"In some cases, market and technology changes simply speed up an occupation's decline once it goes out of fashion, Shatkin says. Stage performers -- a category that includes magicians, jugglers, clowns and dancers -- suffered a steep five-year decline of 61%. Increased interest in movies and home entertainment technologies, including video games, he says, has decreased the demand for live performances."
Oh no's no more 6 flag jobs!
80's 90's and hiccuping into the next decade most of the western world was flush with "living beyond our means" easy credit and the backbone mirage of ever increasing property values to underwrite the blindly optimistic tinkerbell rationally unsustainable bollocks as way of life.
Middle class is not dead but worse, bleeding out and deliriously delusional with short bursts of undirected/misdirected rage.
Disposable income is redundant, fear stalks the suburbs, all those comforting live stage jobs like renn faires are doomed.
Due to the fact that round 07/08 the indicator that used to be published monthly (m1/m2/m3- fucked if I can remember) anyway a data point that investors used that publicized how much American currency had been printed that month . Well that was withdrawn and nobody knows how much currency's been flushed into the system since then but the estimates are nightmarish. That is stealth inflation held at bay by nothing more than an ever increasing flush and confidence and the fact that most of the world still uses greenbacks as the defacto dosh with which to purchase petroleum .
This trains been roaring towards the washed out bridge for a few years now. The things I've outlined are not opinions. They are irrefutable factors. But thank god for tv. Look at all the neat stuff I could buy if I wasn't unemployed and now that I am look at all the programs I can watch that follow people who still have jobs. I can live vicariously through them. Fishermen and tow truck drivers and hock shop owners and gold prospectors and cops. Notice how some of these televised jobs deal with recycling other peoples shit that they've stored before going broke. Bit of a clue huh?
Anyway. Back to us performers. Two types typically. Ones job is to preserve the status quo. Keep people comfortable. The renn faires the 6 flags the amusement parks. Change is happening so fast there's little status quo left to preserve. Surplice to requirements as the concept of "austerity" takes a big bite out of the flabby middle class ass.
The other type of performer doesn't do 'multi-talent' is not reliant on any one market but has some unique appeal. Less of the best and more of the only.
Much harder to do and thus far fewer are qualified. Theres no market for followers when no ones been defined as leading.
The "wow" that used to be almost entirely marketing driven with only the need for a polished but pedestrian show to punctuate the whole commercial feel good circle jerk that if you look at the corporate market you see the naked emperor clothed in a shiny website typically. These are already withering, most of the promo is just the ra ra money marinating years thats heart stopped beating round 05 but the patients not brain dead quite yet.
Anyway I'm ranting obviously but yeah corporate is still viable but the markets shrunk. The upper middle class is still doing the cruise ship thang but that markets just one gas- hike from oblivion.
The future? Hell I don't know. Performing for tramps under bridges for moldy bread? Producing your own web-based eccentricity to exploit the long tail?
The days of disposable middle class income are finished. Street festivals are like a civic marketing ploy, they will be the last to go as councils like corps give one last convulsive effort to extend the business as usual fallacy.
Clowns and humor are my areas of study.
Clowns are used as a social lubricant in times of change. They make change digestible.
Think Chaplin and keystones and Keaton . They existed in those generations that existed in the transition from horse drawn buggies to a full on mechanical age with cars and trains and velocity suddenly increasing for the Everyman.
And what was their subject matter generally? Velocity, running on foot away from chasing cars, everything deliberately speeded up, trains, lots of physical peril involving forces and velocity. And they survived these challenges and made us laugh. They helped a generation digest change.
As performers, clowns, variety performers, whatever. Those who can distract with beauty and those who first define a change and make it at least subtexturally obvious and digestible . Will find work. More likely probably invent their own new markets.
But the other type. The type who merely reinforces a status quo. Whose mantra might as well be 'rubber chicken rubber chicken rubber chicken'
Well for the next convulsive wee while they're fucked.
That actually cheered me up. I am without a doubt one sick fuck.
Also... There are some strange words in the above that make no sense.
Let me explain.
My ex wife ran over my computer a month ago the last time we had the misfortune of meeting. She didn't mean to. Just as I never set out to make her life a panic attack ridden misery. Shit just happens.
So anyway she ran over my computer entirely innocently and I am left with an itouch that randomly inserts fucking gibberish in place of words I use but sometimes perhaps misspell .
And the incy bincy eeny beany screen does not scroll in any way when I go to edit after my usual method of posting then correcting my howlers.
So fuck it, you'll just have to make do as I do.
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