When does a piece of art cross from passion into business? That is a question that many artists ask themselves at some point during their lives. When starting to pursue their passion they create works that have meaning, at least to themselves, and have a message that they want to convey. Those that start to be successful begin to question why they started doing what they do. They begin making more money, and soon the money starts to drive their work. This is not the case for all artists, many will refuse to create and take part in work that goes against their personal morals.
Artists can always produce successful work with social and political value. For example, the purpose of the The Muppets Take Manhattan is to entertain children, yet throughout the movie there are constant lessons to be learned. We see the troubles that Kermit faces in trying to get his play on Broadway, and we learn of the concept of the American Dream and making it big. The messages can be hidden in a creative way so that the audience will not necessarily make the connection. In this way they will not think that they are, in fact, watching something that is politically or socially based and will still allow the work to become commercially successful.
When is “selling out” selling out? When you no longer create what speaks to you, and only to you, you sell yourself out. When artists start to create things that they have seen are popular and will make them successful and wealthy they sell themselves out. All their dignity is thrown away when they stop producing art that they are passionate about. It is often hard to distinguish when this happens. Artists themselves get confused as to what the purpose is behind what they make and if it is solely their own views that are driving them. The problem is that the art that often has the most political and social value is not necessarily the most popular. Therefore, it may not prove to be the most successful, at least in financial terms. By those that value certain political ideas and movements these works will be very successful, but pop culture is very peculiar in how it chooses what is deemed as popular.
The Producers is one of the most blatant examples of selling out. Mr. Bialystock focuses his entire pursuits in trying to gain money while producing his plays. Money consumes him so much that he decides to create a flop and keep all the money that he would raise for it. He does not care about the meaning or idea that his play will give to the public. This is the case for much of the art that is commercially successful because making profits drives a huge portion of our society; we have seen this throughout the semester in class, where greed was shown to be one of the biggest motivators for many characters in the movies we watched. What has to be considered, though, is that although the people in the movies we have seen may have had corrupt and blurry morals, the artists that created them did not; they had very specific messages to convey about society and their movies all became successful.
