As the guilded age came to a close in the 1900s, railroad barons, industrialists and banking kingpins put money into the arts in order to launder their image and legacies. We see no such thing today. Why is that?

I’m an independent film producer in NYC who has previously acted in Hollywood studio films and sold screenplays. I’m also extremely online. I have found that wealthy techies, in general, have little to zero interest in investing in culture. This has been a source of frustration considering the large percentage of new money that comes from the sector.

I’m not alone in feeling this way: I have a friend who raises money for a non-profit theater in Boston, another who owns an art gallery in Manhattan, and another who recently retired at the LA Opera. All have said not to bother with anyone in tech. This has always bummed me out given that I genuinely believed with all of my heart and soul that the internet was going to usher in a new golden age of art, culture, and entertainment. (Yes, I was naive as a kid in the 00s.)

Art and culture can truly only thrive on patronage, especially in times of deep income inequality. Yet there are no Medicis in 2023. So what’s missing here? Where is the disconnect?

  • toadstorm@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Americans especially are trained from a young age to distrust anything that can’t be capitalized upon or used to generate profit. They can understand video games or TV shows, but don’t have the background in arts or literature to understand where the character designs or plot devices came from. Students looking to enter university are almost universally discouraged from entering the arts because it (probably) won’t make them any money as compared to a doctor or lawyer, and the social safety net and arts funding are so underpowered that it’s hard to blame anyone for taking a safer path.

    Even with scientific research, something much more familiar to techies, there’s a distrust or disdain in the general public around research that isn’t immediately applicable to profit. Why do astronomy at all when you could be doing cancer research? Why do pure maths when you could be an engineer?

    Honestly I think it’s just a natural result of living in a hypercapitalist society ruled by a caste of billionaires who are able to influence government policy more and more every year. They can’t profit from art or culture (except to use it as a money laundering device), so why should it exist at all? Better that we all are forced to work for them in order to pay our bills and get health insurance for our families. I think a lot of us have internalized this and feel like there’s no alternative. I hope there’s a backlash.

    • razza856@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      funny thing is the tech we enjoy today is the result of bluesky research that didn’t seem profitable at the time.