Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

The astronomical salaries paid to a relatively small number of sports stars and other celebrities of the media are a recurrent topic in public discourse. Some people point to the huge sums these individuals are paid and claim that this obvious disparity in incomes is evidence of the basic flaws in our free market economy, and justification for artificial intervention to restore "fairness". For every allegedly overpaid celebrity there are undoubtedly thousands who at least think they could do the job for far less. Others point out that the millions these celebrities can charge is merely a reflection of their market value at the ticket booth.

The manipulation and exploitation of the market has grown so extreme that bidding for broadcast rights to the next football season has run up costs to the point where they exceed the potential return from broadcasting the games. The stars in the latest movie extravaganzas are demanding tens of millions for the tens of minutes their image is on the screen, while ever higher ticket prices are making the traditional dinner and a movie date a major financial undertaking. It's hard to imagine how this situation can go on escalating. Something's gotta' give.

Critics have pointed out that unlike brain surgeons and rocket scientists whose far less well paid efforts provide a tangible value to society, sports stars are playing games that most of us played as children for free. And as for spectators, far from putting on a revenue generating event, it often took substantial emotional extortion to coerce any adults into watching our childhood games.

In the past plenty of individuals were willing to engage in these same games and performance arts for far less compensation relative to the average national wage. I suspect that many of those who are allegedly overpaid today for acting or playing sports would be willing to work just as hard at their craft for far less if that was all the market allowed. They may just get the chance in the coming decades.

It's hard to justify the salaries of most celebrities by the traditional measure of their job skills. While some physical skills are required in professional sports and making movies, those skills are in theory comparable to skills needed in less well compensated professions. Throwing a ball through a hoop may represent a degree of difficulty, but the critical importance of getting it exactly right every time is insignificant when compared to throwing hand grenades. Piloting a pretend spaceship in a special effects movie (where a stunt man takes over for any actually risky moments) may appear exciting and dangerous on the screen. But pretend movie spaceships don't hold a candle to strapping one's fragile flesh and bones into a thin skinned tin can built by the lowest bidder that's been bolted to what is basically a flying fuel tank, and setting light to the engines for the controlled violence of a real space shuttle launch.

There is of course a different perspective to the issue. Both professional sports and show business profess to operate as filtering processes where those who emerge at the top are qualitatively the best at what they do. From the perspective of celebrities as entertainers, a case can be made that they are worth a substantial percentage of whatever revenues their participation brings in. As long as enough people are willing to pay a high enough price to cover the astronomical salary demands of the celebrities as well as pay all the other staff and tradesmen that are needed to put on these revenue generating extravaganzas, the market is demonstrating that the demands of the celebrities are justified.

One of the critical factors in the compensation of celebrities has always been the magnitude of exposure available in their medium. The greatest star of the stage appearing before a live audience could only demand a percentage of the actual box office receipts regardless of the brilliance of his performance. The total compensation for all of the members of both sports teams, their managers, and everyone else involved in putting on the game was always limited to how many paying customers they could fit into the arena.

The massive market distortion that supports the current high level of celebrity compensation was created by the evolution of mass media. Where once exposure and potential revenues were constrained by the limits of the physical world, technologies like television and the movies have made it possible for a celebrity to perform for millions of paying customers all over the world at once, and/or resell a single performance over and over for decades. Thanks to the multifaceted distribution of the mass media, a single performance by a modern celebrity can be enjoyed by more people than a performer of a century ago could entertain over an entire lifetime.

The modern entertainment industry has become something of an aberration within our overall free enterprise system. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, in business nothing attracts innovative solutions like goods or services that are perceived to be over priced or in short supply. Our current standard of living and material culture is based on our willingness to accept lower than ultimate quality in return for affordable goods.

Mass produced clothing, automobiles, food, etc. are all arguably of lower quality than hand made alternatives, but only by embracing mass produced goods have we created an economy capable of supplying such a wide variety of goods to such a large number of participants. The entertainment industries have managed to distort this basic function of modern industrial civilization. Rather than lowering the cost of entertainment by distributing a fixed cost over a larger paying audience, or manufacturing mass produced alternatives to eliminate a short market, the media has managed to turn the equation around to allow a very limited number of media celebrities to collect greatly expanded revenues from a mass produced audience.

Instead of the market being flooded with mass produced cost competitive alternatives, the supply side of the market remains severely restricted by the concept that it is talent driven. Unlike a car that can be hammered out of any given lump of iron and come out identical to any other, an athlete or movie star is a unique commodity that is impossible to duplicate within current technology.

The history of business and technology suggest that the current situation is a transient condition resulting from the incomplete evolution of mass media technology. The ever rising price of real human celebrities provides a very attractive incentive to find a cheaper alternative that will be acceptable to the consumer. Given enough time business always finds ways around high costs and short supplies. I expect the solution to high cost human celebrities to evolve out of the convergence of three main trends and technologies.

One of the trends lies in the increasing public acceptance of abstract representations - images on a screen - as acceptable alternatives for reality. The level of return required by the economics of modern entertainment already require that nearly all of the paying customers receive their entertainment as two dimensional representations on some form of mass media. As compensation for this level of distance from the real event, media technology has created advantages such as telephoto close-ups, aerial views from flying cameras, and instant replays that in many ways make the abstract experience preferable to the live experience. Not that there is much reality left in most modern media events anyway.

