The content on this webpage contains paid/affiliate links. When you click on any of our affiliate link, we/I may get a small compensation at no cost to you. See our affiliate disclosure for more info -----------------------
Last updated on March 6th, 2018 at 12:31 am
It’s bad enough that rising sea levels, cancelled TV shows, harbour shadows, spiritual malaise, global warming and religious bigotry are destroying Australia. Now we must cope with, as the Age reports, the greatest threat of all:
The funding threat to La Mama Theatre is a threat to Australian society as a whole, writes Alison Croggon.
UPDATE. Ms Croggon at her blog: “Good things come to those who wait. The Age finally ran my opinion piece on La Mama Theatre being put ‘on notice’ by the Australia Council, almost two weeks after I sent it in, and only after Robin Usher caught up with the same story. After I submitted it, which ruffled my feathers slightly. An old journalist never loses those scoopish instincts.”
UPDATE II. Croggon scooped!
“It’s bad enough that rising sea levels, cancelled TV shows, harbour shadows, spiritual malaise, global warming and religious bigotry are destroying Australia.”
If Australia is destroyed, you guys can stay at my place until you build a new continent.
Posted by Dave Surls on 2006 11 03 at 01:35 PM • permalink
Boy oh boy, I thought we had problems here in AmeriKKKa. You guys are doooooomed. It’s “On the Beach” come true.
How can you live with society and the environment falling to pieces around you like that. Dogs and Cats living together!!!
We’ve got room here in Jersey. Our only problems are hurricanes, tidal surges from volcanic landslides in the Azores, venal politicians, moonbats, mosquitoes, property taxes, car insurance, and tollbooths. You are welcome anytime.
Never heard of it
If this loses its Fed funding will this affect me here in the SW of Sydney and should I be worried?
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 11 03 at 01:45 PM • permalink
What I was going to add – as the Lakemba Mosque is just down the road from my house – should I be worried about the La Mama Theatre, or should I worry about the Catmeat Sheikh in his Mosque?
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 11 03 at 01:48 PM • permalink
Hey, here’s an idea. How about La Mama start putting on shows that people will pay to see? Then it doesn’t have to rely on any governmental funds.
Damn, I still remember being dragged by my wife to some artsy fartsy play called
Metamorphoses. It was based on an ancient Greek play by the same name, which is a sure-fire way to know it’s a wretched waste of a good Sunday afternoon. They might as well had stood up at a lectern and read the original play for as bad as it turned out.But oh no, it was a much worse experience than that. My first indication was when I walked into the theatre and noticed that the audience was made up primarily of gay male couples. Oh how they loved Metamorphoses. Whereas for me, I nodded off asleep in the first act.
By the second act, I wanted to dispense with all pretense and just lie back for a nice long sleep. Cover me up with my blankie. I might have if I wasn’t so worried about inadvertently resting my head on a seat neighbor’s shoulder. “Hey sugar, kiss me good night”.
I told my wife it’s bad enough I have to sit through some god awful mind numbing 2,500 year old gay Greek tragedy. (I think it was a tragedy. Sure seemed like it). But at least with the feminist male-bashing play we saw the prior month two women stripped down to their bras and panties. That perked my interest. What’s in this play for me?
Famous last words. Just then some young male with the body of a 14 year old fluttered out wearing nothing but feathery wings. Nothing else. He danced, he stopped, he sat down by the pool of water in deep contemplation. What was he? The Metamorphoses? A caterpillar that metamorphosized into a butterfly? If that’s true, why was he wearing bird wings?
While he was sitting thinking, and I was sitting in disbelief, the audienced was moved. A collective sigh of appreciation was issued. The people approved. This was art, of the highest order.
As for me. Worst. Play. Ever.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 03 at 02:08 PM • permalink
Oh dear – you are a true – now I can’t think of the word as it’s very late here in Oz – describing someone who is ignorant of the arts
Goodness me the word escapes me! All I can think of is heathen but that’s not the right word!
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 11 03 at 02:15 PM • permalink
Y’know, Wron, back in my college days I used to be one of the appreciative crowd. Not really, but I dutifully tried to be and made all the right comments and laughed where I was supposed to and sighed when everyone else did. Then I grew the f*** up. I got enough experience and self-confidence to call out pretentious crap when I saw it and appreciate true quality no matter how “lowbrow” it looks.
There’s more drama, pathos, tragedy and intelligence in one good episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” than in any of the crap playing in these precious halls of self-congratulation.
aussiemagpie, maybe the word you thinking of is “S T R A I G H T”.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 03 at 02:55 PM • permalink
No none of these – too harsh – there is a specific word for these kind of people like dear wronwright
It’s escaped me tonight I’m afraid!
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 11 03 at 03:04 PM • permalink
- “How about La Mama start putting on shows that people will pay to see”
#7
wronwright, you are being highly insensitive, demanding that those theater folk put on plays people want to see. Art is like cod-liver oil, it is supposed to be good for you, not something tasty, like a nice thick juicy t-bone steak.Off to the politically correct re-education camp for you.
LOL! Straight!!! Now I’ll be laughing all the way to the bedroom – love it
I’m not sure of Tim’s etiquette – do you say goodnight here? Or do you just disappear then turn up the next day?
Anyway goodnight!
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2006 11 03 at 03:07 PM • permalink
Bolta has been bagging arts festivals and the obscene funding they get for years.
As someone who has lived in Melbournistan for near forty years, I am proud to say that I still don’t know where La Mama is, although I may have been there once.
IT was obviously a memorable occasion.
Aussiemagpie, I’d be more worried about Catmeat and the show he puts on than those in the yartz.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 11 03 at 03:14 PM • permalink
“So how has the Australia Council reached such a different conclusion from that of state funding bodies?”
