The Post-Talent Age

On Saturday night around 2:30 I left a bar in Park Slope and since I didn't want to fall asleep during the potentially long subway ride ahead of me, I grabbed a paper from the rack near the door of the bar. It turned out to be a Village Voice from mid-December. Here I thought they spontaneously combusted after about 8 days, and the good folks in Brooklyn manage to keep them circulating for over a month. God bless. So I managed to wade into an article about a writer complaining about blogs. All too appropriately, this blogger will say the article itself wasn't very good, but that there were some wonderful quotes way at the end that nicely verbalize some of my own thoughts:

1. "The state of publishing is such that you can get all these great things, but people don't talk about the work. They talk about you. There used to be serious critics and an audience. . . . Now, the audience is also in the critic business."
2. "The Internet's returned us all to these sort of 19th century critics who are trying to judge us by our voice, who are trying to hear the way our soul comes through."

And now the big ones:

3. "We have created a sort of post-talent age."
4. "It's commercial realism as opposed to intellectual realism."

I'm not so much interested or qualified to analyze how this all specifically relates to publishing--that's just the medium the article concerned itself with--but I think it does a great job generally describing the current state of artistic creation, and the public's reception of it.
The internet lately has allowed anyone to presume himself an expert on anything. Look at me, even. What do I know about film? I took one class in college about it, but other than that my only qualifications are that I'm very interested in film and therefore that I pay close attention to certain aspects of it. But I could be a hack. Anybody writing or critiquing anything online could be a hack. And that's why if you're responsible you must question the writer/reviewer, as well as his reviews. Since this type of ad hominem argumentation necessarily can't lead to any greater insight, what we're left with is simple questions and simpler answers: a dead-end for many intellectual pursuits.
And when your intellectual pursuits lead to a dead-end, you might just easily choose to quit trying. You might aim lower, you might leave the vacuum open for lesser lights. This is how I view the comment about this being a "post-talent age."
I used to spend time thinking about the idea of post-modernism as it applies to all fields of art. I was and still am fascinated by the idea of somehow transcending time or context, or by representing something just a bit further, if you'll allow me a sloppy bit of metaphysics. I used to wonder where could anyone ever go after post-modernism? Was "post-modern" simply a catch-all to describe everything happening now? And therefore, does that mean that artistically we'd arrived at a bleak point with no room to continue to grow, or does it mean that we'd managed to rise above labels and consequently to have limitless possibilities?
Enterprising artists (remember I'm talking about all fields of art here, not just painters or sculptors or whatever your mental image of an artist defaults to) pushed the envelope so much as to distract people from what was beautiful or talented and of course brought into question just what those things were. This was all very interesting, but I think it may have ominously succeeded in removing talent from the equation.
If reality TV "stars" can be more popular than any infinite amount of fine actors, then what good is acting?
If pop stars can be more or less created and sold as images, and if people who already have an image but no musical talent can find success as "musicians," then what's the point in refining a person's musical craft?
If a writer can produce something great, only to have it ignored by the media and attacked and undermined by a faceless internet presence, while all it would take is the opinion of one person (Oprah) to guarantee success, then why strive toward something bigger and better?
If a truly innovative filmmaker toils in obscurity and can't find funding, but a 15 year old can become famous for a 3:00 YouTube clip, then why focus your energy on anything more than what will have mass appeal?

I think it's great that people can now use the internet to express themselves, and that it gives a voice to just about anyone who wants one, but there are consequences.
Say you are in a room that has three microphones with 100 people, and five of those people are unquestioned geniuses. In the past, just a few of those 100 people would decide by some process who to allow to speak (assuming of course that the goal is for the smartest person to have the mic), but those few people would be largely successful in discovering those smart people. Let's say that command of the three mics would rotate amongst a group of 7-8 people, with 4 of those geniuses being accounted for, while one remains in the shadows. What you'd have is little difficulty in hearing the speakers (since there are only 3 mics to talk over each other), and relatively good representation of intelligence. Over time, those 4 geniuses would command people's attention better than the 3-4 hacks who slipped into the group of speakers but some failing on the part of the deciders.
Now let's imagine that you're in the same room with the same 100 people and five geniuses, only this time there are 50 very-slightly-quieter microphones than the original three, plus the original three. And assume that the group who decide who to let speak isn't 100% concerned with finding the smartest people. What you'd end up with is 53 people talking at once, and an almost random allocation of intelligence handling those microphones.
That might be an unnecessarily tedious analogy, but it's generally close to where we are now. It's almost as if no one knows who's worth a damn anymore. Worse, it's not entirely certain whether or not anyone cares who's worth a damn. This is where the final quote from above seems most relevant: "It's commercial realism as opposed to intellectual realism."
If you reread those four quotes at the top, maybe you will agree with me that the first two represent an advance in our culture, while the last two most definitely represent a collapse. Whether or not the two sets of quotes can exist as mutually exclusive is a bigger debate than I'm ready to tackle here. In fact, how society might go about fostering an environment that allows for #1 and 2, while keeping #3 and 4 to a minimum would be one of the more interesting artistic arguments to follow in our contemporary world. Personally, I could live without #1 and 2 if it meant the elimination of #3 and 4, though you have to admit the latter present us with some extremely interesting if unsavory scenarios.