Seismic Shift on Wall Street = “Artists”???
by guest contributor Karen Wang, originally published at Scarlett Cinema
It is a strange feeling to walk down the streets of New York these days. Though the hustle and bustle of commerce may still swarm all about you, it is noticeably quieter than usual. And though the sub-zero wind chills may easily explain why only the tourists and Broadway musical super-fanatics can be lured out to play, I would argue: it is more than that.
I’ve watched, listened, and noticed for quite some time now how things seem to be shaping up; and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are few other places in the country where the carnage and fallout from this blighted recession are more evident than in New York City. The Big Apple has been hit especially hard.
Condos and co-ops sit empty as their selling prices in the New York Times continue to plummet. Five or six businesses on my block alone– establishments that had thrived for years– all closed their doors forever within recent months. A cross-town bus ride or walk down 23rd Street will reveal more darkened storefronts. And perhaps most eerie of all: the empty trains.
Like most people in New York who either have a hand in filmmaking or write about films on the internet, I have a day job. For the last two and a half years, I have worked at a financial firm located somewhere between Times Square and Rockefeller Center. It is this part of town that has, in a way, become the new Wall Street. In fact, the Wall Street of times yore no longer exists– at least, not in the sense of it being the end-all-be-all site of where all the major money makers are housed. Most firms such as Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley now have office space and trading floors as well as run their businesses in buildings all over Manhattan. Dozens of media corporations such as NBC Universal, Viacom, Time Warner, and Conde Nast are also based in the area of town in which I work. Consequently, up until the Dow began its terrifying descent last summer, it was a matter of routine, a normal sight, to wedge one’s way onto packed subway trains full of daily commuters headed towards the Great White Way. These days, however, in the wake of massive layoffs, my wait at the local halal food cart is practically non-existent; I no longer have to dodge and weave between as many brief cases and overcoats walking through Times Square; and most unsettling of all: as I look around during my morning and evening commutes, the subway cars are conspicuously roomier.
Why am I bringing all this up on a feminist-inspired blog about cinema and the media? Because last month, in the New York Times, there appeared an article written by Hannah Seligson about the recent mass exodus of bankers and Wall Street types from the financial industry as they look to the arts and entertainment industry for their future career paths. In other words, they are turning to their “creative plan Bs.”
Seligson writes:
With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs, bonuses disappearing and the financial sector going through a seismic shift, some bankers and lawyers are switching lanes to more creative career paths. They are putting down their Wall Street Journals and picking up Variety as they try their hands at comedy, filmmaking and writing.
The first thing that came to mind after reading this was what this could potentially mean for both racial and gender equality within the arts and entertainment fields. Anyone who works in finance can tell you that no matter how far race relations and women’s lib may have come in the last few decades, the fact remains that white men far outnumber people of color and women at firms such as the one where I work. Not only that, but the way in which race and gender break down along the types of work within the industry are more starkly revealing: front office groups, or the departments that generate all the revenue for companies, tend to be populated by white men; whereas back office groups, such as human resources and administrative support, remain a virtual repository for people of color and women. It is still very much a white male-dominated game. So, when I read that bankers were jumping ship to work in creative fields, all I could think was, “Oh, great. Because that’s what the entertainment field really needs: a fresh infusion of The Man.”
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