To indicate the criteria for Victorian sponsorsip under Labor administration, let me tell you a story. A couple of decades ago a monthly book review magazine “Australian Book Review” was suddenly transformed. (1) It went all glossy. (2) Under a new editor, Louise Adler, now involved with the Melbourne University Press, it shifted from sort of middle of the road left to widly radical left on every trendy issue. (3) It received funding from the Victorian Ministry for the Arts.
Rafe, he may have all that and potato chips too, but it’s still New Jersey. The state that gave us Jim McGreevey.
(Then again, my state has Senator Rodham Clinton, so what the hell have I got to be proud of?)
O/T – Another Phat Phil triumph in today’s The Australian as he tries and fails to explain the derivation of Google. It just defies parody.
Taking a google. Schoolyard slang in the 1950s for “having a decko”. A word deriving from goggle, as in “having a goggle” or “goggle-eyed”. Thus pre-dating by centuries one of the most used and popular verbs of the 21st century
Someone should have suggested he google it, or simply gone to a Google search page. Two clicks: ‘About Google’ then ‘meaning of Google’. The man’s a tool.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 11 03 at 05:49 PM • permalink
#7 My wife dragged me off to see Metamorphoses, but for once I didn’t resist too hard, because the ad warned of the play containing ‘nudity’. Phwoarr!! You, Wronwright, are in a good position to imagine my disappointment when, after two hours of watching smokin’ hot, but fully clothed actresses (and thinking Bring. It. ON!!, or rather, OFF!!) the nudity turns out to be…a guy.
As a Melbournite, who last went to La Mama about thirty years ago, I can say that it’s like going to see a play in someone’s garage. Even the mainstream theatres here in Melbourne have to be massively subsidised, largely because they put on lame lefty crap (Hannie Rayson) that only a tiny clique of bien pensants want to see. La Mama is like the pimple on the buttock of theatre here in Melbourne: I know a few serious theatre goers, and they never go to La Mama.
#20 I’m starting to get the impression that Leftie Journos are somewhat prone to exaggeration.
All leftie journos exaggerate everything all the time.
Posted by Oafish and Infantile on 2006 11 03 at 06:14 PM • permalink
The author of the piece has a blog, containing two paragraphs which were too dissentful even for the Age to print.
And an empty comment section.
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2006 11 03 at 06:24 PM • permalink
I care about Melbourne….. and couldn’t give a rats about some lefty theatre that I only now discover I’ve been paying for since 1972.
Posted by Phatso Phil on 2006 11 03 at 06:32 PM • permalink
I find this review of Eugene Ionesco’s play The Killing Game on this woman’s blog to be just… puzzling in its convoluted attempts to fit all reality into some sort of Marxist handbag. All it conveys to me is the fact that anyone who believes that there is something wrong with a society getting just a little bit worried about a plague that “kills 30,000 in one day” instead of, presumably, not succumbing to “fear” lest one be thought some sort of victim of “society” (which is treated as some sort of alien intrusion upon human existence instead of just… humans living with each other) is cuckoo for Cocopuffs.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 03 at 06:52 PM • permalink
To be fair, I didn’t write the headline, which doesn’t reflect the article. And those who read the article properly will see that the threat is to freedom of expression, of which the arts are an important component, and that this threat is due to funding being squeezed. A 24 per cent cuts isn’t significant? I bet if that happened to your salaries you’d howl.
And re the Sedition laws: out of some hundreds of petitions against the new laws, including all the major media organisations, only two were for them: the Federal police and the Attorney General’s office. They are bad laws. Even to speak about these things is seditious? Things are more Kafkaesque than I thought.
Those who don’t go to La Mama might see La Mama’s work in other places, like the Malthouse or touring overseas. And the artists who begin there end up in all sorts of places – the Theatre de Ville in Paris (the largest theatre in Paris, getting half a million people a year) has seen Daniel Keene’s work (Keene, like David Williamson, began at La Mama). Julian Meyrick, associate director at the MTC (perhaps you have been there?), has directed plays at La Mama. Countless examples. And, btw, La Mama’s audience has GROWN by 15 per cent in the past year.
As for Eugene Ionesco: is the idea of fiction so hard to understand? I would have thought you would be all for somebody who rejected being co-opted by left wing agendas. And what’s not to like about comedy or satire?
Amazing. Could anyone tell me what it is that this theatre actually does? The Age’s article certainly didn’t tell me.
My theory is it is a puppet theatre responsible for producing all those so-amusing giant puppet heads of Bush and Howard. Hence the outrage over a threat to the lefties’ and luvvies’ main means of political expression.
#43—It’s called sarcasm, Alison. The stuff about sedition laws was apparently too silly even for the Age to print, though they didn’t balk at likenihg Howard to Ceaucescu.
As for the alleged horrors of these evil laws—please name one person whose freedom of speech has actually been curtailed by the sedition legislation in the 10 months since it came in. You’d think there might be one, right?
Posted by Evil Pundit on 2006 11 03 at 07:54 PM • permalink
#34 Alison while we are on the subject of being fair I feel the need to comment on your 1st paragraph:
ANYONE who cares at all about Melbourne will be shocked by the news that La Mama Theatre may lose its federal funding.
I care about Melbourne. I’m not shocked. If anything I’m a touch pleased. Public money spent on obscure arts (yes I’ve never heard of La Mama) is a waste. I’d rather that money be spent on something useful.
I do admire your guts in joining the debate though.
Alison, fiction needs to have some connection to the real world to make sense. The gist of your review of Ionesco’s play (not to mention your quote of the playwright’s own words) seems to be that it shouldn’t matter that people are dropping dead in the street from a virulent plague (or being killed by terrorists), what’s reallyimportant is that people shouldn’t be bothered by this sort of thing, and certainly shouldn’t take drastic measures to save the people who are still alive.
