5 ms·
If you're trying to justify the practice of blind auditions, it might be better to target a different prejudice. Sexism may well not be a significant factor in
by beloch 7y ago
If you're trying to justify the practice of blind auditions, it might be better to target a different prejudice. Sexism may well not be a significant factor in hiring musicians today, but it's likely that other prejudices persist. Although it would be hard to quantify, if you could show that unattractive people or people who do not dress like typical musicians do better in blind auditions to a significant degree, then you might well have justified blind auditions.
- mattigames 7y agoBut there is a chance you could skip some important judgement by doing blind auditions, for example if someone has sociopathic behaviors that will damage the orchestra team in the long run and that personality trait may have been clear in a face-to-face interview but not so much in a blind one.
- devteambravo 7y agoThat is very interesting. Art being compared to business. Should we censor talent to benefit the whole? This isn't a dev team with production deadlines... And yet, where do we draw the line? The artists know.
- skookumchuck 7y agoWhy do "we" need to draw a line? I couldn't care less who they hire.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoIf you're a working artist then art is business. Most (all?) working artists make compromises in their art for business reasons IME. Professional artists IME (fine art, photography, ceramics) very much operate with production deadlines.
- necovek 7y agoWhich you can establish by having a non-musical person (commonly HR person in tech) have an independent screening 1st phase interview. In theory, such a person should be better suited to such evaluation too: it's not uncommon to have psychology majors in HR departments, for instance. And finally, once you find someone is detrimenal to the team (the orchestra), you can still fire them (I know it might be harder).
- wtdata 7y agoIf you have a non musical person doing a first - non-blind - screening, than the outcome of the all process becomes non-blind anyway.
- replyguy912 7y agoMust be pretty cool to able to identify sociopaths just by "lookin' them in the eye!" The more I do interviews and get assigned the "culture & fit" asessment role, the more depressed I get. It's really just code for the bias "looks and acts like me => good"
- xiphias2 7y agoThis can be true, but orchestra is a performance act. If I look at it as a business, I don't see anything wrong in giving higher value to more attractive performers. On the other hand it's important how much higher value they get (and the multiple round audition when only one of the rounds is blind makes sense).
- leereeves 7y agoThat's essentially saying the orchestra should cater to the audience's prejudices, and could be used to justify any prejudice.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoThat's how entertainment industry works though?
- barry-cotter 7y agoIndeed, if it doesn’t it doesn’t make any money and disappears unless it gets subsidies. So the WNBA and orchestras get subsidised and can have professionals whereas without subsidy their losses would force them out of existence in short order.
- leereeves 7y agoAnd orchestras do get subsidies because society feels they have value even if a cabaret would earn more money. Certainly a segment of the entertainment industry earns money by catering to the worst aspects of human nature, but that's not the whole industry.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Retric 7y agoThe majority of people involved in the industry are not visible to the audience.