[IP] Creative Class War
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 19:28:20 -0800
From: Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Creative Class War
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Dave, this is being passed around by email. A bit long, but good.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
Creative Class War: How the GOP's anti-elitism could ruin America's economy.
The Washington Monthly, January/February 2004
By Richard Florida. Heinz professor of economic development at Carnegie
Mellon University and the author of The Rise of the Creative Class.
Last March, I had the opportunity to meet Peter Jackson, director of The
Lord of the Rings trilogy, at his film complex in lush, green,
otherworldly-looking Wellington, New Zealand. Jackson has done something
unlikely in Wellington, an exciting, cosmopolitan city of 900,000, but not
one previously considered a world cultural capital. He has built a permanent
facility there, perhaps the world's most sophisticated filmmaking complex.
He did it in New Zealand concertedly and by design. Jackson, a Wellington
native, realized what many American cities discovered during the '90s:
Paradigm-busting creative industries could single-handedly change the ways
cities flourish and drive dynamic, widespread economic change. It took
Jackson and his partners a while to raise the resources, but they purchased
an abandoned paint factory that, in a singular example of adaptive reuse,
emerged as the studio responsible for the most breathtaking trilogy of films
ever made. He realized, he told me, that with the allure of the Rings
trilogy, he could attract a diversely creative array of talent from all over
the world to New Zealand; the best cinematographers, costume designers,
sound technicians, computer graphic artists, model builders, editors, and
animators.
When I visited, I met dozens of Americans from places like Berkeley and MIT
working alongside talented filmmakers from Europe and Asia, the Americans
asserting that they were ready to relinquish their citizenship. Many had
begun the process of establishing residency in New Zealand.
Think about this. In the industry most symbolic of America's international
economic and cultural might, film, the greatest single project in recent
cinematic history was internationally funded and crafted by the best
filmmakers from around the world, but not in Hollywood. When Hollywood
produces movies of this magnitude, it creates jobs for directors, actors,
and key grips in California. Because of the astounding level of technical
innovation which a project of this size requires, in such areas as computer
graphics, sound design, and animation, it can also germinate whole new
companies and even new industries nationwide, just as George Lucas's Star
Wars films fed the development of everything from video games to product
tie-in marketing. But the lion's share of benefits from The Lord of the
Rings is likely to accrue not to the United States but to New Zealand. Next,
with a rather devastating symbolism, Jackson will remake King Kong in
Wellington, with a budget running upwards of $150 million.
Peter Jackson's power play hasn't been mentioned by any of the current
candidates running for president. Yet the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas
competitors is shaping up to be one of the defining issues of the 2004
campaign. And for good reason. Voters are seeing not just a decline in
manufacturing jobs, but also the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of
white-collar brain jobs--everything from software coders to financial
analysts for investment banks. These were supposed to be the "safe" jobs,
for which high school guidance counselors steered the children of
blue-collar workers into college to avoid their parents' fate.
.
.
.
Richard Florida is the Heinz professor of economic development at Carnegie
Mellon University and the author of The Rise of the Creative Class.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0401.florida.html
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