The Crisis of Creativity

“Those commercials were just so . . . creative!”

Americans celebrate the most climatic game of their favorite sport with big parties, lots of food and an expensive half-time show. And despite all of the hoopla about The Game, it is the commercials we end up talking about.

We love creativity. It inspires us. In many ways creativity is like beauty. It can show up in almost anything, it’s most noticeable when it’s absent or extremely impressive (the Super Bowl commercials, for example), and its value is judged by the beholder.

Just like we have a narrow cultural aesthetic for beauty (flip through different fashion magazines or drive through different upscale neighborhoods and you will see a similar version of beautiful), creativity is subjected to a threateningly narrow standard. The forces of the market create exclusivity and value sameness over uniqueness, receptivity over truth.

We see this effect in the way we only think of ideas as being creative after they have proven to be highly marketable or financially viable. Steve Jobs of Apple Computers is celebrated as a creative giant, and Survivor and The Blair Witch Project are thought of as truly brilliant. Our great examples of creativity lean more toward entrepreneurship than artistry.

It’s tempting to think our artists are alone in the struggle for creativity or to blame mass consumerism for this crisis. But one quickly discovers that the tension between creativity and finance has always been. We tend to think of Michelangelo as a pure artist working from his soul, but the circumstances he faced were surprisingly similar to the ones today’s artists face. He was an artist for hire. His first success, the statue of David, earned him more work, though as a painter, something outside his area of expertise at the time. His work in the chapel was entirely deadline-driven and constantly evaluated by the investor.

Every artist from Michelangelo to Shakespeare to Beck has had to worry about the same thing. Could they support themselves with their art? Will their art speak to an audience, draw crowds or fill stadiums? If not, their career as an artist will be over quickly.

However, things are different now, if only because the pressures of money and marketing are so much greater. Creativity and the arts are some of our most valuable commodities. Due to the power of conglomerates, creativity has more to do with developing a marketable product than ever before. Viacom, Inc., for example, owns MTV, CBS, Simon and Schuster, Paramount Pictures, UPN, VH1, Nickelodeon and Showtime, all outlets of artists’ creativity. And those artists must ultimately answer to Viacom, who is much more interested in protecting their interests than in aesthetics.

While creativity continues, much of it is squelched in this environment. Now is a good time to be asking: What is creativity? Is it important to preserve it?

The Bible is the only book that presumes to go all the way back to before time, before anything, and to tell a story starting with nothing becoming something. It assigns characters to our scientific theories and describes the creation with poetry, providing a context for an entire people and a stirring arc to the invention of time.

For this installment of onedeepwell, we’ve found artists who are attempting to create by listening to the voice inside of them despite the pressure of the cycle of production and consumption.

We have a review of a band, 16 Horsepower, whose musical style resists categories and whose lyrics are infused with a halting mix of passion and conviction. We have interviews with two fine artists who admit to having a need to create and have shared their thoughts and experiences about the creative process. We have an article that looks at how, according to the creation story, creativity is an essential aspect of being human.

We have also reviewed two recently published books, Marcus Borg’s Reading the Bible Again for the First Time and Anita Diamant’s best-selling novel The Red Tent.

I hope your creativity will be encouraged.