Re:not sure I get the controversy (Score 1)

It seems to me not that painters were made irrelevant or obsolete, merely the method in which they applied their skills were made obsolete. That is to say, skilled painters were not rendered immaterial by the development of photography--representative paintings were rendered immaterial. Impressionism, cubism, surrealism, dada, the entirety of the modernist art movement can be glimpsed as a move away from representation and toward something photography could never capture, no matter how skilled the photographer. Ultimately as it relates to film actors, until we find some way to surpass the uncanny valley effect of near-photorealism I'm not sure this will really be that large an issue. As some other commenters have pointed out, is there some deeper "sincerity" in an analogue falsehood than a digital one? I'm not sure there is, unless your paycheck depends upon it.