The Arts Are Suffering From A Lack Of Meritocracy

When I was a young artist, I could tell when someone was giving me an opportunity just because I was a girl. Whether it was a gig opportunity, an interview, or a compliment, it mattered to me that my musicianship and my songs were gaining respect and admiration not because of my gender but because of their own merit. It felt patronizing to be seen as needing encouragement or validation just because I was a minority in my chosen medium when I felt that my guitar playing and songwriting spoke for themselves. Like anyone else, I put in hours and hours of practice, felt I had endless creativity and ability to musically innovate, and more than that, I wrote from the heart. 

Funnily enough, it soon became passé to just be a girl in music anyway. Any special consideration I’d been getting for not being a man was soon swallowed up by the fact that I was heterosexual and of European descent. As I watched myself get passed over for other artists who fit the identity categories that record labels, blogs, and fans now wanted to check off their lists, the extent to which the arts were drowning in politics dawned on me. 

While someone’s identity, complex and deep as that concept is, certainly can play into their art, that should not be the stance from which we assess its value. When we do that, we are doing a disservice to both the art and the artist who, if they truly are an artist, wants you to see what they’re making — what they’re saying — rather than the color of their skin, their gender, their pronouns, or whatever the latest identity trend might be at the time. 

The result of this misplaced focus, especially by the critic and elite classes, is that as a public we are no longer seeing the best art. Instead, all of the platforms that once were seeking and exposing the best, the freshest, the most inspiring and the most beautiful art are now looking for a face that looks like this but not that, or a name and introduction that sound a certain way. This is as heartbreaking as it is boring.

We Should Cherish Diversity in Art

Before you think otherwise, let me say that I do believe we absolutely should cherish diversity in art. Many of my favorite films are from other countries because they don’t follow the same predictable polish of Hollywood and because they show me cultures and philosophies I might not have otherwise experienced. I’ve studied Indonesian gamelan, African drumming, Balkan folk music, and the Indian tala system, alongside European and American music. I value differences in perspective, whether it’s between works of art by men and women, or works of art from different parts of the globe. All of that is exciting, inspiring, and richly rewarding to explore and experience. I even think about my own unique perspective as a woman, as a mother, and as a second generation American granddaughter of war-refugees and how that plays into my own songwriting. 

However, there is a difference between honoring and enjoying the identities that make different forms of artistic expression unique, and elevating one or two facts about the art or artist to the highest level in our judgement of artistic merit. When we do that, we’re suggesting that art exists to glorify the ego, rather than to lift our gaze to higher things like beauty, love, truth, and the human experience. What matters much, much more than a simplistic statement of an artist’s identity are things like their artistic intention, the beauty of their work, their imagination on display, and the mark that their art can leave on your soul. 

The Infectious Spread of Anti-Meritocracy

Art has in many ways always attracted people who are a little different or even totally out-there. To be creative is to be high in the personality trait openness, which means you’re more likely to be interested in things like eccentric fashion, experimental ideas and alternative lifestyles. While in the past we still valued what artists — quirky as they may have been — made more than the fact that they fit into this or that category as people, that’s not the case any longer.

The openness of artists, combined with their ache for recognition and an audience, plus the fact that wherever artists are so also will be the wannabes and copycats who create what we call the “scene,” left the arts as a whole totally vulnerable to the ideology of identity politics. Curious and genuine artists explored and adopted its tenets, while others jumped through its hoops to gain opportunities, acceptance, and fame, and still other, more superficial players took on its garb to fit in and elevate themselves beyond their own talents. 

Just as artists dove into identity politics, so too did their fans, the press, the critics, and the tastemakers who began to prioritize identity over merit. The most charitable view is that they truly wanted to lend visibility to what they saw as marginalized voices. Unfortunately, while it may seem compassionate to intentionally give attention and a platform to someone you think might otherwise go overlooked, in reality, worrying about the race, gender, or sexuality of an artist above and beyond their work harms the integrity of the artist and audience relationship. Instead, it operates as moral validation and social currency for the critic, which has proven to be an all-too-appealing offer for many of them.

The State of Our Arts

This lack of meritocracy is unfortunately noticeable in every medium. Take film, for example. This year’s Oscar’s include nominations in 13 different categories for the movie Emilia Peréz, a movie about a Mexican cartel boss seeking gender transition surgery, starring a transgender actor. This film currently has a score of just 5.6 out of 10 on IMDB, 2.3 out of 5 stars on Google reviews, and while it has 73% on Rotten Tomatoes for critic views, the Rotten Tomatoes audience gives it just 17%. Despite these dismal numbers, Emilia Peréz is up for as many nominations as Gone With The Wind and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring. 

