"Artists" are cringe

There is a lot of popular discourse around the decline of popular culture and how the mass audience is just plunging themselves into youtube/twitch streams/tiktok/bravobarf tv instead of enjoying the highbrow classics of literature, fine art, theater, film, etc. And while all that might be true, so much of this is coming from people who label themselves as "creatives" or "artists" who have anchored their identity to these words. Almost as if this is a separate ethnicity or tribe of people who exist on Earth, and nowadays, are oppressed across the rich world because they can't get financing for their black and white recreation of Midsummer's Night Dream in a modern high school setting with the lead who is a shameless self-insert of themselves.

While thousands of words have been spilled to castigate the general audience for their failure to appreciate the work of these "creatives" by failing to spend their hard-won discretionary spending dollars; not much is said of the mountains of shitty, self-insert art that exists for the consumption of a select few within close doors. Maybe these anointed "creatives" should create more stuff for the general audience to relate to and meet them where they are? Or maybe actually try to make a movie on contemporary life in a way that actually tries to take a stance or transmit a message?

One time while visiting India, I saw a single man painting public service murals across the entire city with select government approved messaging like "avoid drugs", "stop smoking", "respect parents", "be nice", and "respect your community". He was given no artistic guidelines, except to make the colors bright enough so that the inevitable dust wouldn't cover the messaging dictated by the state government and that he had to complete a certain amount of murals by a certain time. Apparently, he had no formal training and learned by just watching another guy do it, and even more shockingly, he could do close to 40-50 of these murals in a week. Each one had such expressive characters, with unique designs and color schemes to illustrate each public action slogan. The quality of the art was really masterful given he had no formal training and the output itself was praiseworthy. But even more surprisingly, he was really ambivalent about his talent and really just saw himself as doing a job, rather than being any sort of "artist" or "creative". To him, creating these murals was just a way to eke out a living and he was even hinting at wanting to do something else since he wasn't sure he was any good at his job anyways in the eyes of the state government.

Maybe that's the future of the arts in the modern day. Take away all this bullshit about "creative communities" and the "artist's way" and just make it another McJob that people do and the government pays for with some loose guidelines for social impact and let aesthetics emerge from natural form?