What competitive forces? It's not like people have a choice in choosing whether they want a particular cap or gown and the people who contract the rental agreement (i.e. the university admin) are not the ones bearing the cost.
It's always seemed crazy to me when people talk about "the cause" of dyslexia. There are so many brain processes involved in reading, that any number of issues could be a cause of someone's dyslexia. It's like saying "the cause" of water drainage issues is beavers.
I am aware it's more famous. I've already seen it, but I'm not sure it's more disturbing as a photo (admittedly I am not going to look at the one described above to compare).
In this specific example, this art is mimicking the artwork on the fronts of the Lord of the Rings novels. The imitation itself is what makes it evocative and nostalgic. Often people want more of the same. So this is precisely the kind of art that is a commodity. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
A lot of things used to be hand crafted. The care and raising of horses was a respected profession, each horse has a different personality, but we use cars instead now. That doesn’t mean nobody raises horses, if anything the profession has become more prestigious and less of a commodity because the only people raising horses are people who really want to raise horses. Regardless, I’m going to ride my bike (if I can), or drive my car to the store when I’m getting groceries. I’m not thinking about the horse breeders every time I use my cargo bike to get groceries.
Similarly, we’re all free to go out and spend $8,000 on artisanal resin river flow tabletop carved from a single old growth tree. They’re beautiful and I’ve certainly dreamed about it. But a very nice wooden IKEA kitchen table built to exacting specifications and fit for purpose is a mere $899. What we lose when commoditizing these things we gain in access and affordability. This is a good thing, even if there are fewer people making these things.
One last example, since it was one of the biggest catalysts of the Industrial Revolution, while we still have people making couture outfits for specifically for Kim Kardashian, but it’s a good thing that we all have access to textiles that would have been considered impossibly high quality (literally, the thread density and uniformity of the fabrics are so high) 300 years ago.
In retrospect these things are all pretty great, in my opinion.
I think that "art" and "graphics on a book meant to sell merchandise to a fanbase" are different things and we have to start making that distinction more clear these days.
reply