Are YOU an Authoritarian?

I had an interesting/disturbing conversation with some family members yesterday. It was about the upcoming Canadian election. We got into the topic of Stephen Harper's undemocratic proroguings of Parliament. It wandered a bit, then ended when I, in a shocked voice, asked them, "Do you... want a government that just shoots people?" They must have looked at each other and silently decided that the conversation was over. They changed the subject.

This conversation put into focus for me that Harper is not acting alone in his undemocratic actions. He has the support of people in our country who no longer believe in our constitutional, parliamentary monarchy and would prefer a powerful government with an unaccountable dictator who "gets things done". These folks are what are called authoritarians. Are YOU an authoritarian?

Answer these questions and your score will reveal how authoritarian you are.

1. Do you believe that politicians are all yappy crooks and we should get rid of them?
(a) No.
(b) Yes.
(c) No, only that one politician I like is honest. We should get rid of the others.

2. Do you believe that national leaders should hide information from their citizens?
(a) No.
(b) Only in the interests of National Security.
(c) Yes, if the information contradicts my views.

3. What is a terrorist?
(a) "Terrorist" is only a label. One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter.
(b) A terrorist is somebody who uses fear, economic disruption and war to achieve political ends.
(c) A terrorist is somebody who opposes my government.

4. Should terrorists be tortured?
(a) No.
(b) Only in the most dire emergencies and lives can be saved.
(c) Yes, please. Can I help?

5. Criminals. We hate 'em, right? Should they vote?
(a) Yes.
(b) Not while they're in prison.
(c) No. They've forfeited their rights as citizens. Let's force 'em to make combat helmets!

6. What's the best way to keep the crime rate low?
(a) Ensure healthy communities through a strong economy and/or social programs.
(b) Hire more police.
(c) Hire more police, make it easier for them to arrest and convict people, oh and let's make some more laws for people to break.

7. Panhandlers are always asking for money and making you feel bad and, besides, all they do is spend their money on booze. How do we get rid of them?
(a) My annoyance with panhandlers is caused by my own feelings of fear, guilt and inadequacy. Deal with those emotions and panhandlers won't be so trying.
(b) Form public awareness groups to ask people not to give to panhandlers.
(c) Arrest them for loitering. Can't beg for money in the drunk tank, can you, stinky?

8. Our soldiers occasionally commit atrocities. Should we prosecute them?
(a) Yes, in the public court system.
(b) The military courts can handle that stuff on their own. They're not biased at all.
(c) Plunder and rape are historical rights of soldiers. If we want to keep morale high, we sometimes have to look the other way. So no.

9. Media information can be contradictory. What's the best way to make sure you know all the facts?
(a) Listen to and watch all media available to hear all opinions.
(b) I have a news source that is fair and balanced. I only need to pay attention to that one: the other media lie all the time.
(c) Why listen to the media when I can listen to the President/Prime Minister/Il Duce/Der Fuhrer talk?

10. Some criminals just have to be killed for the good of society.
(a) No.
(b) Only after a trial by proper authorities.
(c) Just criminals?

11. Artists, musicians, actors, playwrights, filmmakers and writers should receive funding and tax credits for:
(a) Skillfully produced and engaging art.
(b) Art that does not contradict public policy. Pornography and treason must not be funded by taxpayer money.
(c) Artists ought to do what the government asks them to do if they want funding.

12. Oh oh. It's that pesky asshole, Pastor Fred Phelps and he's not just picketing gay funerals anymore. Oh my God. Is he seriously picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and screaming at the bereaved that their loved one is burning in hell? What's to be done?
(a) If you need to do something, make some noisy public display that drowns out Fred Phelps and shows support for the families.
(b) Fred Phelps ought to be arrested for disturbing the peace.
(c) This way, Fred. Step into the car. Just move that spade out of the way. You'll need it later. So... pray much?

13. A bunch of eggheads at the university are saying that the government shouldn't be holding those protesters without charge. What's the best course of action?
(a) Join the protests.
(b) Stay home. There must be a good reason why the government is doing that. It'll sort itself out.
(c) There's nothing worse than intellectuals trying to tell us what's what. Let's go yell at them for being so mouthy!

14. Gun violence is out of control. The innocent are dying in the crossfire. What's to be done?
(a) Nothing. It's sad, but sometimes innocent people must die upon the altar of freedom. Besides, prohibition pumps money and power into the hands of smugglers, black marketeers and gangs.
(b) Guns must be controlled and licensed. If you want to own a gun, you have to take a safety course. Concealable weapons need more control than long guns. RPGs, flamethrowers and artillery are completely prohibited.
(c) No citizen should be able to own a gun. It's for their own good.

