Burn It Down, Generative A.I., and Richard Karinsky: Starving Artists and Other Fibs
On capitalism, Hollywood, AI, and the myth of the starving artist.
I am in the throes of sketching complex relationships diagrams, crafting the ethos of two-to-three cults, and plotting six-to-seven grand romances for a singular chaos novel entitled Harlequinade!
Harlequinade is intended as a prequel (& stealth sequel) of my previous novel, Dionysus in Silk. DiS, if you didn’t bother clicking the link (this is ok; I love to talk) centers around Hollyweird, the nature of Celebrity, and hot, hot gossip.
As a lover of celebrity blinds (true and false—so long as the latter is funny), I must regretfully inform you that the ides of preparation involve digesting a litany of gossip forum speculation and shitty rags like the Daily Mail to contextualize the setting. That’s what research looks like right now.
Also, it is this book:
Entertainment reporter and critic Maureen Ryan delivers page after page of devastating stories about the Hollywood Machine chewing and devouring low-rung, self-made-aspiring stars and auteurs without second thought. My brow has a permanent notch from the near-constant stress I felt turning the pages. “Oh my god,” I said, “people work like this? People suffer for a chance at creating art?”
A lightbulb flickered above my head.
The romanticizing of suffering for one’s art has been a prevalent instinct humankind has never really been able to shake. It plays into the sunken-cost fallacy: the suffering must be worth it, otherwise, what the hell has it all been for?
Richard Karinsky, you will always be famous (in my heart)
I recently fell in love with the ‘90s sitcom, Caroline in the City—a three-season series about cartoonist Caroline Duffy living in New York, working on her weekly strip, and navigating a fraught love-life and a will-they-won’t-they dynamic with her colorist, Richard Karinsky.
I was instantly fixated with Richard—the pinnacle starving artist living in a rundown apartment on the muggable side of the city, filled with self-important pretension over his time in art school and paintings reminiscent of the womb that suggest a complicated relationship with his mother. And, of course, my gaydar pinged for his actor (Malcolm Gets) even though I never doubted his secret love for Caroline was anything but genuine. That strangled gasp of “Caroline!” when he believes she’s left her fiancé for him? My mind plays it on a loop.
Catty, quick-witted, and an absolute fucking mess, Richard Karinsky easily entered my Top Favorite Fictional Dudes list nearly thirty years late.
Textually, Richard yearns for recognition of his talent—or just plain recognition. It causes him to look down his down at the work he does for Caroline, and to grasp at anything that lends him a sense of legitimacy. Sure, Salvador Dali found his work pedestrian and boring, but oh my god, Dali wrote his name. His work—with titles such as “Cavalcade of Death”—is simply beyond the unwashed minds who pop into the restroom of a country club for a quick powder.
Richard dabbles in self-sabotage; he ruins a life-changing gallery opportunity by “coming out” as straight because he has simply too much integrity to co-opt a struggle he doesn’t endure. Similarly, he fakes his death to sell his works at a mark-up only for that scheme, too, to fail. Another story revolves around a local politician buying his art out from under his nose after Richard refuses to sell due to a difference in politics (this is so valid of him).
In another episode, Richard is selected to paint a mural in a seedy neighborhood, and while the locals want him to just leave them be, Richard returns time and time again to persuade them to just let him do the art, please. He brings his television as a peace offering, and when this doesn’t work, he finally makes a breakthrough by offering to incorporate their unique perspectives into the mural.
Then he paints the mural on the wrong building. Which is set to be demolished the day it’s unveiled. Classic.
Richard wants nothing more than to create for creation’s sake—an ideologically pure take on the artistic endeavor. And yet, there is an underpinning of starving oneself of comfort and means to maintain that purity. Art for the “right reason” or “not selling out,” as some see it divorces oneself from the cogs of capitalism—as if any of us living in America are allowed to escape it fully rather than finding brief respites.
Besides, acclaim doesn’t necessarily have a monetary price, does it? That’s why a disproportionate amount of thick-walleted stiffs believe that they can pay them in “exposure.”
In a meta sense, Richard Karinsky never achieved the acclaim for which he yearned. Who else in the year 2024 is thinking about him, aside from the people catching reruns on Pluto TV or, perhaps, his actor? He’s far from the only example of the archetype that’s been around since humans have creatively endeavored.
Everyone starts at the bottom rung; I just have to work my way up the ladder.
Hazing is part of the culture, and I’m the newbie.
My meager belongings are proof that I am spiritually in-tuned with my work, not my possessions.
Discomfort is the seed of greatness.
I ache, therefore I am doing something right.
Right. Okay. So, what happens when our suffering yields no fruit?
The apples are rotting on the moss
In Burn It Down, Ryan relays stories of hostile work environments, of struggling to pay rent with meager-to-nonexistent paychecks, of mental health bottoming out, of people walking away altogether. She systematically busts the myth of “necessary monsters”—the tortured genius archetype.
It’s human nature to rationalize pain in lieu of feeling it. It’s a coping mechanism innate within many of us. Coupled with bystander apathy, eyes are averted to avoid dealing with the complicated bits, with your own complicity.
While writing this, the Investigation Discovery documentary, Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV has swept the internet with thinkpieces and furied Reddit discussion. More so than disgust I feel towards the perpetrators—whose crimes easily fall on the dark parts of the morality grayscale—I’m filled with anger for the adults unwilling to make waves, who explained away odd behaviors of monsters like Brian Peck and Dan Schneider.
I can sympathize with the fear of stirring the volatile pot of “set culture” and losing one’s job—especially when you’re at the level of “the target” for the boss’s blame and right-arm throw. It’s survival instinct overriding whatever sense of justice native to your form. Freezing and fawning tend to overrule the fight or flight response in these situations; justifications are made to avoid collapsing the delicate ecosystem we’ve all just decided is okay to exist.
Is art worth that?
Cognitive dissonance is defined by Oxford as—
We should pay artists fairly. We should pay writers more. We should stop using AI to replace art with soulless facsimiles.
The 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike—while in some regards a success—failed to crack down on the threat of AI. TCL is dropping a terrible AI-generated movie, Instagram is awash with generative puppets that would look better in the hands of real puppeteers, and TikTok has been inundated with r/AITA read by bots over Subway Surfer footage since the beginning. Things will get worse. Rather than replacing menial jobs, Silicon Valley tech bros endeavor to ruin the arts by “putting the power” of creation in the hands of the very, very lazy—read: those uninterested in devoting time and effort to honing a craft.
God, just make a damn puppet, would you?
So what are we left with? The arts space is overrun with creatively bankrupt people typing prompts into programs that leech and steal from existing art; writers aren’t paid fairly; we are being fed a constant stream of content that’s ruining our ability to think critically; starving artists are starving because capitalism is working as intended.
I can’t blame artists for turning to romanticization—it’s a coping mechanism and a feature of being a creative. “Our struggle makes it real, right?” It shouldn’t. Babes, it really, really shouldn’t!
Artists, now more than ever, need to shed the shackles of the Starving Artist archetype. That’s step 1.1 in a series of increasingly common steps towards fair wages and a heightened sense of self-worth and confidence in one’s work. This isn’t easy; it’s comfortable to remain paradoxically (forgive me) up your own ass and humble over your chosen medium. Artists have made themselves mythic based on the lie perpetuated by a system built on quick turnaround time and extending copyright to wring IPs dry.
Of course you’re starving: this environment wasn’t made for thriving.