Since my video editing software is still acting up, I’d like to spend this week’s article on a topic that I’m certain would get me booted off YouTube if I tried to make a video about it.
At some point in your life, you’ve probably been told that beauty standards are subjective, and that, in the Middle Ages, people used to find fat people attractive. To support this claim, people will point to paintings from the renaissance period which show women who would be considered overweight by today’s standards, and even a few who would be obese. The idea, as people who support this belief will tell you, was that back then, only the wealthy could afford the amount of food you needed to become obese, and most beauty standards are based on signs of wealth.
There might very well be some truth to this, and it is genuinely possible that, to some extent, the beauty standards of the pre-industrialized world genuinely did view overweight women as beautiful. But the problem I have with this theory is that whenever people bring images of either Renaissance paintings or modern obese women to impoverished parts of Africa today, who by all rights would find these women attractive for the same reasons as a Renaissance painter, and they unanimously describe these obese women as unattractive.
Another oddity is the most famous portrait of King Henry VIII, pictured above, which showed him as obese as he was in real life. Unbeknownst to most people, Henry commissioned the painting from Hans Holbein to help smooth over the Church of England’s break from the Vatican, and he fired the painter afterwards because of the way Hans portrayed him. While the painting served its purpose of making Henry VIII look better to the public with his larger-than-life personality, the king was embarrassed by how fat the painting made him look. Not that this wasn’t an accurate depiction of his waistline, given the armor he wore still in the British Museum today.
So what gives? Why would people starving in Africa find obesity, which should be a symbol of wealth and luxury to them, so unappealing? Why would Henry VIII fire a painter who portrayed him as obese? Are we missing details regarding the Renaissance artwork?
Well, there’s one detail that no one who clings to the “fat used to be beautiful” narrative ever addresses: who was paying the artists to draw women this way? As it turns out, most artists at the time were paid for their works by nobles and other wealthy houses, and the rich, who were more likely than the peasants to be overweight, liked to have images depicting “beauty” to look like them. It’s particularly noteworthy that artists from the same time period who received their patronage from the church often portrayed people as slimmer, healthier-looking, in particular when depicting Jesus, his apostles, and the Virgin Mary.
Does this prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that people in the 16th century thought obesity was unattractive, and that the only reason so much art included fat women was because of overweight noblewomen’s vanity? No, not at all. But it does highlight a problem that most artists run into at some point in their lives: whoever pays the painter gets to tamper with the final product.
I am extremely lucky that I get to write books entirely as a hobby, with a completely unrelated job that pays my mortgage. Most people are not lucky enough to come close to that kind of independence, and this is the root cause behind why so much artwork made by people today tends to be so terrible; why so many cash grabs exist, and why there are entire subgenres such as “the airport novel” that are universally viewed as trash, but still somehow turn a profit.
Think about Pixar from ten years ago for a moment. Everyone I know agrees that at least the first two Cars movies were garbage, and that it was weird for the same studio to give us movies like Up. But the thing is, most of the money made from a movie is made not from ticket sales, but from merchandise. Movies featuring talking cars with eyes for windshields? Those sell toys, ice cream, sneakers – you name it. But a movie about an old man and a boy scout flying to South America in a house held up by balloons? When was the last time you saw someone buy their kid an over-priced tube of toothpaste because it had their favorite senior citizen on it? How many toy sets did you ever see for a balloon house?
This is the secret about how Pixar used to work: cash grab films like Cars and Cars 2 would often pay the bills for the company to make films like Up and Soul, both good movies in their own right, but Up barely made a profit, while Soul didn’t make back its budget. Sure, most of Pixar’s films can sell enough merchandise to stay afloat, but a big reason why they keep making movies in the Toy Story series is because they can always sell products to kids afterwards; that’s why they made Toy Story 4, after the creativity in the series clearly dried up, and why they’re planning to make a fifth. And at the same time, why didn’t Wall-E get a sequel? Well, because even though there were plenty of merchandising opportunities there, people didn’t buy very much.
Soul in particular is a film worth noting, because it’s exactly the kind of movie that Pixar used to be famous for; it’s an awesome movie with a great message that makes you appreciate the gift of life. And there is almost no chance that anyone was going to buy toys for it, primarily because it wasn’t really a kids movie.
I also want to point out that Cars 3, the one movie in the Cars trilogy that people agree was actually pretty good about dealing with old age and having to pass the torch before retiring, made substantially less money than either of the other two in the franchise. Is that purely because it was the only film out of the three that had something of an actual soul? Probably not, but it’s worth noting.
If you’re looking to be any kind of creative, be it an artist online who takes commissions, or a writer who wants to publish your own books, there’s a very good chance you’re going to have to make things that are less “art” and more “product.” It’s either that, or get a job that can pay the bills when you aren’t producing your art.
Next time you’re in a store pointing and laughing at some obviously vapid piece of pulp fiction, be it a cheesy detective novel, or a romance story where the protagonist does some seriously illegal things like stalking, abuse, and any of the other crimes Christian Grey commits, but gets away with purely because he’s sexy, remember: you’re probably going to have to produce something like that somewhere down the line to keep the lights on, so you can make the art you really want to create that just doesn’t pay the bills. People often think it’s wrong to include making money as a reason to be a creator, but often times, that the only way you’re going to pay the bills.
And while obviously not every cash grab is made so you can use the funds to make higher quality art, if that’s the reason you make your version of Cars 2, then in a way, you’re still doing it for the art.