15. Some weirdo scientist is telling you to turn a knob that will electrocute somebody. He's yelling at you to do it. You:
(a) Walk out of the experiment.
(b) Protest, weep and cry but turn the knob anyway.
(c) There must be a good reason for this. He's a scientist, after all. Bzzzt!

You did it! Add your score thusly: For every answer of (b), give yourself one point. For every answer of (c), give yourself two points. Compare to the list below.
Score:
(0): I don't believe you got a score this low. Go back and do it again.
(1 to 10): You believe in personal freedom. You see a logical need for order in society but worry about too much government control. You are most likely either a student, a hippie, a libertarian or an educator.
(11 to 20): You have strong authoritarian tendencies. Your belief in democracy is shakey. Cameras and cops make you breathe easy. You would rather be safe than free. You are most likely a person living in a gated community or parent concerned about some kind of moral panic.
(21 to 29): You are an authoritarian. You don't really believe that democracy works and you would feel better if somebody would just "take care of things". You yearn for a powerful leader to tell you to do things and what to believe. You are most likely a strict soldier, survivalist, angry cop, religious housewife, somebody who lives on a compound for some reason, or a brooding revolutionary hunched alone in your basement in front of your computer monitor, writing insane blog posts and waiting for the day you seize power.
(30): Henry VIII, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin.... *sob*... Why did the Lord take them from us so young?

Enough with the semi-joking already. Liberté, égalité, fraternité: remember that? It's not just French bullshit. It's the essential ingredients to a democracy or republic: liberty, equality and brotherhood. Liberty is the important one here. Large numbers of nosy police and soldiers cramp liberty's style. You cannot have freedom and have armed men imposing strict laws at the same time.

Everybody, look deep inside, especially if you vote Conservative or Republican. Are you really a democrat? Do you believe in your republic/parliament? I'm asking you because I fear for your mental health. A sick society is a society that is dishonest with itself. If you can admit to yourself that you don't believe in democracy and you are an authoritarian, you will be happier. Every time you invoke democracy in the name of hurting, jailing and killing people you don't like, it sounds a little more hollow and we all know it.

So go ahead and admit it. You'll feel powerful and maybe afterwards we can have an honest talk about all y'all going off and forming a little dictatorship in Arkansas with Sarah Palin as your despot.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

The Legend of the Knockout Blow in Debates

I just watched the 2011 English Leaders debates on CBC, streaming live on the internet with viewer commentary. When the debates finished, I was excited. For the first time in a long while, I saw the people on stage talking instead of shouting at each other. It was civil and thoughtful.

More than this, as an avowed enemy of Stephen Harper, I was excited. I had the powerful impression that he had lost the debate. Online polls suggested that people were impressed and surprised by the performances of Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff. By contrast, Harper spoke plainly, rarely to his opponents and habitually into the camera, never allowing himself to become excited, but making himself a total bore in the process.

Then, a few hours later, I started clicking news stories about the debate. As the spin wheeled forth, I began to seriously question my sanity. The debate these political pundits described bore no relation to the one I had seen. They described a debate in which an unflustered Stephen Harper, for six minutes, sparred with his opponent, Michael Ignatieff, and won the debate because he didn't allow himself to lose his cool. And Jack Layton made some off-colour remarks. The end.

I began to pack my bag for a lengthy stay at one of Saskatchewan's fine mental institutions. Clearly, my perception of events was deeply flawed and it was only a matter of time before little glowing gnomes appeared in my peripheral vision and started telling me to stalk Miley Cirus. But then I remembered, and with a huge sigh of relief I exclaimed, "Oh yeah! The media have their heads up their collective asses!"

The source of the madness claiming that Stephen Harper won the debate is the Legend of the Knockout Blow. You see, a long time ago, there was a magic man with a big chin. Giant-chin-man once had a debate with a man who patted women's bums and all the mooses and beavers came to see them talk. (A godless commie was also in the debate, but nobody remembers him). Until the debate, the Bum-patter was very popular. Then, Giant-chin-man said, "You had an option, sir!" and Bum-patter sputtered and gibbered and all the forest creatures cheered, "Hurray!" and made the magic man their Viceroy of Evil.

Since that day in 1984, the media have been hungering for another Knockout Blow. Every election, political commentators judge the performance of our politicians by saying, "So-and-so failed to deliver a Knockout Blow, so therefore the other guy won!"

