An Artist's Rebuke

"Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production" (352).

Mr. Smith, it appears as though you've never heard of a Blu-Ray, a DVD, or a CD.

If artists fall into the division of "unproductive" labor (or, as I could argue, 'used to fall into...'), how is it that Hollywood has created such a thriving business out of art and entertainment? Is this merely the morphing of society, a warping of values that Smith could never have seen coming? I guess my question here is if art as we know it has transformed itself (or has been transformed by certain economic forces) from a so-called "unproductive" labor into a capitalist enterprise unto itself, complete with its own economic rules and regulations. Or maybe it's still "unproductive", but it's just a hell of a lot more organized...and more financially motivated.

Sure, Smith's idea of "unproductive" lends itself more to things which have a sort of ephemeral existence; a song you hear someone singing on the sidewalk, the rant of a (usually fringe) political zealot on the subway, a stage actor in a Broadway show...these things fit more within the kind of "unproductive"-ness that Smith discusses. But there's something more in our society today that allows these kinds of artistic expressions to be sold as products. A 'Scarface' movie poster, Homer Simpson-voiced talking beer-bottle openers, video recordings of theatrical performances, etc. and so forth. There's a complexity now that I doubt Smith could have foreseen; an interplay between art and commerce ('commerce' here being something I define as a kind of generic, solely for-profit entertainment), so much so that the very debate of 'art vs. entertainment' is one that will enrage and/or annoy film aficionados across the nation (in addition to art critics, writers, musicians, etc).

In the end, my real talking point lies within film, as it is the art I am most familiar with, but this kind of evolution from "unproductive" to...well, whatever exactly it is one can classify the business of artistic entertainment as today anyway, this is something Smith does not seem to entirely anticipate (at least as far as I've read...I could be proven horribly wrong by some passage I've skimmed over in nonchalance). The fact that one day people would be sleeping for days on end on the sidewalk to pay money not just for technological breakthroughs or vital resources but for artistic expression...it stands to reason that art has changed, and so too has the business of art. In fact, that's exactly what has changed: art's transition to being a business. This is what has happened to the actor's declamations, the orator's harangues, and the musician's tunes, which, with apologies to Smith, still thrive so heartily in the digital age.