And I’m not sure how not having money from the government to support your every whim is somehow “threatening” freedom of expression. No one is threatening the people running this theater with jail. They can do what theater people have always done when they need money: advertise, get a private sponsor, and most of all, make sure the plays they are charging money for are well-acted and about something interesting. I suspect, however, that fewer people than you would like are willing to pay for having despairing Marxist gruel shoved down their throats, but I believe that most people are also sick of Cats, so it’s not all bad.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 03 at 08:12 PM • permalink
#31 – Why don’t they change to musicals or such, like “Sound of Music” or “Oklahoma!” then people might go.
Exactly. This is why the Australian Opera does a Gilbert & Sullivan each year. Highly popular: bums on seats and lots of lovely moolah in the bank to cross-subsidise the earnest, serious, and rather less unpopular program.
The arts luvvies hold their collective noses and look the other way. Putting on popular shows is the artistic equivalent of a cruise ship. Those of us who wish to be actually entertained leave the telly and flock to them.
Theatre owners in the West End learnt this lesson. Result: quality revivals of classic musicals filling theatres that would otherwise be dark. We’re not so enlightened here.
We tried with ‘Hair’ a couple of years back but that tanked.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 11 03 at 08:14 PM • permalink
WBAI a lefty station in NY City had a pledge segment I liked http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/wbaipitch.ram wherein the pitch was that most of the programming in wingbat but you can always listen to other stuff.
I listen to pick up the old Jean Shepherd shows on Tuesday mornings.
No federal subsidies I know of. But they obviously live from hand to mouth.
I propose it as a model to Oz.
A 24 per cent cuts isn’t significant? I bet if that happened to your salaries you’d howl.
Most people here EARN their salaries, as opposed to lining up with hands out at the annual govt wealth redistribution fest.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 03 at 08:19 PM • permalink
- Michael Duffy reports that:
“Robert Eastment points out that Australians use lots of paper, much of it imported, and the pulp to make it has to be produced somewhere.”
So I have two questions:
The Greens support imported paper pulp?
Which overseas paper pulp company funds the Greens?Posted by stackja1945 on 2006 11 03 at 08:22 PM • permalink
#34 Of course I agree with Alison about the importance of freedom of expression, but as a genuine question, with respect, can I ask when is the last time she saw a play that was genuinely working as a form of communication, i.e., a conduit of new information? Every time I hear someone talking about the arts and freedom of expression, what they’re talking about is a completely closed-circuit, echo chamber phenomenon, in which an ‘artist’ delivers a pre-packaged ‘message’ to a pre-sold, fully on-song audience. That’s mutual masturbation, not expression. If you want to see smoke come out of your ears, just try to imagine the Melbourne Theatre Company – the Bolshoi of bourgeois drama – putting on a play sending up the pretensions of middle class left-wingers (and no, I don’t count Don’s Party).
Sorry, still ranting: the people who go to see a David Hare play don’t do so in order to have their world view challenged or their horizons broadened. On the contrary, they go to have their worldview confirmed, and their moral self-satisfaction massaged. Yet we will be asked to pretend that David Hare, or Stephen Sewell, or La Mama, or whoever, are candles of freedom in the wind of totalitarianism that blows through Howard’s Australia. Blow me.
#12, Dave S.: There’s more drama, pathos, tragedy and intelligence in one good episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” than in any of the crap playing in these precious halls of self-congratulation.
You got that part right. (And don’t forget humor and wit.)
Posted by Bruce Lagasse on 2006 11 03 at 08:35 PM • permalink
Most people here EARN their salaries…
And your beloved theatre company could earn its keep, also, by doing what many have already suggested here: put on plays that people will pay to watch.
Imagine if the artsy worldview was transported outside to the real world: should every product that fails to move off supermarket shelves be propped up by govt subsidy, just so it is there, even if no-one is actually prepared to buy it? I’m sure Dick Smith thinks so, but the rest of us may not be so sure.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 03 at 08:44 PM • permalink
The funding threat to La Mama Theatre is a threat to Australian society as a whole, writes Alison Croggon.
Dayum! How many seats IS that place?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 11 03 at 08:58 PM • permalink
We are doomed, I tell you. All doomed.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 11 03 at 09:28 PM • permalink
Alison, nice to have you duking it out here, but this issue is really very simple. I appreciate art. I’m willing to pay for art that I love appreciating. When people such as myself voluntarily and informally club together to discriminately support artistic output, it’s called a market. Certainly, the art market is a tough one, because art is such a subjective commodity. Yet there are quite clear indicators that artists can utilise to produce art that appeals to the market. Every other merchant must respond to signals identical to these to remain viable. Why should the professional artistic community be any different?
No doubt you’ll claim that without public financial support, much great art will not be produced. Yet, if the art market is not willing to voluntarily pay and sustain this great art, perhaps it doesn’t think your art is so fabulous? Why should you (or an “art council”) be able to assert that your/their artistic values are any more valid than those found in the wider community by deciding what its tax dollars are spend on? Is this reasonable?
Also, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Melbourne professional drama cannot be experiencing a “renaissance” whilst its leading theatres are going under due to lack of funds. That’s no renaissance – quite the opposite – it’s a retreat towards irrelevance. Your false renaissance is merely the staging of a lot of plays that not nearly enough people want to watch.
I don’t believe you can provide me with one valid argument that’ll buttress the publicly-funded artistic community’s claims of exceptionalism in justifying their subsidies. There is absolutely no socially beneficial reason why the arts should be funded by anything other than private exchanges on the free market. If the free market won’t sustain the production of a play, then the play must change to become viable – or fold. Allowing the latter is not an attack on this art’s right to exist (which is beyond question) – it is an attack on the presumption that its right to exist justifies enforced extraction of resources from uninterested taxpayers. Your description of the tiniest shift towards a user-pays art market as a “stifling of free speech” represents one of the more intellectually lazy and spurious contentions I’ve stumbled across in recent times.
