The middle class. Americans are talking about it a lot and for good reason: Many believe the middle class is in a state of crisis. Politicians debate not only how the middle class started to crumble but offer possible solutions that range from changing the tax codes to plans for making college education more affordable. Cable news stations, newspapers, bloggers, and other media pundits take it from there and talk about everything middle class–from mortgages to the minimum wage.
On the surface, then, it would seem that problems faced by the middle class are being thoroughly covered. Cultural journalist and author Scott Timberg would disagree.
Timberg considers (or considered) himself a member of the middle class, and his story is all too familiar. After working as a journalist for years, Timberg lost his job. He found other work, but took a substantial salary cut. Timberg and his family lost their home. As they were moving, his young son asked when they could be coming back.
A lot of people talk about the decline of print newspapers; it seems like fewer talk about what happens to the journalists, editors, photographers, and graphic designers who lose their jobs when papers cut back on staff, or even fold. Timberg notes: “Perhaps a fading creative class—experiencing real pain but less likely to end up in homeless shelters, at least so far, than the very poor—may not offer sufficient drama for novelists, songwriters, or photographers to document”.
Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class aims to draw attention to the dwindling creative subset of the middle class.
Timberg doesn’t focus solely on writers or newspapers in Culture Crash, but he does focus, as the title of the book indicates, on what he refers to as the creative class—writers, dancers, artists, musicians, architects, and graphic designers—but not ones that are household names. It’s not the Lady Gagas and James Pattersons of the world that Timberg is concerned with. It’s the poet, the art critic, the violinist, the people whose careers have been derailed by technology, outsourcing, and the most recent recession, not to mention a diminishing emphasis on the humanities in American universities and a diminishing support of the arts in American culture overall.
Timberg also looks at American society as a whole and wonders what it would (will?) be like without a creative middle class.
Timberg notes that many see the creative class as pot-smoking, absinthe-drinking, pampered dreamers. But he thinks we should see them as “working class people—a lot of them have second jobs. They’re highly trained—dancers, singers, actors—and they don’t make a lot of money. They make tremendous sacrifices for their work. They’re people who should have our respect, the same as a farmer. We don’t want a society without them.”
Timberg states that the decline of the creative class began long before the recession in 2008. He talks about the indie book stores vanishing, gobbled up by the big chains, and movie rental and record/CD stores closing because of online competition. Timberg shows how traditional creative neighborhoods became gentrified, and thus too expense for anyone other than the wealthy. And then there’s the “winner take all” attitude (think American Idol) and America’s blockbuster culture, both of which Timberg believes are also hurting middle-class creatives (and American culture in general). Often, Timberg thinks back to better times, times when major publishing companies would take a chance on an unknown writer, or the music industry would give a band time to develop.
Using a combination of stories, research, some amazingly scary statistics, and commentary, Timberg puts forth a convincing argument about the precarious financial position of many people in these creative fields. He also does a good job of connecting the dots—showing how, for example, the orchestra musician would supplement his or her income by working on a film score—until film scores starting being outsourced.
While Culture Crash makes a significant point and is a book that needs to be widely read, its scope could have been larger. Timberg spends a lot of time in the past, perhaps too much time. Technological advancements (including but not limited to the Internet), economic challenges, and changing societal norms have affected almost every industry in the world, including the creative fields. But the plain and simple truth is that no matter how much we might like to go back, moving forward can mean exploring new opportunities.
I’ll be the first to admit that my heart breaks a little each time an independent bookstore closes, and I do think some of the best novels are currently being published by independent presses and will never find a spot on The New York Times Best Seller List (and therefore will never be discounted at Barnes and Noble). I miss wandering around the video store looking for a movie to rent. That said, even though there have been losses, there also have been gains. Some gains, such as beautiful pieces of multimedia journalism, offer opportunities both in terms of paid employment and educational value. Others, like webcomics and Twine, are giving people different ways to tell stories–although how to monetize such creativity remains a challenge.
The strongest chapter in the book is “The End of Print”, primarily because it draws so heavily on Timberg’s own experiences instead of relying on interviews and other studies. In fact, that might be the primarily problem with Culture Crash. Timberg has an important point to make, but there’s something almost overly familiar about it. After all, things such as the decline of American arts culture, the demise of print journalism, and the changing face of the music industry have already been well documented. Culture Crash adds a little bit more to the already existing conversations.