It's been 30 years since Mulroney's Knockout Blow on John Turner. None other has occurred. It is time to stop expecting our politicians to deliver them, because they don't happen. It is nice to hope for them, but madness to expect them.

Every year except this one, the media consortium that governs the leaders' debates has tried to encourage Knockout Blows by presenting debate formats that glorify sound-bite politics, giving each person very little time to present their case. It's always devolved into candidates shouting over each other, trying to deliver the Knockout Blow. Finally we have a format that is inspiring thoughtful debate with minimal interruptions. Please, let's stick to it and junk this childish yearning for something that happens less often than a blue moon.

So, now that we've gotten that out of the way, allow me to indoctrinate you with the correct version of events, free from the intellectual shackles of Knockout-blowism. Ignatieff was sensible but stiff. Layton was lively and funny, which is surprising because he's sucked so hard in debates-past. Duceppe was likeable but irrelevant.

And Harper was a huge snore with his beady eyes searing into the camera and droning away on his dull talking-points. He started off the debate boring, then was a little more boring midway-through, then varied his act by being insensere. Then he bored us during the healthcare debate and finished with words of inspiration in his closing remarks: inspirational only because they inspired me to check my watch and restlessly tap my foot. In conclusion, if I hadn't known that Stephen Harper was onstage I would have sworn that a giant, boring black hole had opened above the soundstage and was sucking anything interesting or exciting into a vast parallel universe of tedium and deflected questions.

But whatever, this is Canada and we like our politicians boring, so maybe he did better than I thought. There's no accounting for some tastes, eh hosers?

Oh yeah, and while I am truly anti-Harper and cringe at the idea of the Green Party splitting the vote further, Elizabeth May should have been there. And I'm also sick of the media casting every election as a simplistic black/white two-way battle when there are in fact five major parties competing for our vote. But those issues are for another rant.

Remember: Anybody but Harper. For the love of God and your democracy, anybody but Harper.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Why I'm Not Voting for Stephen Harper this Year

Okay, I admit it. This will come as no surprise, but I have never voted for Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party or its predecessors the Canadian Alliance, the Reform Party or the Progressive Conservatives (dumbest party name ever). However, just so I'm not mistaken for some ideologue who votes for the party his parents voted for out of habit, I like to give reasons why I'm not voting for Harper. It's only fair.

In 2004, I didn't vote for Harper because I heard that he was a member of a Christian sect that recently stood outside a tavern and prayed to God to make it collapse. I figured it would be a bad idea having a guy like that guy in charge.

In 2006 I was disgusted at the Conservatives' stance against criminals. They wanted to make more laws that would create more criminals and then they wanted to strip those criminals of their democratic rights as citizens and not allow them to vote.

In 2008 Harper revolted me with his comment that ordinary folks don't care about art. As I explored in this post, I don't think he's incorrect. I merely understood loud and clear what he meant: "I don't care about art".

So here it is, 2011, and Harper is running again. Normally, my not voting for Stephen Harper wouldn't be news, or even worthy of a blog post. This year is special. It's special because if he wins, he'll be justified in pulling all his undemocratic horseshit. Read on.

It's fair to say that Harper has been a clever Prime Minister. Since he first formed a minority government, he's known exactly where he is. He knows that he can't get everything he wants because Parliament won't let him. For his first term (2006-2008), he laid very low indeed. He even, dare I say it, governed well. He was receptive to the wishes of the people and he tried to work with Parliament. What resulted was a government that was moderate and responsive.

During this period, I have to admit that I was surprised. I wondered, fleetingly, if Harper was worthy of my vote. But then I thought about it a little more and realized that Harper was biding his time. He had his own Conservative dreams and would have loved to realize them, but he had three left-wing parties breathing down his neck, constantly threatening to topple him if he didn't play ball. He knew that if he governed as a populist, he could maybe win a majority government and then truly do what he wanted, free of meddling.

In 2008, he made his bid for a majority government, called an election and got another minority. It was immediately obvious to me that he was frustrated and losing his patience. The man has dreams after all. He had plots to hatch and Parliament was getting in his way. Harper's government went from being clever to ruthless. This began a new phase for the Conservative government, what I call the "undemocratic" phase.

Since 2008, he has since done everything he could to do to push his agenda and thwart parliament. Remember this? He shut down Parliament. Twice. In 2008, after the election, he told the Governor General to shut down the show. Why? Because it looked like some other parties were going to form a coalition government. Then he did it again! In order to keep a Parliament prying into allegations that Canadian soldiers had handed prisoners to torturers, he closed down parliament. Why? "Uh... the Olympics are on... or something..." Can you imagine that? Imagine the government of the United States shutting down because there were Olympics happening! It would never, ever ever happen. Is Canada even a real country? Disgraceful. Disgrace, shame and INFAMY!!!

