Low Culture, High Statism

Sports is culture too:

Governments at all levels in Canada have an easy time providing billions of dollars annually toward artists and their cultural organizations — many of which are just as “professional” as NHL athletes and teams. Similarly, governments often have little or no problem funding concert halls, theatres, art galleries and other bricks-and-mortar venues where cultural events are performed.

The result: Professional ballerinas, musicians, actors, writers and artists routinely ply their trades in places that are paid for by the taxpayer while their professional sporting counterparts are treated in a very different way. There is little sympathy for the multi-million dollar hockey player, as compared with the (figuratively) starving artist.

How did a debate over what constitutes culture become a political, er, footbal? Let's say you are a cultural elitist snob like Publius. You think that hockey and sports are about as exciting, and enlightening, as watching a burping contest. But perhaps you are like the other 99.999% of Canadians who live and breadth hockey, and professional sports in general. Its rather unfair to have other people's tastes - like opera or classical music - subsidized on your dime. In that light David Aspers' call for public funding of sports seems reasonable. If government can subsidize the preferences of the few, why not the fun of the many?

The high arts - both genuine high art and the scores of professional poseurs - have acquired a powerful political lobby over the years. Cloaking themselves as defends of culture, they argue that the market, which is both cruel as well as crude, does not appreciate the finer things in life. Therefore government must subsidize these flowers of civilization, lest they perish amidst a diet of philistine entertainments. It's not that I'm unsympathetic to the barbarians at the cultural gate argument, but running to Leviathan isn't the answer.

The problem with having government play patron is that in the process art becomes political and bureaucratic. Not in the obvious manner of Soviet or Nazi art programs, but in our special democratic Canadian way. As with every dollar government spends, a decision must be made as to whom and how. Why should this artist be funded and not the other? 

In the old aristocratic societies the decision process was straight forward, if Lord Whatnot liked it, the poet, painter or musician got the money. In a democracy the processes must at least seem more democratic, even when the art being funded is a minority taste. The soul of democracy isn't the process of voting, that's just the mechanics, it's the work of committees. When the subject is specialized, it becomes a committee of experts. How do you define an expert? Well either they have a certain degree or relevant experience. In effect they are the recognized elite of whatever they're experting on. 

Since politicians are non-experts, except at playing both ends against the middle, they give money to experts, who will decide how the funds are to be disbursed. This transforms a group of specialists into an entrenched elite, who, as time passes, acquire sweeping power over their respective fields. If the committees have a revolving membership, then today's supplicants might be tomorrow's committee member, and vice versa. Thus committee members are reluctant to be too harsh on others' works, knowing that the brittle egos they offend today, may next year exact revenge. 

In Canada this committee culture has helped breed that uniquely stagnant brand of art know as CanCon. From excremental television programs to ponderous documentaries, no matter how bad it is, as long as it is plausibly Canadian, it seems to get funding. Canada is not, in the Sun Tzu sense, very interesting. We try to keep the wars, famines and massacres to an absolute minimum. This does limit the raw material for great art, but surely we cannot be as dull as the National Film Board makes us out to be. 

Like a command and control economy, command and control art is just as undynamic and uncreative. After a few decades of churning out books and films on aboriginals and fur trappers, the no doubt bored to death Canadian arts committees turned to more daring fare. Unfortunately, like most committees, they couldn't tell genuine originality if they choked on it at cocktail party. 

Supporting transgressive art - the needlessly offensive, practiced by the utterly talentless - was the nearest thing to seeking originality, without having to exercise actual judgment. Why? Because, historically, often truly innovative artistic ideas were regarded as offensive when first shown. Over time people came to understand the value of the new idea, and so it became part of the overall culture. Much of modern art reverses effect for cause. If it offends and shocks, then it must be original. But mere stunts are soon forgotten, and each new stunt requires even greater artifice to sustain attention. It is bad art, or more correctly anti-art, that has been breed and encouraged by a bureaucratic system of patronage. Government art didn't create modern art, but it has done much to entrench it in galleries and universities. Repeating the same mistake with sports or popular culture would be a disaster.  

Comments

[nomdeblog]

Sports are particularly important for esprit to corps for youth and should fall within education spending. Olympic competition has the byproduct of athletes doing their best and even those who don’t reach those levels can be inspired by them and hopefully they get a little exercise in the process.

But Ottawa should stay out of picking artists and sports teams. Ottawa should only be involved in an overall national strategy to ensure we have enough plant and equipment in accessible locations for the arts and sports

Therefore a Federal budget should be set up for bricks and mortar purposes only. The budget should be set up per capita and match funded by the Provinces who can pick the projects.

[Ron]

Excellent topic, nice job of framing this Publius.

Artists can tax deduct business expenses. Charities and non profits also benefit through tax policy. Any other taxpayer involvement is wasteful and needlessly fertilizes Statist ground.

nomdeblog, great idea but I'd prefer federal funding to be a smaller percentage simply to lessen the federal subsidy of provincial spending.