The reasons for substandard art ruling the industry

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

It’s your personal choice how you interpret the quote but one thing is for sure. If you always live a life of comfort and acceptance, it means you have never produced or will create anything that’s somewhat significant to the world.

In the current times distracted constantly by social media, technology, economic recessions, focussing on one thing has become quite an uphill task. So the leisure time is actively spent on consuming newsfeeds, galleries, status updates and the latest series on NetFlix. When everyone is busy in consuming, that society struggles hard to come up with people who will create something original.

Let’s look at the reasons why the current generation is unable to move from consuming to creating

1. Chasing for livelihood is a never-ending syndrome

The human race has reached a place where a fairly rational man can live life without worrying about survival. The over-hype media creates about struggles of survival is exaggerated for increasing the viewership from anxious people but in reality, a man/woman who can take decisions can exercise the luxury of streamlining the survival process.

It’s the reason we have many travel bloggers, fashion VJs, tech vloggers, and many more people who have made it possible. It’s people who are stuck in the conventional routine succumbing to old lifestyles and running out of leisure time- running forever for financial security, killing the spare time in the name of stress relief by binge-watching Game of Thrones or FilmFare award nights on Sundays.

2.  A childhood artist vanishes as he/she grows adult

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

― Pablo Picasso 

What Pablo Picasso told holds relevant till today because a child’s enthusiasm is slowly eaten away by parents, teachers, and the school management. 

All the logical approach the institutes are rubbing the children with is directed towards only one aspect of growth i.e intellect. Intellect is just one part of brain used for mostly survival in the world. There are other creative and complex areas in the brain which are untouched in the current educational system. For the very reason, people with strong left-brain overtake people with the strong right brain and the chase never ends because you know, elephants and crocodiles shouldn’t compete in long jumps.

3. Complete avoidance of pain through indulgence

A man/woman must get torn apart to understand and experience the depth of life. Mere going to school, getting a degree, and landing in a secure job won’t give vibrant life experience at all. It’s the sense of life(philosophy) trending now because of two reasons

Few people who broke the norms and tried to live outside the box in the decade 2000-2010 failed miserably in the Indian suburban society. Showing them as examples the institutions of family and education pushed children into safest paths where there’s no scope or question of adventure.

People who succeeded are often treated as magical and the same institutions quote them as exemptions to the rule and the inspiration they created is killed mid-way successfully.

As a result, the generation gave into a lifestyle that consists of reading, shopping, NetFlix watching, social media indulging, gossipping, and living dreams while taking alcohol with a bunch of similar people with no depth and direction in life.

4. Settling down abroad cuts away the connection to art life in the homeland

The regular discourse repeatedly heard in Indian youth is that they will go abroad, earn tons of money, overcome the financial rut, and then invest in their dreams of childhood i.e in Cinema, Writing, Singing, Dance, painting, and whatever endeavour of art they were passionate about.

But the problem is the graph takes many U-turns on this journey. It’s not their fault at all but anything significant takes a lot of committed effort and dedication. They realize the dream of landing a job in that rich country but lose touch with their art/passion (they won’t have time and lose the command first and then interest levels relatively). Passion is not something warm or cold, it scorches, and when it’s not that much hot it loses its lustre in their lives. Because a job in a western country brings in many friends, parties, financial investments like a house, properties, gold, securities; followed by marriage proposals all of which together tie him/her up to the window. 

The sad part is what hard work they did for getting liberated from the rut of life, locks’em up too deep in the same shit in levels of imprisonment.

5. Even if they created something, the intention of the artwork to be liked by everyone kills its intensity

Art is the selected recreation of reality according to the creator’s view of life according to Ayn Rand. Even by crossing the above hurdles, if a passionate guy created something, the anxiety that it should be liked and received well by everyone kills its originality and purpose.

The more intense an art, the stronger it’s both liked and hated by opposite sections of people. If everyone claims to like a piece of art, it means it’s just a mediocre work. Because of the financials involved in the creation and in a bid to recover the cost, the creators many times surrender to the disintegration of art for appealing to the irrational sect of the audience.

That’s the reason a passionate artist should learn to produce an artwork with minimum cost and maximum effect. Where there are all resources available, there a radical creativity is never born.

A society’s level of real prosperity is decided by the art that is popular across it and art that’s being produced and consumed on a daily basis. That’s the very reason, even though it has many dark sides, Paris still stands as the art capital of the world- (Struggle and darkness fuel the original creation of art). 

We in India have to seriously review our art that’s visibly sub-standard, proved multiple times by shameless plagiarism done by our directors from Hollywood movies even copying first look posters; our TV shows produced replicating their concepts, our blockbuster movies lacking any substance- made a long run in theatres just because of B-Center audience who can reduce heroin to a glam doll, actors to caricatures, and music to meaningless sounds.