No one should be forced to pay for anyone else’s interests, tastes, sports or hobbies.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 11 03 at 09:29 PM • permalink
Note to self: Do not employ overblown rhetoric on mundane matters unless…unless… ah,… the very forces of nature arrive at a nexus of bullshit, right here, in my living room.
[/diary]ANYONE who cares at all about Melbourne see my earlier post regarding my itinery in Australia:
Sydney – Melbourne Darwin.
Nuff said.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 11 03 at 09:37 PM • permalink
Hey Wronright, I am sorry about your “greek” experience 🙂
In fact, whatever this play was, it must have been based upon Ovid’s Metamorphosis, a Roman work. The ancient Greek and Roman plays were excellent fun, even the tragedies, which still are as central to civilization as Shakespeare. If they are boring now, it is because of the actors and producers.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 11 03 at 09:45 PM • permalink
Well put James. Excellent contribution.
In the past (say, more than 100 years ago) art was not publicly funded. It was funded by royalty, the church, and wealthy patrons. If you were an artist unless you wanted to starve in a garret you produced art that your patrons wanted to purchase (and often on commission). The result: wonderful art, memorable theatre, books you can’t put down, and music that is loved and adored. The market produced these outcomes. Government subsidies produce turgid nonsense in all artistic fields. There may be exceptions but I can’t think of one.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 11 03 at 09:49 PM • permalink
#31 Big Arnie, you inadvertantly raise an argument that has been going on for generations. Problem is, the field is now dominated by lefties.
The argument:
Should we do some really profound stuff on stage that will alter peoples’ consciences or just make ‘em larf?
Unfortunatley, most of our “artists” in the autistic community are too dim to realise that there is no point in playing the violin badly. You have to draw the audience in, make them want to see something that will entertain. Once you’ve got their attention, then you can slyly be profound. Ol’ billy Shako did it. And so could I if challenged.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 11 03 at 09:56 PM • permalink
ah la mama – could be quite enjoyable in the very late 60s/very early 70s. went to one of the first performances of dimboola there. was set up like a wedding reception (funny that), & the actors & audience mingled like wedding guests. bad finger food, awful sherry. was a hoot – bunch of us had a great time. went to some other good shows & enjoyed them BUT then it all got increasingly earnest & preachy & somebody let in a bunch of greek communists who recited awful poetry & sang vile modern folk songs, probably about the romance of a boy & his goat & how their young love was destroyed by the colonels but who knows cos i can’t understand greek. & then there were the anti-vietnam people, & the khmer rouge lovers, and it all went to shit in a big way. oh well
Confession time: I don’t care for musicals nor for the comforting pap that most people want to see when they go to the theater. (“Great” singing like the stuff in, say, Phantom of the Opera, just sounds like a pack of hysterical people hollering, and in general gives me hives.) I can be a bit of an art snob and am the sort of person who actually would enjoy a well-acted, well-staged version of Metamorphosis, or any other two-thousand-year-old Greek play. But note I said well-acted, well-staged. This takes devotion to the actual art to bring off, and most of today’s stage directors seem more interested in politics. Also, the theater in the West seems to have gotten stuck in a “gay is the way!” loop, and are increasingly focussing on a minority crowd.
I do believe that most people want more out of life than football and bland “entertainment” but they don’t want to be told they and their way of life sucks either. Most “art” these days seems to have been given over to people obsessed with revenge against all the kids who were mean to them in high school, and who wants to see that?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 03 at 10:01 PM • permalink
#40 – you’re right, but I’m with the culture vultures on the matter of Gilbert and Sullivan’s plays. That laboured, thickly smeared Victorian bonhomie – blergh. The Mikado…arghhhhhh!!!!
Anyhoo, on to your point about bringing in the punters. A few years ago, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra transformed itself into the only commercially viable state orchestra in the country (although perhaps some of the other states’ orchestras have caught up by now). WASO did this by performing a lot less of the oesoteric fare it regularly dished up and performing a lot more of the crowd-pleasing orchestral movements, as well as putting shows together with internationally popular singers like Frank Bennett and Ben Folds. Funnily enough, lucrative sponsorship contracts followed, and suddenly WASO was a going concern.
Of course, the music intelligentsia furiously resented this populist intrusion. I have a friend who studied music at the Uni of WA during the time WASO was reinventing itself. The entire music department was distinctly sniffy that WASO would be playing Mozart’s Magic Flute to a packed house instead of pushing the boundaries of avant garde orchestral music, witnessed by a couple of dozen.
The intelligentsia’s position is preposterous. I believe any state orchestra that doesn’t follow WASO’s lead should be allowed to sink like a stone.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 11 03 at 10:07 PM • permalink
#60 Andrea, we should meet and produce 🙂
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 11 03 at 10:09 PM • permalink
I too think it’s commendable that Alison has come here to present her case. My reply to her comments is I recognize the facts of life. One immutable one is that resources are limited. Tax dollars that go to art take away those available for education, health care, or welfare. We must get the most benefit from each dollar spent.
Almost no one here (except McEnroe possibly) believes the plays, etc., put on by La Mama Theatre should be suppressed. We just believe it should be done on the funds it can raise itself. Where those funds do not meet the current level of expenses (a la Webdiary), those expenses must be slashed. A for profit business could quite easily move such theatrical productions to more affordable stages. Indeed one can envision a sponsor who allows an outdoor stage be built on the grounds of his estate. Put out a good product, build up a following, and you could easily evolve into a top tier theatre.
