap of misinformed conservative ideals; the "NO" factor I believe some call it. Teaching culture, the arts and humanities opens the eyes of our children to the beauty that is the world around them. It also teaches them how to be citizens of the world rather than insular.

I do not buy nor do I support that teaching of the cultural arts is reserved to those who are intellectuals in ivory towers. Having a well rounded education in the humanities makes us better people. The reason why there are critics of the cultural arts is simple, because they themselves have never been exposed to the arts nor care to.

Nations around the world are succeeding in the sciences because there educational systems are well rounded. Part of that reason is there dedication to the humanities. In addition the world understand that to beat the United States is to understand there culture. If we understood the rest of the world better we also would be better equipped for the competition.