Interestingly enough, the Academy Awards excitement over Emilia Peréz is now fading. The film’s transgender star, Karla Sofía Gascón, has been removed from consideration for “best actress” due to past offensive comments about topics like George Floyd and Islam. Not only does this illustrate how identity politics can quickly fold in on itself, but it also suggests that when you focus on someone’s superficial identity rather than on what they do and say, you might be ignoring everything that actually matters.

This ideology has also affected the state of our music on every level, whether it’s pop, rock, or classical. In the classical music realm, for example, we can see the effect of anti-meritocracy in the orchestral audition process. In the 1970’s, orchestras began to use “blind auditions” to eliminate any race or gender bias. With a screen between the player and the review panel, each musician could be sure the judges reviewed their skill and musicality rather than their identity. However, in 2020 some orchestras began to feel that while blind auditions provided equality to applicants, they weren’t resulting in equity — that is, representation of each race or gender in the percentage to which they make up the community. In order to increase the quantity of certain minorities in professional orchestras, some have been having separate auditions for black and Latino applicants who are then allowed to skip over levels of competition to compete against just a few others in blind auditions, and some orchestras have been getting rid of blind auditions entirely, specifically in order to judge applicants by their race and gender rather than by their performance alone.

Meanwhile, there’s been a trend among some white male artists in the last ten or so years: use a non-Western pen name to gain recognition and awards. This worked for the poet Michael Derick Hudson, who used the pen name Yi-Fen Chou to get his poem accepted into the Best American Poetry Anthology in 2015. He had previously had the same poem rejected 40 times under his own name. Similarly, New York composer Larry Clark used the pen-name Keiko Yamada to acquire grants and to get compositions published, and Marvel’s editor-in-chief C.B. Cebulski used the pen name Akira Yoshida for his comics. While these fraudulent behaviors might not be admirable, they do prove that culturally we have been elevating and rewarding something other than merit, value, or artistic quality.

What We Might Be Missing

While we can muse about the art we might be experiencing if the art world at large was still meritocratic, it can be hard to tell what exactly we’re missing when we prioritize things other than artistic quality simply because we aren’t actually seeing or hearing it. I have to imagine, though, that there’s a lot of worthwhile, innovative, and heartfelt art that is currently slipping through the cracks unseen. It’s still being made, because true artists create whether they have an audience or not, but the lack of engagement from the tastemakers is stifling any chance it might have had to find our eyes and ears. 

Lately I’ve found myself feeling nostalgia for the disappearing art form: bands. While there are other factors that play into the diminishing crop of new bands each year, like the fact that the ability to record at home has inspired many artists who would have in the past formed bands decide to create solo music instead, or the fact that so much music now uses electronic instruments rather than real instruments played by real people, I also think there’s another reason. Historically, rock bands have largely been made up of young straight men who practice endlessly to be good enough at what they do to attract the girls and because they just seem to like rocking out. I can only wonder what sorts of bands we’d have right now if that sort of lineup was still judged for the quality of its songs rather than the diversity, or lack thereof, of its members.

A Change is Coming

The narrative that identity is king has perhaps begun, at least on grassroots levels, to unravel. People seem to have gotten bored, like I have, with hearing about an artist’s race or gender identity before they even experience their art, and artists are getting tired of their ethnicity or sexuality being the focus of any conversation about their work. While the elite class and the critics may still be in fantasy identity land, there’s hope that the rest of us can snap out of this fever dream. Let’s face it, if corporate America, Hollywood, and the media are all on board with identity politics, the true artists have long since moved on to something else. With more and more people reconsidering the importance of beauty, whether it’s in our architecture, our literature, our fashion, or our film, we may be on the edge of a meritocratic artistic renaissance.

If you want to be a part of the renaissance, there are a few things you can do. If you’re an artist, keep making genuine, beautiful, and creative work, no matter what. If you’re an aspiring critic, review and share lesser-seen but more inspiring works. For everyone, dig a little deeper to find the art that the press and critics aren’t talking about. Use your own innate sense of beauty and wonder to gauge the value of art, rather than relying on the opinions of others. And, if you have an opportunity, create new and meaningful platforms to critique, promote, and review different forms of art. With any luck, we'll soon be surrounded by beautiful creative works of the human imagination once more.