But one word of advice: avoid gay Greek plays at all costs.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 03 at 10:34 PM • permalink
At the risk of flogging a dead horse, the moaning about La Mama is a bit like the nostalgic whining about the recent closing of legendary New York club CBGB. They’ve had their time, and it’s time to move on. La Mama is like a ‘living museum’ exhibit in the formerly-hippie enclave of Carlton (“and if you’ll look to your left, why it’s a theatre production about the need for solidarity with Cuba..no, no, please don’t feed them..keep your hands inside the car at all times…”)
- The Mikado (YES!) …
Ko-Ko, the Lord High ExecutionerAs some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I’ve got a little list — I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!
There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs —
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs —
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with ‘em flat —
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that —
And all third persons who on spoiling tête-á-têtes insist —
They’d none of ‘em be missed — they’d none of ‘em be missed!
Chorus.
He’s got ‘em on the list — he’s got ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed — they’ll none of ‘em be missed.Cheers
Posted by J.M. Heinrichs on 2006 11 03 at 10:52 PM • permalink
The ancient Greek and Roman plays were excellent fun, even the tragedies, which still are as central to civilization as Shakespeare. If they are boring now, it is because of the actors and producers.
Well maybe they could be fun. But they need to be adapted for today’s mass audience. Say change the toga covered senators into Bush, Howard, Blair, and the neocons. Change the soldiers into rugby players. And at some point in the play, have women with big hooters take off their tops and do jumping jacks.
Now that could be a great play.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 03 at 10:56 PM • permalink
This argument extends across all publicly funded culture. E.g. if the ABC, instead of having its teeth firmly clenched on the public teat, had to rely on sponsors or advertisers (who in turn expect to see good ratings), we might actually get listenable radio and viewable television, innovative programming, stimulating shows, maybe even some good jazz shows, instead of the grey institutional mediocrity that is public broadcasting in Australia.
Big Arnie That would mean work for the ABC. Then no time for just lazying about and only bad mouthing the Fascists.
Posted by stackja1945 on 2006 11 03 at 11:09 PM • permalink
#66, Wronwright, I have a beef about this too: just once I’d like to see Shakespeare presented in the way he intended his plays, instead of adapted to every other period except the 16th century. We’ve had Richard III as a 1930s nazi-style dictator; Mid-Summer Night’s Dream set in a Sydney Oxford Street dance party; others set in 19th- century Tuscany. In 30 years I don’t think John Bell has ever staged any Shakespeare as Elizabethan period pieces, and yet the historical plays in particular, can only really be appreciated in the political context of their times. Bell’s got a lot to answer for.
I think most of you preople are missing the point here. Aren’t we in danger of becoming just a little bit self-absorbed? “My money” that “I earn” etc etc?
Remember, we’re talking about La Mama, which was the seedbed of the Melbourne theatre revolution of the 1970s. That’s right, the Melbourne theatre revolution of the 1970s! Not feeling so snippy now, are you? Because, as everybody knows, that launched many a stellar career.
Presumeably, a career as a whiny prick who thinks the world owes him/her a living.
TFK
Abdrea wrote…“Great” singing like the stuff in, say, Phantom of the Opera, just sounds like a pack of hysterical people hollering, and in general gives me hives.
I’m with you – not a lot of hummable tunes there. I went to see ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in the original Melbourne stage production about 35 years ago. That was the first and only Lloyd Weber production I’ve seen with zero desire to see another. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all. Highly popular though.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 11 03 at 11:27 PM • permalink
Sheik Hilaly and the Lakemba Street Theatre are doing a revival of Cats. Should be provocative.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 11 03 at 11:47 PM • permalink
When we see a Jesus Christ Superstar style play about Mohammed at La Mama, I’ll be using the words “bold” and “ground-breaking” along with the rest of them. Until then…
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 04 at 12:11 AM • permalink
How could anyone believe that a reduction of public money to a group of actors etc, is “one more front on the Howard govt’s war of attrition on freedom of speech”? Produce more stuff folks, that more may want to pay to see and you won’t need handouts. I really can’t see why the taxpayer should fund such stuff at all anyway.
Posted by Dennis, Doncaster East on 2006 11 04 at 12:40 AM • permalink
OT, in The Australian:
Multiculturalism is a dirty word
THE Howard Government is looking to scrap the word “multiculturalism” as part of a major revamp of ethnic policy.
In a move seen as a shift in emphasis away from fostering diversity and towards increasing integration and responsibility among migrants, the government is canvassing alternative words to describe how ethnic communities harmoniously integrate into Australian society.
About time. Not sure about that harmonious integration though.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 01:00 AM • permalink
A 24 per cent cuts isn’t significant? I bet if that happened to your salaries you’d howl.
I work for my salary. I stopped accepting handouts years ago. (BTW, good on you for coming here to defend your article.)
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 01:17 AM • permalink
And at some point in the play, have women with big hooters take off their tops and do jumping jacks.
Like this? (Possibly NSFW.)
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 01:32 AM • permalink
One immutable one is that resources are limited. Tax dollars that go to art take away those available for education, health care, or welfare. We must get the most benefit from each dollar spent.
Wronwright – exactly! The author should justify why this theatre deserves public funds more than, say, hospitals or schools (or even the humble taxpayer who worked hard for the money in the first place).
The freedom of speech argument trotted out at Alison’s blog is a little confusing. Wouldn’t accepting government money lead to a conflict of interest and compromise the independence and thus the publicly expressed views of the recipients? Now that they are free of the shackles of government money, they should think of this as an opportunity to say what they really think.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 11 04 at 01:41 AM • permalink
66. And at some point in the play, have women with big hooters take off their tops and do jumping jacks.
Now that could be a great play.
80. And at some point in the play, have women with big hooters take off their tops and do jumping jacks.
Like this? (Possibly NSFW.)
Are these examples of anglo-christianity’s morally superior attitudes to women as compared to Muslims?
And those who read the article properly will see that the threat is to freedom of expression, of which the arts are an important component, and that this threat is due to funding being squeezed.
