If you have been following my posts closely for the last couple months, you know the topic of the prescriptive value of the arts to fix various problems has been on my mind lately. Often we see people argue about how the arts stimulate the economy, help students do better in school or contribute to a reduction in crime.
It wasn’t until I was looking back at some old entries that I was reminded of a less frequently discussed measure of success — are the right people being served.
Back in 2008 I wrote about a speech given by Frank Furedi where he criticized the apparent perception that a performance wasn’t successful unless it was attended by the right demographics.
[Britian Cultural Minister Margaret] Hodge had nothing to say about the musical experience of listening to performances at The Proms. Instead she focused entirely on the audience. She observed that ‘the audiences for many of our greatest cultural events – I’m thinking in particular of The Proms – is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this’. In essence, she was arguing that one should judge the merits of a concert on the basis of who’s in the audience.
…For Hodge, and other supporters of the politicisation of culture, the value of classical music is called into question by the fact that apparently the ‘wrong’ people listen to it. ‘The main problem with classical music is its audience’, wrote Sean O’Hagan in the Observer. That’s another way of saying that because its audience is predominantly middle class, classical music is an unreliable instrument for promoting social cohesion and community regeneration.
I am not arguing that there shouldn’t be more opportunities for a wider demographic range of performers and artists. Nor am I suggesting potential audiences should learn to appreciate the standard cultural expressions of the country in which they live.
I feel a lot of progress has been made, especially in the last year, in terms of calling attention the narrow choices that are being made in casting and programming. That shouldn’t be impeded or reversed. There is still a lot of stubborn inertia to overcome.
However, in the process of expanding opportunities, it will be easy to judge something as less valuable because it doesn’t resonate with the correct audiences.
It is just as bad to say Western classical music is less valuable than a Taiko drumming performance because it won’t attract as many Japanese audience members that your funders desire as it is to decide to cast Scarlett Johansson as The Major in The Ghost in the Shell movie because she is more marketable than a Japanese actor.
As Furedi suggests, the view that a work by a Western artist won’t resonate with someone who doesn’t come from a Western background does a disservice to them and underestimates their capacities. (As is the assumption that Westerners won’t enjoy something that isn’t from the Western canon.) Just because someone is thrilled by an experience that tells them more about themselves doesn’t mean they can’t appreciate an experience that has more relevance to another than them.
Yes, steps need to be taken to make audiences more demographically diverse. Judging the worth of a work based on whether it helps you achieve that diversity is misdirected.
I think that whether audience diversity matters depends on the mission of the theater. For example, the African American Theater Arts Troupe at UCSC has a mission that specifically address who their audience needs to be: “AATAT was formed as a vehicle to create unity, higher visibility, and understanding of the African American culture here at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the greater Santa Cruz community.” If they are only reaching the black students, then they are not achieving their mission. (Incidentally, they do seem to be doing well at what they aimed to do.)
I am so encouraged that you have the bit between your teeth in exploring the role and function of value in the arts. You keep asking important questions, necessary questions, and I for one am grateful to be challenged to think more deeply about the issues you bring up.
One hot topic these days is the related field of equity, diversity, and inclusion. When art is in the position of serving the social/public good these are ideals worth aspiring to. Mission statements laudably aim at maximizing these things and are criticized when they do not. If the arts are going to be a servant, these are worthy goals to support. In the lens of social good we want the arts to stand out. Rightly so. But is that all there is? Are the arts’ value defined solely by what they serve?
This post you’ve just written answers this important issue. “Judging the worth (value) of a work based on whether it helps you achieve that diversity is misdirected.” We too often conflate the value of art with how well it serves goals. This attitude rewards the arts for how well they achieve worthy ends. Instrumentality trumps intrinsic. We praise the arts as the means to ends. And we are so used to looking at the arts as servants that we habitually take their primary (if not exclusive) value as that of being a servant. The arts can be a marvelous servant, but can they have dignity and value in their own right? That is the problem we are too often tripped up by. And we shake our heads in confusion when a public that has been sold on the arts’ instrumentality fails to find value in the arts themselves. We have sold the arts on the promise of value, but its not the value of the arts themselves, merely how well they serve other ends…..
And it is right to praise the arts when they support worthy goals. But this is only a partial view of the arts’ potential for value, and when it distracts us from those other things it does the arts a disservice. It misunderstands the arts’ other value. The arts deserve respect independently of how well they serve worthy goals. Just as you say. Value is not based only on service. We’ve simply got to get a better handle on that.
My current thinking has the temptation for measurement as the mindset luring us away from intrinsic value. We are obsessed, really, with the need to be seen measuring. And so the idea of serving some good is an accepted way of establishing value and making judgments. The activity of measuring itself has become a rightness in our lives. Measuring places things and ourselves within a context. No matter how you measure, you’ve got data, you’ve got a handle on something. This reassures us. The standard of measurement itself doesn’t always bother us as long as we can be seen employing it. We can fumble about figuring the more efficient means to ends, but the ends are often unquestioned. We may not really understand what a maximization of equality, diversity, and inclusiveness looks like, but that gives us something to aim at. Is it a practical objective? Does that even matter, as long as we can be justified by aiming that way…..
Our problem is that we are so measurement focused that we are validated more by the act than the actual measure being enforced. We are justified so long as we can be seen justifying. Its a weird sort of tautology, that the act itself is its own support. What we have left out is an adequate consideration of the measures themselves. We like to say that the ends justify the means, and this is true. But its not *these*particular*ends* as much as its the act itself of supporting ends. THAT is what justifies us….. So long as we measure we will be justified.
Sorry if I’m rambling a bit, but you are on to something important here. The first step is untangling the value of the arts from ends they serve. We are too tempted to see the arts as means, but mainly this comes from our failure to fully recognize the role and function of value in our lives. We are means obsessed. We measure compulsively. It takes our eye off things that themselves operate as values in themselves. We lose sight of the things that measure the instrumental value. We have become blind to the ordinary operation of intrinsic value in human lives. And the arts get set adrift as merely means, with no discernible value in themselves. We see the arts as good for at the expense of seeing the good they are. Our failure is at the root of public perception that no longer values the arts in themselves. As means to ends, they are incidentally good at best. Really, why should they care?
Apologies for the essay!