Why does this bug me so much? These are our elected officials. He was using proroguing, a rule used in the past to allow our elected officials to go home and help their constituents, to prevent himself from losing power and getting embarassed during the Olympics. If he is re-elected, what kind of message are we sending him? We are telling him it's okay to thwart democracy.

Well, it's not. It opens the door for future abuses, and greater ones. What's stopping Harper from shutting down Parliament whenever it's inconvenient for him? What's stopping him from closing Parliament indefinitely? Legally, nothing. The Governor General can legally do just about anything here, and he/she usually does whatever the Prime Minister asks. The only way to keep Harper accountable for this total bullshit is at the polls. Vote him out!

Need another reason? Okay. How about this? His government was found in contempt of Parliament. His own government! This is the first time in the history of Canada that a government has been found in contempt of its own Parliament! Why did this happen? He's buying some really expensive military jets from the States and refuses to tell Parliament how much they really cost.

Well, Steve, we have a right to know. It's our money and our elected officials get to find out what you're up to. That's why we have Parliament and opposition parties. What are you hiding? Why are you hiding it?

Once again, if we re-elect that guy, it's sending the wrong message. If we put him back in the PMO, it tells him, "Go ahead, Steve. Govern without our consent or knowledge. We think you're cool for being such a rogue! Would you like to hit us over the head with a truncheon?"

(The funny thing is that, you know what? I think the Canadian Forces could use some modern jets. Those junky CF-18s are nearly thirty years old. The Americans seem to be getting a bit, um... unreliable. We can't continue to rely on them to protect us from commies and we need to be more self-sufficient. Bring on the multi-million-dollar hardware. Just be truthful about how much it costs.)

This undemocratic strain in Harper's governing style is now leaking into his campaigning style. If you want to attend a public rally where Harper is speaking, you have to submit to a pre-approved identity check. Then, once you're there, if Harper's goons see that you're wearing a T-shirt they don't like or not acting enthusiastic enough, they can toss you. Then when Harper takes the podium for questions, we only get five. If we ask him why we only get five questions before he leaves, he refuses to answer.

But here's what makes this scary. Our loveable mounties, the beloved RCMP, have recently admitted that they've helped Harper investigate and remove people Harper doesn't like. Can you imagine that? Our national police force is helping the Conservative party conduct its unwholesome business!

I'm reading now that Harper has actually apologized for chucking people out of his gatherings. Is an apology really in order? What does this apology really mean? Is he sorry for being creepy and undemocratic? I doubt it. He issued the orders in the first place. Surely he thought about the moral consequences and decided to do it anyway because he didn't want to be embarassed. No, what he's really sorry for is that people called attention to his George-Bush-style campaigning.

Dear Canadian readers, Harper has kept his minority government since 2006. He has been waiting for his majority for a long time. I now know in my heart what he wants. He wants American-style Republican government. It's not religious, because if it was, they would actually abide by Jesus' wishes to live poor and await the next life. It's not capitalist, because if they were true capitalists they would want fair trade, not monopolies. They don't really believe in smaller government because they spend billions on authoritarian institutions like the military and police. They're not democratic because they are hell-bent on locking more people behind bars and then denying their right to vote. The only word I can use to describe them is Opportunists. They wrap themselves in religious, capitalist and libertarian rhetoric when they are, in fact, the antithesis of all they proclaim. They are servants of powerful men who want more power.

Don't believe me? Go ahead and vote for Harper. Give him his majority and see. Then come back in four years, read this post and weep.

Alternately, why don't we all save ourselves a lot of trouble and vote the crooks out? If we hand government to another party, I guarantee Harper won't run again. We'll be rid of him and maybe, just maybe, the Conservatives will get the message that it's not okay to pull this bullshit.

I once took a political leadership class in university. In it, my professor told me about many of the constitutions of other, less-democratic countries. These constitutions are well-thought-out and sincere in their desire for democracy. However, powerful dictators in these countries routinely declare martial law, choose not to hold elections and make people disappear at night. By contrast, Canada has very few legal safeguards on our constitutional monarchy. Our Governor General has the power to roll tanks through the streets, dissolve Parliament on a whim and choose not to hold elections.

Why doesn't it happen here? It just isn't done. We have inherited a British Parliamentary tradition of fair play, compromise and reverence for our method of legislating and certain things you just don't do.

