10-09-2011, 03:40 PM
On the other hand, is not the market created by what's available? We buy clothes according to "fashion", which is really just another word for "this is what the designers have decided you want this year" -- and the current obsession with reality tv/self help gurus/pretending you don't deserve to be on The Biggest Loser while you eat your five buckets of KFC/celebrity babies is really only based on the fact that there's nothing else of quality presenting itself. Or rather, being presented by the people who control the market. I won't speculate on possible political/social reasons for dumbing down audiences/consumers; suffice to say they exist, and one doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see how keeping the public ill-informed with simplistic tastes benefits certain elements of society.
I know, largely from anecdotal evidence but there's a hell of a lot of it out there, that there remains a largely under-serviced market of people who do have sophisticated -- or not utterly primitive -- tastes, who do like to be challenged by what they consume, and who don't fit into the categories of pompous aristocrat or academic but who nonetheless wish to be entertained by more "cultural" pursuits. What I don't know is how to service that market, because if I did I wouldn't be moaning about how little money one can make out of poetry
I know, largely from anecdotal evidence but there's a hell of a lot of it out there, that there remains a largely under-serviced market of people who do have sophisticated -- or not utterly primitive -- tastes, who do like to be challenged by what they consume, and who don't fit into the categories of pompous aristocrat or academic but who nonetheless wish to be entertained by more "cultural" pursuits. What I don't know is how to service that market, because if I did I wouldn't be moaning about how little money one can make out of poetry
It could be worse