A number of recently encountered statements have forced us to take a hard look at the question of how much we should pay for entertainment.
Take David Comissiong’s statement in the SUNDAY SUN on July 24:“While good entertainment is a thing of value . . . my personal ranking of human needs does not place “entertainment” so high on the list as to justify spending $300 or $500 on a single entertainment event.
“But what I would readily spend $300 or $500 on is a ticket to a concert that features an ‘artist’ – as opposed to an ‘entertainer’ – who is going to nourish my consciousness, help me to clarify important social and cultural issues, and generally inspire me.”
(A kind of development of what he had said on July 26, 2010: “We can’t build a nation simply around the culture of Kadooment and frivolity and entertainment.”)
Then Tuesday’s DAILY NATION reported a post-Party Monarch complaint: “Lil Rick called for an increase in the prizes, adding that ‘if you don’t win, you lose money’.”
And we want to throw in two statements made by tennis player Andre Agassi. In one, he said that the amount of money paid to sportsmen – especially in comparison with the criticalness of what others do – was obscene.
In the other, responding to fellow player Yevgeny Kafelnikov’s charge that the prize money in tennis was too low, he retorted, “He should take his prize money . . . and go buy some perspective.”
Now, Lil Rick’s calculation that to put on a good show a Party Monarch artiste may spend $20 000 suggests that that figure should be the lowest payout for each participating artiste.
Is that obscene?
Looking at entertainment in its broader context, we are inclined to say we need to get some perspective.
Although we know that entertainers and sportsmen are often paid what the market can afford, we need at least to contemplate the fact that they often receive more than what their product is really worth to the people – and much more than others who “nourish” (to use Comissiong’s word) the country today and for years and years down the road.
For who would dare argue that what an artiste does is more mission critical than what, say, a nurse, a policeman, a teacher does? Or, in the arts field, who would ever think that the value – to our today and tomorrow – of any of our artistes is equal to that of an artist like Kamau Brathwaite? But the market damns these others.
This is not to trash the contribution of artistes/entertainers. But especially because in these matters our Government (read taxpayers’ money) is often the operationalizer, we are just putting things into – here’s that word again – perspective.
And that leads to the conclusion that we need to think about how we can properly reward those more critical others. Where is the big prize money for poets, short story writers, novelists, playwrights, sculptors, watercolour/charcoal/pencil artists?
Also, after having been handsomely facilitated by taxpayers’ money, don’t our artistes need to be noticeably charitable? We scarcely, if ever, hear of them setting up foundations for good causes or making any largish donations.
At least Agassi – he of the “obscene” salary, which was not handsomely facilitated by taxpayers’ money – does his bit, opening a preparatory academy for at-risk children and setting up a charitable foundation that raises dozens of millions for those kinds of kids, among many other philanthropic deeds.
All the same, we recognize that this is a complex issue and we are not “bull-rushing” it. But there’s no doubt that we need perspective.