Well it's being done now. Harper isn't playing fair. Rather than compromising, he is finding sneaky ways to circumvent Parliament. I know a few people who like Harper because he "gets things done." What price are you prepared to pay for getting things done? Any dictator can "get things done" by waving his hand. And where does it end? If the Conservatives are not handed their asses, this bullshit will continue with other governments, no matter which party is ruling.

So please, dear Canadian readers, when election day arrives, vote NDP. Vote Green. Vote Liberal (even though they started this proroguing bullshit in the first place). Vote for the skeleton of Abraham Lincoln. Vote for the giant, malevolent toad who only you can see and tells you to do things. Take your ballot and wipe your ass with it.

Anything, anybody but Harper.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com

The Disaster that is Art, Part II

In my last Disastrous Art post, I explored the reasons why artists, musicians, actors, writers and craftspeople in North America are forced to choose between their art and survival. In this post, I wish to examine the very idea of art itself and how Art is deepening the divide between itself and its audience. I am not talking about the generous, broad definition of art which can be defined as "human expression". I'm also not talking about indigenous art that collectors fawn over because they want to make themselves look worldly. I'm talking about Art.


It goes by many names. Fine art, high art, literature, art-music, classical music, or just Art with a capital "A". It is difficult to define, but some people define it by what it isn't. It isn't pop-art. It isn't genre-fiction. It isn't popular music. That would be fine, except "pop-art," "genre-fiction," and "popular music" are all terms equally difficult to define. At best, Art can be defined as human expression which is "better" than others.

Why is this definition important? Because many institutions place high value on Art. For example, within my own experience, Grain Magazine publishes "engaging, surprising, eclectic, and challenging writing and art" according to their website, which is code for "we're not looking for genre-fiction". The Saskatoon Symphony differentiates between its main concerts in which it plays "classical" music from established masters and new Canadian composers, and its "Pop Series", in which it plays film music by John Williams and ABBA. When I applied for arts funding from the Saskatchewan government, I was advised that if my project was "popular" in nature, I should apply to the extra-governmental Saskfilm for funding.

I see Art-exaltation in people around me, particularly those with a university education in an artistic field. People who work in artistic fields have much of their self-esteem tied into Art, and many feel that they are better than other artists because they practice true Art instead of vulgar entertainment and commercialism. I too have a Bachelor of Arts degree and for a long time I believed in Art. I believed that some art was better than others, that some human expression should be written-off as "entertainment". It was the cause of much snobbery, haughtiness and pooh-poohing on my part. However, since I graduated I have been tormented with the suspicion, then the conviction, that the concept of Art is total bullshit.


I believe that Art is a holdover from less democratic times. Hundreds of years ago, nobles needed a way to make their form of entertainment seem superior to the entertainment of their smelly, toothless subjects. As a noble, the myth of superior breeding had to be upheld. Not only was a noble born better than his subjects, everything he did and appreciated was better. This was essential to his survival, because appearing unworthy of leadership could lead to his head on a pike. Thus was born the concept of entertainment that was better, smarter and elevating. With the growth of the middle-class in the 19th Century, the new moneyed class desired to imitate the nobles. So they bore the noble concept of Art, showing themselves to be cleverer and more refined than those who had less money. While the nobles and their courts have vanished, the concept of Art has lingered among the wealthy, intellectuals and professionals. In our society, it is permissible for people well-versed in Art to hold themselves in superiority over people who do not.

I have said that people believe Art is "better". So what does "better" mean? Firstly, it means a higher degree of skill on the part of the artist. Skill comes with hours of practice at the art form, to a point where technical mastery is achieved. I have no objection to this, although it's worth noting that technical mastery does not equal art. A potter can create a functional plate with mastery, but it does not become art until he uses the medium for expression with glaze and decoration.

Secondly, in the past, Art was distinct because it sought to "elevate" the audience. Elevation is the result of "the sublime", a strange concept based in grandeur, bigness, beauty and proximity to God. An elevated individual is brought into the throes of ecstasy by the Art in question. However, with the decline of religion in Western Society, so has the idea of the sublime fallen. Now, many would submit, Art is achieved by breaking boundaries and expectations. Art must be new, intellectually stimulating and challenging.

Lastly, and most importantly, Art is only for certain people. Many people mask this intent by saying that Art should not be "commercial" or "out to make money". However, what they mean is that Art should not appeal to the vulgar masses. How else does one make lots of money, but by appealing to lots of people? The intended audience of Art must be connoisseurs of art: other artists, intellectuals, scholars, critics and collectors.

