Generation Exploiter

My musician friends have all been sharing this Globe and Mail article, written by Elizabeth Renzetti, about the problem facing musicians, writers, and most other culture workers right now: “Namely, that everyone wants to listen, and no one wants to pay.”* She focuses on a lecture given by Iggy Pop (who was nearly wearing a shirt!) and suggests that corporations have long exploited musicians, but this generation has basically taken over the role of exploiter.

This is an interesting argument I hear made often about the file sharing generation- taking over an exploitative role in the business of art.** I grew up when “the music industry” was criticized by fans because they paid musicians only a few dollars per album sold. (This was the essay everyone shared then) But, now, great numbers of young people have effectively cut out that industry to embrace another basically corporate model in which musicians are either paid a few cents for every album sold, or paid nothing at all. Young people still have a strong emotional connection to “their” music, so it’s not as if they have a grudge against musicians or the product they produce. And, at this point, the reality of online music distribution is widely known.

And yet, is it possible that the “digital generation” has, in the main, embraced economic exploitation as their preferred way of doing things?

What a strange and fascinating thought, especially when one still hears young people complain about being regularly underpaid at jobs, or about the evils of Wal-Mart or Wall Street. The first thing that came to mind was the famous lines at the end of Jean Renoir’s great movie The Rules of the Game:

“Today everybody lies. Pharmaceutical fliers, governments, the radio, the movies, the newspapers. So why shouldn’t simple people lie as well?”

Perhaps this generation has accepted that someone has to be ripped off in every economic exchange, so they’d prefer to be in on the con.

Now, it could be argued that they simply believe that things like writing, music, art, and journalism have little intrinsic value. Renzetti quotes Tim Krieder, who writes: “money is also how our culture defines value, and being told that what you do is of no ($0.00) value to the society you live in is, frankly, demoralizing.” And certainly the culture has, time and again, chosen the option in which the artist or musician does not get paid or gets paid far, far below minimum wage over the one in which they get paid fairly. Many people see music as being a fun hobby, but not a real job. As expression instead of labor. “The market has spoken” and increasingly deems art, literature, music, and journalism as being nearly worthless. On the other hand, as Renzetti points out in her article, it’s not as if this generation has turned away from music and art- sure, they don’t read books, but all other forms of art they still deem to be valuable in their own lives. They still want it. In fact, in many cases, they consume more of those sorts of products than any other. However, like sex, they seem to see it as somehow shameful to pay people to do that work for them.

However, maybe it’s overly optimistic to think that this generation is only willing to exploit writers, artists, and journalists just because those are the workers that can currently be exploited with an Internet connection. If it was possible to download furniture, food, or clothes for free and cut out the expense of paying people to do that labor, it’s hard to imagine that a generation that accepted this sort of exploitation a long time ago would suddenly balk. And note that many of them have long been alright with buying clothes that were produced under somewhat questionable conditions. At least with sweatshops, though, one can argue that it’s better than the alternative.

So, maybe they would balk… That’s the great irony, isn’t it? Young people can quote you chapter and verse the case against Wal-Mart and how it exploits its minimum wage workers. And they know all about that because they downloaded an anti-Wal-Mart documentary from a file sharing site last week.

*{Not to say that they, or I, bought that issue of the newspaper!}

** {Admittedly, using the word “exploitative” is a bit provocative; however, as Renzetti and Pop use words like “rip off” “stealing” and people being “estranged… from their morals” it seems a fair inference of their argument. The thought experiment here is just to ask, if they’re right and this generation has chosen to exploit artists, what does that say?}

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