“What is your major?”
This seemingly innocuous question is asked almost any time new people encounter each other. The idea being that if you know someone’s selected major, you can automatically make several assumptions about that individual.
When I was a freshman and was posed this question, I answered “Finance.”
This was always met with an impressed, “Ooooh, really?”
My interrogator was assuming that I am smart and will be fiscally successful when I am older.
However, somewhere between accrued interest and zero coupon bonds I realized that I was going crazy with a hunger to create things. Supply and demand graphs were not the kind of drawing that I had in mind.
Unfortunately, creativity is frowned upon in accounting (except at Arthur Andersen). So I packed up, left Grainger and hiked down to Humanities.
Now, when people inquire, “What is your major?” I happily respond, “Film.”
However, rather than that impressed recognition I earned as a business student, now I get a whole new breed of reply. Most people stare back at me and then, literally dripping with condescension, they say: “Oh ? what are you going to do with that?”
What they really mean is: “how are you going to make a living with such a stupid major?”
The assumption now exacted upon me is that I am not smart and I will spend my adult life standing on a corner begging for change in order to complete my obscure independent film.
Students who paint or write fiction for homework are sure to be scorned by those analyzing the GDP. However, the assumption that one of these tasks is “harder” than the other is ludicrous.
Here’s a shocking assertion: An arts degree does not signify a lack of intelligence, nor does it guarantee poverty.
According to the U.S. census bureau, there are 79,636 arts, entertainment and recreation companies in America. Together they employ 1,207,373 people.
Not that being an artist is easy. Finance and real estate companies employ five times as many people.
The problem is, in our current culture, those who study art are not considered artists. You can make as much “art” as you want, but until you sell it to somebody you are simply nobody. Respect comes in the form of recognition, which in turn is signified by revenue. Perhaps this is true in all industries, but none so much as the arts.
I won’t even mention all the pertinent services that arts majors perform such as creating the clothes you’re wearing, designing the building you’re sitting in and making the music that you listen to while walking there.
The U.S. motion picture box office reported revenue of $7.7 billion in 1999.
The Recording Industry Association of America earned $12.5 billion in 1995 from record sales.
The Association of American Publishers also reported revenue of $12 billion just from book sales.
The theaters on Broadway annually report profits of around $1 billion.
It is estimated that the big four networks combined, CBS, FOX, NBC and ABC, earn annual advertising revenue of $8 billion.
Altogether that’s 41.2 billion dollars that you are spending annually on the very artists whom you roll your eyes at.
The pursuit of arts does not equal a lack of intelligence or a life of destitution.
Stick that in your calculator and compute it.