So, Art is masterful, challenging human expression that is meant for smart people. Well, my friends, there is no imperial scale that judges the skill of an artist, nor the intellectual value, nor the IQ of the intended audience. That means that Art is subjective. SUBJECTIVE. Because it is subjective, "Art" is a completely useless term with which to judge human expression.

Everybody has varying levels of different types of intelligence and different amounts of experience with entertainment. One man's Art is, to others, either vulgar or incomprehensible. To some, a Fellini film is Art, while most Americans wouldn't understand it. For others, Fellini is vulgar merely because he is a filmmaker.


Another example: when I was ten years old, I watched the legendary wrestling match between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. Professional Wrestling is a form of entertainment of the most vulgar kind. No Art could possibly result from such spectacle. But there they were, two men feigning rage, pain and exaltation. Kinda like actors. There they were, using their bodies to express emotion. Kinda like dancers. When Hulk Hogan triumphed and held the title belt above his head, exhausted and elated, my ten-year-old mind was moved. I felt the ecstacy of victory, the thrill of hard-won triumph. I had never seen anything like it before and my developing mind was touched with the sublime. Yes, I was just a dumb kid. But to me, a WWF match was elevating. At the same age, I would have found a Mozart symphony boring.

What I am trying to say is that it is incorrect to declare any entertainment as "better" than another. Art and entertainment are the same thing. Each individual has opinions and a less harmful way of expressing them is to say "I like this" or "I don't like this".


Harmful? Yes. I say this to all who are reading who believe that Art is better than entertainment and have their egos wrapped in this fallacy: others can detect it. They see that because you know your Art, you think you are better than them on some level. It leeks through your personality and effects your behaviour. It makes people feel small. It makes them hate you. It perpetuates the view that artists are snobby and self-absorbed. It is one of the reasons why Stephen Harper declared that ordinary Canadians don't care about art.

I normally wouldn't mind that people believe in the existence of Art. It is, after all, only an opinion. However, from what I've experienced, art snobs populate high places: universities, arts funding boards, galleries, newspapers, scholarship committees, and friends-of societies. They pass judgment on other people's projects, using the bullshit-definition of Art as a standard. They indoctrinate young artists with a belief that is false and offensive. While film has just started to become recognized as an Art form, film composers are still ostracized by their peers. Sequential art and Video Games are ignored or mocked.

A gaping crevasse yawns between high-artists and the rest of the world. Ordinary folks resent artists for their snobbery and artists resent the hordes of philistines who marginalize them. This is unbelievable. Isn't art supposed to be about communication and expression? Shouldn't people trained to communicate be the best-understood people on the planet?

Artists, we must take the first step, because the rest of the world won't. We must get off our high-horses and stop being so damned smug about ourselves. We have to recognize that our worldview is not the only correct one. We have to respect the tastes of others and not take it personally if they would rather watch CSI. Lastly, and most importantly, we must remember that there are six billion people out there hungering to be entertained; if we can do that, they will love us.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

The Disaster that is Art

I'm sure this will be a long post. Grab your coffee and sit back for an epic.

In 1981 Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers released his album, "Northwest Passage". The title track was a hit and became a cornerstone of Canadian culture. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has admitted his own love for the song, saying that Northwest Passage is the closest thing Canada has to an unofficial national anthem.

And this is where things get hypocritical. In the last election, Stephen Harper, whilst on the campaign trail and defending his government's $45 million dollar cut to arts funding, said that (paraphrased) ordinary Canadians don't care about arts funding.

The hypocrisy? Stan Rogers was a Canada Council funding recipient. I think it's fair to say that without the Canada Council, the CBC and other forms of government arts patronage, Northwest Passage might never have happened. In short, Harper likes Canadian culture but doesn't want to pay for it. I would be more angry about his comments, but I'm not necessarily sure that he's wrong when he says that ordinary Canadians don't care about arts funding.

This blog post is not about my Prime Minister's hypocrisy. It is about what is wrong with art, music, writing, film and stage today in its execution, funding and the public's understanding of it. It's about why ordinary folks don't care. It's about how artists either starve or work jobs to which they are not suited and undervalued. It's about how our educational system and artists themselves are deepening the divide between art and its audience. It's about the cultural black hole that is being filled by American values. In short, the arts are in the toilet and nobody wants to fish them out.

