Halfway down this post is a .gif of jaguar-head teats shooting milk into a dude's mouth

Or: On the Antipodal Nature of Profit and Art

There are two irreconcilable forces at work in American filmmaking these days: the drive for profit and the desire to maintain artistic integrity. This is not to say this conflict is limited to the realm of film. In a capitalist society, the dichotomy between being lucrative and staying true to vision exists in all forms of artistic expression. It's simply a matter of labor. It takes less resources and fewer laborers to create a painting or a book than it does a movie or a game. To make larger productions, it takes a veritable army of specialized workers, working on specific tasks for weeks or months. As a result, it takes a lot of funds to see a film or game through to completion, to say nothing of distribution.

Thus there are only a few options for funding large-scale projects. The least common option is to fund everything out-of-pocket, but very few creators are wealthy enough to do such a thing. Sometimes the artist is fortunate to find a sort of "patronage" for their creation. Some artists may find a patronage stifling if their patron is conditional in support. But if the funding comes from a close friend or a fervent admirer, a patronage can offer the greatest creative flexibility of all funding options. Just look at Alexandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, funded largely by money from members of The Beatles, for an example of the freedoms this can allow.


Okay, maybe don't look at it.

The other options are corporate funding and government funding. Many Americans cringe at the thought of government funding thanks to the national myth of "big government" being harmful for everything. Really this idea was created by think tanks in the pockets of large corporations to lay the groundwork for massive deregulation and advancement of corporate interests. Critics of government grants might be quick to bring up The Triumph of the Will and other propaganda, but the modern artistic grant is far removed from the grandiose fascistic posturing of old. The truly fascist elements of society are not the artists who need funding to achieve their vision, but the politicians who slash grant funding out of fear and hatred of culture.

That leaves corporate funding, the vessel that most films, especially modern ones, go through. Coincidentally, most modern films aren't very good. This is because most of these films are created not out of love and the joy of crafting and sharing, but out of the cynical drive for ever greater profits, for a return on the expenditure of creating the film. Filmmaking is a collaborative effort but not necessarily a committee effort. Collaborations combine the passions of all artists involved to create something greater than its base parts. Committees scrap ideas that are considered to unfamiliar to turn a profit and leave nothing but soulless husks. Historically, the best pieces of art are the ones funded unconditionally.