In my anthropology discussion this morning, we talked about Marxist critique. (Ooooh, exciting stuff.) Anyway, the TA explained the difference between 'value' and 'price' by giving an example about a piece of artwork. "Let's say this art is being sold for $100,000. That's the 'price', but the 'value' is all of the physical materialist labor that went into producing it: someone worked to build the frame, someone made the paint, someone made the paint brush, the artist put physical labor into painting it. All of that labor makes the 'value' of the painting, which is obviously much less than $100,000." Then someone asked about the fact that the artist had to think up the idea for the painting - didn't that add to it's value? "No, imagination and all of that stuff isn't work, so it doesn't contribute to the 'value' at all."
Probably just because I'm an avid imagination user, I had a problem with that. Not to knock Karl Marx or anything (apparently his opinions are pretty valid according to the world at large...) but I think imagination definitely adds to the value of something. I write stories - I have to put in the physical work of typing up the words, but that's easy compared to the time consuming effort of actually thinking up an idea, and putting it into words, and arranging those words in the best way possible. All of that is intangible, but it's work nonetheless.
Especially in a field like writing, imagination is so important to the value of your work. Everyone is so against anything that's cliche; we're all sick of seeing shelves and shelves of vampire books in the YA Section. People want to read something new, something they've never read before.
According to my TA, every book has about the same value. They're made of similar materials, and they took some time to write down, and someone took time to put them together. But I think if you ask any writer or any reader, they'll tell you that they definitely don't value books the same at all. 1001 Nights has made such an impact on the world - does it have the same value as Captain Underpants? Maybe to a third grader it does, but the idea is the same when it's reversed.
Just had to rant about this. Don't mind me. XD
If anything in the history of ranting ever deserved to be ranted upon, this takes the proverbial cake. So on behalf of writers everywhere - we who spend hours and hours spinning stories together out of thin air and pure imagination - thank you!
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