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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy who wrote (229587)	5/3/2007 11:33:42 AM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Famous is the key word. There are dozens of people who majored in the arts that you will never hear about, but who make livings in their fields. They go to school to hone their craft. Most members (if not all) of symphonies have degrees in performance. Many actors whose name you will never hear make a decent living doing commercials or soaps or playing secondary roles or doing regional theatre. Stage acting is very different from cinema, which relies heavily on the director and camera, and requires a different set of skills. A good actor studies history, literature, and trains physically for his roles. A lot of trained vocalists (and it takes many years of training to sing or play classically) earn livings with their music but will never be famous. They are in opera choruses, they are teaching, they are singing in oratorios, churches, and yes, theatre. They are like ordinary people in any field, doing something they hopefully enjoy, and earning a living. They pay taxes, raise families, live regular lives. I don't believe that becoming FAMOUS is what drives them. Maybe the arts aren't engineering or accounting, but I hate to think of a world without them. They are no more trades than engineering, which my own son, a BS in CS from the well-regarded engineering dept at Rice, agrees is just glorified technical school. Taking those departments out of state universities is an option, I suppose, just as the removal of music and art in the lower school system has been done in recent years, something I deplore. I for one, don't mind my tax dollars supporting those departments. In fact, that would be higher on my preferred list of tax spending than war. :)