Um, no, Alison. Freedom of expression doe not mean, “The government must pay me to air my views.” Cutting of government funding does not equal censorship. Besides which, there is nothing radical or challenging in what comes out of the arts echo chamber. It’s just more banal tweaking of the mundanes that pretends to be daring when it’s really just adolescent rebellion against indulgent parents. I mean really, even the left-wing The Onion riffed on it with a headline that said something to the effect of, “Daring artist mocks Christianity for 4,812th time.”
A 24 per cent cuts isn’t significant? I bet if that happened to your salaries you’d howl.
Dear, if my salary had been paid by taxpayers and my work effectively consisted of playing dress-up and going to cool parties, my reaction would be, “Well, that gravy train ride was good while it lasted.”
the Guardian: “Senior Taleban leaders attended a conference in Washington in mid-1996 and US diplomats regularly travelled to Taleban headquarters.”
85. Or, i could go live in US supported Saudi Arabia, where women are second class citizens as well…
The hooters weren’t white? Nice to know you are only sexist towards non-whites. I guess its a step in the right direction…
Are these examples of anglo-christianity’s morally superior attitudes to women as compared to Muslims?
That’s a Japanese video, you unitard. And I’m sure the woman in it consented.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 01:57 AM • permalink
It is exhibiting moral superiority, you fucktard- they’re free to wave their tits around without winding up dangling from the end of a 14 ton Kato; same as skinny, ugly, under-endowed “actors” are free to waddle around the stage of La Mama with their atrophied todgers dangling out in the name of artistic expression and challenging the dominant paradigm of capitalist Bushoward hegemony.
Go and play in the traffic, you juvenile, duplicitous twat.
Yeah, thanks. It tells me that the overwhelming majoirty of rapists in this country are anglo/christians.
You’re writing from Australia, right? Guess what, dunce – the overwhelming majority of citizens are “anglo/christians.” Are you saying they are over-represented proportionally? If so, let’s see your data.
91. kilo. I posted it, numbat, not KK. Yes, I like breasts, but I would never think a woman is to blame if I groped hers, even if uncovered.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 02:05 AM • permalink
And re the Sedition laws: out of some hundreds of petitions against the new laws, including all the major media organisations, only two were for them: the Federal police and the Attorney General’s office. They are bad laws. Even to speak about these things is seditious? Things are more Kafkaesque than I thought.
You can say what you like about this Government, and I doubt you’ll be arrested, Alison. But taxpayers have no responsibility to fund you and your colleagues in that effort.
Why not try some contrarian thinking, for a change, and do something different? Put on plays people want to see and make money from ticket sales. It’s happened before, it can happen again. Imagine how proud your theatre company would be if they DIDN’T have to suck up to the Howard Government for monaey, like a common prostitute!
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 04 at 02:13 AM • permalink
unitard – unattractive and therefore should not be seen in public
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 02:13 AM • permalink
UPDATE. Ms Croggon at her blog: “Good things come to those who wait. The Age finally ran my opinion piece on La Mama Theatre being put ‘on notice’ by the Australia Council, almost two weeks after I sent it in, and only after Robin Usher caught up with the same story. After I submitted it, which ruffled my feathers slightly. An old journalist never loses those scoopish instincts.”
Ah, Alison. Such biting insight on an issue of such import. I’ll bet there’s a Walkley in it for you…
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 04 at 02:19 AM • permalink
Just a short note, in response to those who ask why the arts ought to be subsidised here. I do wonder if these same people question the amount of public money that goes into sports, or devote the same scrutiny to the amount of government money that goes into so-called the arts mprivate industry here – sums that dwarf the relatively miniscule amount spent on the arts. Especially when you take out of the cultural budget the amount spent on museums and other institutions, it’s tiny.
Survey after survey shows that Australian like their arts. They also show that artists are among the hardest working and most poorly paid sector of the Australian economy. Study after study shows that the arts justify themselves well on grounds of generating employment, tourism and other economic benefits. However, that’s not why I and others who value the arts think they are important. They make us smarter, they make us think, they nourish us in lots of intangible but crucial ways. That is, if you think being a human being is more than being an economic creature.
In Australia, which has a total population around the size of London spread over a continent almost as big as North America, we face particular difficulties in making art. We can’t tour productions without great expense, whereas in Europe shows can tour for literally years. Distributing books is much more expensive. We face competing with hugely resourced international corporations without those resources. If the arts are not subsidised here, we will cease to have Australian arts.
If we think that having an Australian culture is important, then we have to subsidise it (if you don’t care about having a culture, well, we have no grounds in common). Of course artists will go on working even if they are not subsidised, because this is what artists do – they are committed, hardworking people. But the difficulties peculiar to Australia mean that, without support, it is impossible to achieve the standards of excellence that are desirable to anyone who wants to do anything good. In the end people get tired or go overseas (there is a huge cultural braindrain going on right now, as resources here shrink and shrink and – guess what? – elsewhere Australian talent is hugely appreciated).
So, if you think that the ideal culture consists of an endless run of foreign musicals and commercial theatre, with perhaps an occasional visit by the (heavily subsidised) RSC, fine. If you think it’s good to make Australia a parochial, cultural backwater without a voice of its own, and ensure all our best and brightest head overseas where their talent will be appreciated, well and good. But I happen to think that Australia deserves better.
I don’t believe in public subsidy of art, sport or any other commercial endevour; they should sink or swim on their own merit.
As to the usual blather about “Australian culture”, how many Australians could be bothered attending any of these turgid, hectoring, self-indulgent wankfests which are aimed at a miniscule audience who believe their choice of entertainment should be unded by those who don’t give a shit about same?
Same goes for the ABC- it’s not our ABC, they believe it’s their ABC, and squeal long and loud whenever a decision is made to shed one of their soapboxes (and crush their freedom of speech etc).
I’d say the vast majority of readers here (and the population in general) would concur.