An uncomfortable truth about artists is that they need patrons. When an artist begins the slow process of building his or her career, practicing their craft, building contacts and reputations and expanding their portfolio, only the very lucky make any money. Those that do make money do not make a living wage. Therein lies the problem. People like living. Generally, if given the choice between following a dream and survival, people choose the latter option.

Artists in this situation therefore must squander their talents and waste their lives working unskilled jobs. For many artists, this secondary career becomes their only career. Some get tired of never earning money with their art. Others are forced into their non-artistic job to afford housing or children.

Patronage feeds artists. It lets them use their talents. It lets them quit those jobs they never wanted to work anyway, providing employment for other people who also need feeding.

Many businesspeople and politicians don't seem to understand this. When viewed through the lens of the free market economics, it makes no sense to support the arts. To the economy, starving artists are starving because they are creating product with no demand. They deserve their fate. Why waste money on something nobody wants?

It's a disconnect from reality. The longer artists practice their craft, the greater the demand for their product. If they can't feed themselves and produce their art at the beginning of their careers, they will never create demand.

About 500 years ago in Italy, the greatest revolution in the history of art occurred. It was the Renaissance and its power was fueled by patronage. Obscenely wealthy noble families, such as the famous de Medicis, kept artists in business with their favours and commissions. They competed with each other to see who could patronize the most beautiful art. It was a societal priority. I could go on and on about the Renaissance, but to attempt to do so within the confines of a single paragraph would be a terrifying injustice.

Well, them days is gone. Yes, our society has obscenely rich people. Yes, many of those people are patrons of the arts. However, it's fair to say that art is no longer a societal priority. Our societal priority, and I challenge anybody to contradict me, is sports.

Don't believe me? We just spent $8 billion dollars for a two-week party in Vancouver called the Olympics. For that amount of money, Canada could have paid more than 100,000 artists full-time minimum wage to practice their craft for three years. Want more proof? Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a city of 200,000 people can barely keep its Symphony orchestra afloat. By contrast, late 18th-Century Bonn, a city of 10,000 people, had two orchestras and produced Ludwig van Beethoven. Canada produces top-notch NHL players, not musical genius.

Where art is to be found, it's quick and dirty. As Capitalism has entrenched itself in North American society, it just doesn't make sense to produce anything that lasts or is of high quality when you can cut corners. Open the newspaper and look for illustrations. Chances are, you'll see quickly-drawn, highly-abstracted first-drafts drawn in ink. Take it from me, the newspapers of yesteryear put love and effort into their drawings. How is it that the primitive, sub-humans of medieval Europe managed to erect towering, beautiful cathedrals and castles with their low population and lack of machine tools? Because to them, the art of their construction had value. Today with our ballooning population and marvelous technology, there is no reason to make a beautiful, stone WalMart with gargoyles and ornate carvings that is meant to stand for a thousand years. It's just cheaper and easier to barf out tin boxes by the hundred with concrete floors and unfinished ceilings.

Shouldn't we be ashamed that tiny villages full of toothless, smelly, gruel-eating apes who believed in werewolves could make prettier buildings than us? Nope. Nobody cares.

However, there is one branch of art that our society truly treasures: film and television. It is the divine art of the modern age, combining visual art, film, music, writing and crafting into one marvelous spectacle that we take for granted. For Canadians, most film is an abstraction. It shows up on our screens from very far away, created by people we don't know, and often it is free. Unlike other art, film and television is big business and is profitable. It replaces our need for art on a local level by beaming in easy entertainment. Why go out to a concert when you don't have to leave the couch and be entertained for free?

It's all too easy to forget that this multi-billion dollar industry is the result of the efforts of many tiny little artists who had to claw their way to success. It's also a little scary to think about how many Canadians are working in Hollywood and New York because they couldn't make their film careers work in Canada.

Canada used to have a film industry in the 1980's. Not just a coastal-temperate area that American companies could film TV episodes for cheap. Not just an annual film festival in Toronto that American celebrities attend to look pretty. I'm talking an actual industry. Funding was high. Tax breaks allowed random companies to produce a movie in Canada just to save money at tax time. Compared to Hollywood, yes, it was chintzy. Yes, most of the movies that were made in this period were low-budget horror flicks of dubious quality. But Canadian artists were working. In Canada. It all stopped when governments cut their film incentives and funding. Now this place is a howling wasteland for film, dependent upon the low-value of the Canadian dollar for survival. Pathetic.

It's not just the amount of arts funding that is at issue here. It is the method of distribution. It's an old problem. English author Samuel Johnson, for instance, refers to a patron as, "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help". Simply put, our system of government arts patronage gives the lion's share of money to people who have already established their careers.

