The Oscars and the "dark matter" of art and business

I tried to write a brief thing about the Oscars, and this happened. It's long, but it relates to branding and positioning as small creative businesses so if that's you, it might be worth a cup of tea, because I would love to hear your thoughts:

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The Oscars came and went again, full of all there is to love and hate about mass media and pop culture, that big engine that continually absorbs the genius on the fringes, tokenizes some and awards others, neutralizes radicality, offers the occasional rebellious or delicious red carpet spectacle, and simultaneously predicts, performs and prevents cultural change.

Highlights: Janelle Monae's outfits and performances; Billy Porter's outfits and his interview style, Taika Waititi - everything, Matthew Cherry's "Hair Love" win, both Janelle and Billy's unabashed visible queerness, Billie + Finneas' melodramatic emo-whispered "in memorium" Beatles cover, and the first ever Best Director award to go to a non-English Speaker and non-US-er, Bong Joon Ho.

Lowlights: another evening of soaring black and queer and female excellence on display as *entertainment* (musical performances and announcers), while the overwhelming majority of those nominated and winning the "biggest" awards for their genius were...drumroll...straight/cis white men. I'm still waiting for one of them to say "My thanks to the Academy for this *shameful* honor," and explain why.

But I'm not wasting much time on that longing - because thats not where the change ever comes from, even as the occasional actor breaks out and says something controversial. They aren't heroes - they are just joining the rest of us for a moderately brave minute, with much less really at stake (a nod to Joaquin Phoenix).

What's interesting me this morning is how much the whole structure of the popular culture and mainstream film world is mirrored in our small business communities.

There's a concept about the art world, coined by Gregory Sholette, called "dark matter" - the masses of relatively invisible artists who provide the cultural raw material that gets incorporated into the brands of the few who "make it" in the art world and become its elites. The entire art world system completely depends on the invisibility and poverty (to be real) of those artists who operate OUTSIDE of commercialism - because thats where the fresh ideas are that sustain and inspire the ones at the top.

Sound familiar? Its how white/colonial/settler culture feeds on black and brown and indigenous culture; it's how male "geniuses" use women's work, its how the movie industry feeds on smaller scale film artists, how the art world feeds on everyone...

And it's how the famous business influencers keep their brands and messages fresh.

Yep, the biz gurus and influencers are absorbing movements and genius from the larger cultural context of small business, and feeding the best of it back to you. That's how the system works.

In a way, thats how human beings make culture, period. We absorb it from the world around us, make it new, and put it back out there. There's no lightening bolt from some magical place. It's a beautiful process - we are built for collective creation and storytelling.

But in the context of a social/economic/cultural system such as capitalism, things get screwy. The reciprocality that should come from the gift of creating becomes lopsided and benefits a few at the expense of the many, and we are all inside of that dynamic somewhere.

So back to your business and marketing "influencers -" you are feeding THEM as much as they feed YOU in the knowledge/creative economy. EVERY DAY.

Just like the Academy Awardees and the millions of people and creative movements laboring in obscurity that inspire them and give them their best raw material.

We can learn from this - and our view of this can be a part of how we think about our brand positioning.

Because when it isn't, we lose an opportunity to be cultural changers, rather than those whose great work would just get neutralized into the existing overculture of business.

That's intentional standing-out, not just doing it because being a badass rebel is popular, and helps make a buck. I encourage us all to make a buck how we can - that's why we are in business, after all - but doing it intentionally will be more sustainable, more effective and more meaningful (and likely, more ethical too).

So how do we think about how to position ourselves; or our brands, businesses - in a powerful stance in relation to the larger culture of small business, of the overculture itself, of the society of the spectacle?

And as our audiences and our influence grows, how are we responsible for reciprocality with the cultural movements and creators that inspire and feed us? How can we even the playing fields? How can we use what we've got to create new economies of culture?

I'm writing about that whenever I can get to it this week, and I might publish more on it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the meantime.