#103 Alison: as a rebuttal allow me to quote a local [Los Angeles], well-respected performance artist, Sandra Tsing Loh. She is most definitely not right-wing; I would classify her as apolitical or middle-of-the-road.
In the end, what counts is that my work has amused and delighted me. It doesn’t really matter whether you or anyone else likes it or hates it; since I funded it all myself, I don’t have to answer to anyone but myself. I always thought that was what artists did: They earned money and then spent it on the pieces they wanted to do, exactly the way they wanted to do them.
(Source: Depth Takes a Holiday, 1996)
She gets it.
But I happen to think that Australia deserves better.
Don’t you think it’s a little elitist for you to decide what Australia deserves?
Shouldn’t Australians decide, via the use of their own money?
And isn’t there more than a little self-interest in your support for public funding of obscure art held in low regard by said punters?
Indeed we do question the money that goes into sport. Here in South Australia, despite it being the most popular pastimes by a fair margin, the state government is not going to spend a penny on football and cricket.
It’s all very well to say that ‘survey after survey’ say that Australians like their arts; but they do not like them well enough to actually go to them.
And who can blame them? My own experience with the ‘arts’ sector is pretty similar to wronwright’s. The Australian arts community is elitest, excusive and dull.
As for freedom of expression being ‘threatened’ by this cut of funding, I have to say that is a pathetic argument. Your freedom to express yourself is just as great as mine, the difference is that mine does not cost the taxpayer.
After all, given that the arts community refuses to make itself culturally understandable to the mainstream of Australian life, it is hard to imagine that there’s the slightest chance that the arts are going to have the political impact that you seem to hope from them.
In reading your article, Alison, the coded message is loud and clear: give me some more money. Well, my answer is, no. If you can put on artistic performances that actually had meaning to the Australian public instead of a tiny minority, you would not need the funding, and you would be able to have your ‘avante garden’ works that your small subgroup seem to consider so important.
Obviously, you are no more likely to follow that path then I am likely to go watch theatre, but hey, what do I get out of funding the lifestyles of your artistic harpies?
(By the by, good on Alison for coming here and defending her case. She’d make a better lawyer…)
Alison, I will agree with some of what you say as regards the cost of production and some in the arts being bloody hard workers. I’ve done a little bit of theatre work, although prefer film and tv stuff when I’m in that field.
If you want to complain about something, complain about reality tv and it’s impact upon the film and television industries.
Complain about the overabundance of actors and other players in the arts who now have no place to go other than to try and put on plays that nobody wants to see.
When I go to the theatre I’m happy to be provoked, entertained and startled. Just not preached at.
As for money for museums, again they should present their exhibits in an unbiased manner. I used to go to the old Melbourne museum regularly.
I’ve not been game to go to the new one in Carlton simply because I’ve heard too much about it’s black armband presentation of Australian history, and I’m not interested in subsidising that sort of crap.
In this day and age also, it is getting cheaper to fly, and with the technology available, surely it’s not within the realms of impossibility that multimedia can be used to network performances from around the country?
(ps. congrats on entering the Blair Lair gold star and a skippy badge to you, no sarc intended)
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 11 04 at 03:14 AM • permalink
In Australia, which has a total population around the size of London spread over a continent almost as big as North America
London’s population is less than 8 million. It is the only European city larger than Sydney or Melbourne. Australia’s population is mostly urban. A tour of just three cities (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane) would make a theatre production available to just under 10 million people. Australia is one of the few western countries where this is possible. (The others are the US and England.)
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 03:16 AM • permalink
I do wonder if these same people question the amount of public money that goes into sports, or devote the same scrutiny to the amount of government money that goes into so-called the arts mprivate industry here – sums that dwarf the relatively miniscule amount spent on the arts.
Alison, I question all of those. If sports devotees can’t be arsed to support their own sports, I’ll be darned if I should have to! As for corporate welfare, I’ve always been agin it, in all its forms, be it through subsidies or tariffs.
And the idea that goes along with your point is ludicrous: that if money is being spent wrongly in other areas, it should be spent wrongly in yours too??
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 04 at 03:30 AM • permalink
With regard to “Cats”, I was in London back in 1983 or 1984 and Mum and Dad wanted to see Cats. I declined – I had spotted this new movie in “Time Out” called “Terminator”, so I went to that instead. The rest of the family got to see the original London production and I got to see one of Arnie’s great movies months before it opened in Australia. 20 something years later, I still don’t want to see Cats, but I sure enjoy watching re-runs of Arnie and his 17 words.
Each to their own.
As to the performing arts, I bought the missus and I season tickets to the Sydney Theatre Company two years ago. Cost me over a thousand bucks. When you add up all the dinners that we had beforehand, and the grog and taxis and parking, I probably spent nearly two grand on enjoying the yarts. We would have gone last year and this year, but a sprog happened and that was the end of that.
I have no problems shelling out good money for good plays that hold my interest. The season that we went to was a mixed bag. Some were great, but I slept through most of “Julius Caesar”. The theatre in the Opera House was quite small and intimate, with very comfy seats, and I started snoring after a few minutes. I woke up to find Brutus glaring at me from about 15 feet away during the middle of a big speech. I managed to stay alert for about 2 lines before disappearing back into the land of nod. I heard later I was not the only one sawing wood that night. However, none of them could match me for pitch and volume. I guess that was the most brutal form of review for an actor.
Most of the plays that we went to played to full houses, or very close to full. They had no problems pulling in lots of people who paid lots of money. I sat behind that chrome domed Professor whats-his-name that was chairman or CEO of Fairfax at the time. One of the characters had a line that went something like, “Those chardonnay swilling wankers that read The Age” and the top of his head went bright red when I burst out laughing behind him. I should have slapped the back of his bald little cranium.