I understand the thought-process that goes into it. Why waste money on an unproven artist? What makes an artist? If we start handing money out to nobodies who call themselves artists, surely fakers and layabouts will emerge to take advantage of our generosity. However, it is undeniable fact that starving, unknown artists, the people who need the money most, are being denied funding and offered a pittance when others are receiving large amounts of money they don't need. What's the point?

But you know, it's not just clueless politicians, bureaucrats and apathetic citizens that are causing all this misery in the art community. In many ways, the artists and educators that teach it are bringing it upon themselves. The sad fact is that art education is in horrible shambles.

I took art classes every year in high school. Not once was I taught to render on paper or in clay that most basic of artistic expressions, the human form. I had to buy a book called, "How to Draw Super Heroes and Heroines" to learn its value. I also took Creative Writing courses throughout high school and University, yet nowhere was I taught classical story structure: I had to learn that from screenwriting books after University. The education system taught me English but not how to use it to influence the hearts of humans. Similarly, I took a music degree in University and between my Theory classes and my Orchestration classes, I learned the bare bones of music composition, yet a basic element was denied me. No instructor was willing to tell me the meaning of those chords to the human ear and their emotional effect on "ordinary folks".

Unbelievable. Artists are being trained without the basic tools that will make them successful. I've been submitting short stories to a mutual review site lately and almost nobody knows anything about classical story structure and are shocked when I let them in on what seems to be this huge secret! Why is this happening? As you might have guessed, I have a theory.

You see, in the last century, the "modern" era began, followed by the difficult-to-define "post-modern" era. In these eras, guided by odd notions about "progress" as applied to art, artists started trying to be different than each other. They came up with genres that were at first reactions against the rigid forms and styles of the previous centuries, and then tried to invent new languages and modes of understanding. Abstract art, twelve-tone scales and nonsense versions of English were produced. The score of one piece of music, for instance, contained no musical notes: merely the phrase, "Crawl inside the vagina of a living whale." Some performance artist took snapshots of his self-inflicted castration. Recently, some students were arrested for skinning a cat alive and calling it art.

Honestly, is it any wonder that there is little demand for this product? As the artists of the modern eras invented their new languages, they left their audiences behind. Stuck on traditional ideas of art, "ordinary folks" paid for new artistic forms that weren't quite so radical: Hollywood movies, graphic novels, jazz and rock music. All these forms were ones that did not completely shun the lessons of the past.

Meanwhile, the lame-duck grade schools were at work. Somewhere along the way, it became "uncool" to constrain kids with artistic rules. It was during this era that the "personal essay" became the highest form of pubescent writing. In art rooms, children were encouraged to "do their own thing".

The post-modern high-art snobs who are entrenched in universities and the hippie grade-school educators are very different but they seem to have one thing in common: they don't believe in creative limitation. They expect that artists young and old should do their own thing and create their own artistic language from scratch.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with creative limitation, here it is. Apparently, the human brain finds it easier to be creative if it has a set of rules to work with or against. By removing the lessons of the past from curriculae, the education system has made being creative actually more difficult for students.

Some people may be reading this and thinking that I'm an artistic conservative. I'm not. If you like post-modern art, it's not my place to criticize you. It's not my place to say what I like is better than what you like. My point is that by leaving important information out of the curriculum, Canadian artists are being denied a critical part of their education which will help them connect with their audience. Wouldn't it be better to teach students the rules of their art as society understands them, then give them the choice later whether they wish to transcend them?

Rest assured, friends, art is not as mysterious as some persons would have you believe. Part of it is craft and can be learned. Many of my teachers in the past had me thinking that creativity is this elusive thing that descends upon you like luck, cannot be controlled, that certain persons are born with. That's partly true, some people have more talent than others. But all art involves learning how to use a tool and using your brain in conjunction with it. It takes practice and it takes proper training. Why would we send our poor artists alone into the world without that training?

So here we are. Ordinary folks don't care about art and those of us that do can't define it. For most people it's a mystery. People love music but have no idea how it's created. Abstract art hangs on gallery walls that is valued either for the artist's reputation, the overlong explanations that justify them, or their shock value. Post-modern music rattles in crumbling concert halls, played by under-funded orchestras, tolerated by audience members who when asked what they thought of it are obligated to say, "It was interesting". American television beams into our homes, each reality TV show slowly crowding Northwest Passage from our collective memory. New schools are being constructed without music rooms. If Mozart was alive today, he might just be serving you coffee.

So what the fuck are you going to do about it? Do you even care?

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