The second factor is the long standing tradition of show business itself. The primary function of show business has always been to create illusions of things that don't exist in reality. Consider how much of any media event already hinges on the willing suspension of belief by the audience. Sets and props have long turned a few sticks of wood, paper, paint and sundry other materials into convincing illusions of places that never actually existed. Even when the intended setting does exist in reality, a wholly artificial rendition is often preferable in order to more closely control the too often uncooperative forces of nature such as the sun, wind, and weather.

Even the most perfect of normal humans have far too many flaws and blemishes to serve as media idols in the idealized airbrushed version of reality offered up by the media. The physical appearance of many if not most celebrities owes far more to plastic surgery, the work of skilled makeup artists, creative lighting, filters on the camera and various other artificial enhancements than to the natural attributes of the individual. We readily accept that shallow empty individuals too racked by their own psychoses and a chronic identity crisis to function in the real world, can play convincing heroes in the movies. The public images of most celebrities are far more fabricated illusions created by publicists and image consultants than the true nature of the individual.

The creation of special effects has advanced to the point where almost anything can be made to appear on the screen. Not only have the capabilities of the technology improved, but the cost of the necessary hardware has dropped precipitously. And as costs have dropped and quality risen, computer enhanced imagery and artificial reality have become the expected norm in the minds of the viewers. Our expectations of technology have risen to the point where many of us are no longer willing to accept simple presentations of reality as adequate entertainment. The key is that from the perspective of the viewer, it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell reality from manufactured illusion.

The third factor in the pending celebrity market restructuring is the rapid improvement in simulator technology. The core problem in the realistic simulation of reality is the difficulty in calculating the vast number of variables involved. One of the attractions to sporting events is the element of uncertainty. Even when all of the players are known and their future performance can be reasonably predicted based on their published statistics, the inconsistencies of human nature as well as factors as diverse as the weather, world events, or the wholly personal triumphs or tragedies of the individual players can influence the outcome of a given game. It is this uncertainty - that the star pitcher's streak will be broken, or the home team that hasn't won a game all season just might pull this one out of the hat - that adds excitement and suspense to an otherwise predictable repetition of the previous game.

But as computers have become more powerful, simulation technology has inched forward in its ability to accurately model events in the real world. At some time in the not too distant future computer simulations will reach a point where it becomes possible create artificial celebrities that are indistinguishable from real humans by the average viewer within the limitations of the mass media.

The greatest obstacle to cyber celebrities will of course be market acceptance. While the initial impulse of many is to deny that humans can ever be replaced as celebrities, the process is already in motion. We've long accepted obviously artificial cartoon celebrities - with a certain singing dancing mouse establishing an entire empire. There have been several successful movies mixing human and cartoon characters with the cartoons playing leading roles.

The old style man in a gorilla costume movie monsters have become passe of late, with the public demanding the ever more convincing and realistic creatures that can only be created in the cyber world. Thanks to computer generated special effects, we've been treated to dinosaurs, anthropomorphic animals, space nasties, and all manner of bioengineered creatures that few of us would want to exist in the real world, but which played critical roles in their media events.

Perhaps one of the most telling signs of the times is the market acceptance of cyber enhanced partial human celebrities such as the cyborg antagonist in the Terminator. When the public remembers that role, do they think of the human who played the scenes when the creature adopted human form, or the computer generated melting, molding, transforming product of special effects that defined the role?

In sports the case for cyber simulations is easy - it's the money. Fans want exciting games and celebrities with whom they can identify. The alleged shortage of top level players that justifies limiting major teams to only a handful of large cities, and allows rich owners to in effect buy successful seasons by bidding up the price of the best players past the budgets of smaller teams, will end with the generation of unlimited numbers of cyber players. Each simulated player will still be different, with his/her overall strengths and weaknesses embedded in their digital definition, as well as variations in their play from game to game factored in at "run time" by the simulation. Cyber players will have good days and bad days, and the overall success and type of strategy used by each team will still be strongly effected by the balance of skills held by the players.

The modern arrogant, abusive, multimillionaire genetic mutation that currently throws more emotionally infantile tantrums than balls when he's not out on strike demanding even greater rewards for his specialized skills, is hardly the most effective personality through which the fans can live vicariously. Cyber players can be created with exactly the right mix of personality traits to appeal to the fans both on the court and off. Best of all, cyber players won't let their temporary fame go to their heads like the current human players - unless the cyber player is programmed to do so.

Cyber celebrities are already sharing the mass media with flesh and blood humans. With their tremendous financial advantages, complete absence of workplace issues, infinite willingness to do it over until the scene is exactly right, and ability to suffer endless injuries and mayhem on the screen or playing field without running up expensive treatment costs, it appears the cyber celebrities have a nearly irresistible market advantage. As technology improves, human celebrities will find it ever more difficult to justify their astronomical salaries to the flint hearted accountants who really run the entertainment industry, eventually becoming the novelties that cyber celebrities are today.