Effects of late capitalism on creativity

Today, what is and is not considered a great piece of work is heavily influenced by the great class divide, and capitalism is to blame.

When Joan Didion said, “Writers are always selling someone out.” I viewed it in a literal sense; writers are making money by packaging someone in romantic words, through metaphors and imagery. Along with the person, also sells the writer’s creativity, which is in turn, left to the hands of the common public to decide if it is a great piece of work or not, completely eroding the idea of the subjectiveness of art. And that is the problem with creating art in today’s age; it has to be sellable- not only limiting creative freedom, but also reversing the whole point of selling art (faking creativity). But if you want to put forward your original self, to succeed, you must come from connections, which here can be interchangeably used with money.

I won’t use examples from my personal life to prove to you that many people have succeeded with their mediocre creativity just because they are rich. Instead, I would just use the famous authors who have gotten too much credit for their mediocre work, to just prove that: capitalism has blurred the lines of art, and has kept us in delusion.

Rudyard Kipling’s writing was racist, and he has been celebrated throughout history (he was one of the first authors whose names I had learned) for his writing. Let’s make one thing clear, was he really good at the art or was he just white (among brown people)? I have another example, read the following excerpt-

“You are all knowing, friends,

What sweetness is in Miss Pushpa.

I don’t mean only external sweetness

but internal sweetness.

Miss Pushpa is smiling and smiling

even for no reason but simply because

she is feeling.”

This is an excerpt from “Goodbye Party For Ms Pushpa” by a very celebrated Indian Jewish poet, Nissim Ezekiel. He legit wrote this, packaged it as satire (oh Indians cannot speak English like their colonizers hahaha funniest thing of all time) and got published. Not only published but is also considered a foundational figure in postcolonial India’s literary history, specifically for Indian Poetry in English. See the irony?

But wait, don’t these two writers appear the most in any prescribed reading in Indian education?

What I am trying to establish is, that creativity is a luxury. It is afforded by people who are rich and have connections, who have people to guide them and get their works published and appreciated.

As frustrating as it is, a creative person has to choose between preserving (suppressing) one’s art or selling it after butchering the whole thing to serve capitalist systems.