Unfortunately, I was one of the few people in the audience that found that line funny. I was also the only person that pissed themselves laughing at a the mention of “nuff-nuffs”. No one else got it.
Oops. Must have been in the presence of several hundred chardonnay swilling socialists. Nuff-nuffs blew my cover. Beware the sneaky utterance of “nuff-nuffs.”
Anyway, if I want to fund the yarts, I would prefer it comes out of my own pocket, rather than via my taxes. I’ll watch what I want to watch, not what you think I should watch.
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 11 04 at 03:52 AM • permalink
Anyway, if I want to fund the yarts, I would prefer it comes out of my own pocket, rather than via my taxes.
I feel that way about most services the government insists I pay for.
I’ll watch what I want to watch, not what you think I should watch.
Oh, you misunderstand! The arts community don’t actually want ordinary folk clogging up the empty aisles of their arthouse theatres. They would simply appreciate it if you’d keep signing the cheques.
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 11 04 at 04:50 AM • permalink
I got freebies to Cats in London in 1985, and fucked off to the pub within 20 minutes- ever since I’ve been a fan of compulsory neutering.
I know plenty of wallies who toddle off to the opra and ballet, and are bored shitless and would sooner be at the pub, but go to be seen- it shows their collegues who culturally aware they are.
There is so much pretension and posturing involved in appretiation of the yartz it makes me want to puke.
If, however, some enormous sheila squarking like she’s just been given a barbed-wire enema, or some emaciated pillowbiter poncing about en pointe is your idea of cultural nirvana, knock yourselves out; don’t expect me to sub your choice in filling your spare time.
There’s a reason why there was/is an Australian cultural cringe, most of us know bollocks when we see it; also the idea that something is worthy because it’s old is elitist twaddle as well.
Most opera etc is nothing more than the Cats of its day.
I agree with most of what you say, Alison, up until the point where you argue that ‘if we care about our arts, we have to subsidise it’.
Now there’s an ideologically fraught argument!
I suspect that one of the biggest problems with Aussie arts over the past hundred years or so has been subsidies. Looking to subsidies for support inevitably means concentrating on the influence of governments and bureaucracies, rather than on what plays communicate to audiences.
If the arts had been left free to grow with the growing Australian economy and population – without government subsidies – then what we might have seen would have been the growth of much more community-based arts organisations, with deeper philanthropical support, instead of what we DO have: an arts industry that is vulnerable to every changing whim of government and the public services.
My opinion, anyway.
Apparently old journalists can forget that a story so overblown that it only turns up after weeks when the usual opinion editor is away does not constitute a scoop. They can also forget the principle of disclosure. Alison Croggon (here, #34):
And the artists who begin there end up in all sorts of places – the Theatre de Ville in Paris (the largest theatre in Paris, getting half a million people a year) has seen Daniel Keene’s work (Keene, like David Williamson, began at La Mama).
Keene is Alison’s husband.
Alison, if you’re really concerned about freedom of speech, perhaps you should stage a performance that mocks Islam? I bet Brack’s tolerance stormtroopers shut it down within days.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 11 04 at 06:09 AM • permalink
Why do people keep talking about empty theatres? That’s just not true. Typical was all the shit about the Melbourne Festival, where people kept attacking it for not selling tickets, whereas I kept going to see things that had full houses. I saw 2/3 full only twice out of about 10 shows. The rest were packed. I presume some of those people were “ordinary people” (as if artists themselves are not “ordinary people” who pay taxes like everyone else). A lot of them were young people. Who also pay taxes.
I’ve yet to see anyone who says it’s compulsory to see art. Life just happens to be richer if you have art in it. I have no patience with art that preaches, as anyone who reads me regularly knows. Hannie Rayson, for example, has never loved me.
I do want art that’s thoughtful, beautiful and exciting. Usually that thoughtful, beautiful and exciting art involves questioning how things are and imagining how things might be otherwise. That’s what art does. It’s true that some people in the arts are elitist and dull (try Peter Craven). Just happens that La Mama is one of those places that isn’t, in the least, elitist. And very seldom dull.
And, erm, the STC is subsidised. Not much, by overseas standards. But it is still a subsidised company.
Just to get some perspective: last year the Australian Sports Commission received $204.549 million. The total Australia Council budget for 2005/6 was $149.248 million. Are you going to go for those tax-guzzling olympic cyclists and pole vaulters? Seems only fair.
You have failed to read previous posts- if we must have for example an Institute of Sport, it should be full fee.
As to the claim of full houses, then the box office must be being heavily subsidised, otherwise there would be no need for subsidy.
I used to be a callow leftist and attended myriads of dull fringe events, and the only crowd was around the bar, usually accompanied by whiny blather about the perfidry of government funding.
The only systems which have consistently provided large funding to the yartz have been the nazis, fascists and commies until socialists managed to weasel into government in Western democracies.
I would have thought funding from what you oppose would be an anethema, but obviously not.
I suggest you google hypocrisy.
Alison, if you’re really concerned about freedom of speech, perhaps you should stage a performance that mocks Islam? I bet Brack’s tolerance stormtroopers shut it down within days.
Heck, a play lampooning Melbournian high-brow pretensiousness, entitled “Brackistan”, would probably bring in the paying customers by the hoarde!
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 04 at 06:44 AM • permalink
#119 As Habib said the last time you brought up sport subsidy, you will find a degree of consistency here on sport subsidy. It’s not how the subsidy pie is carved up, but when an enterprise is viable, it is bad even for the enterprise for it to become dependent on subsidy. I find the money thrown at Olympic medal sports obscene.
The questioning of the Melbourne Festival’s direction was not based on subjective assessments of how many people were at performances, but on rapidly declining box office even as subsidy was increasing. That’s not the only indicator of a festival’s success or failure, but we shouldn’t refuse to discuss the situation on artistic grounds. Once, for less, the festival was more generally pleasing, though not without any lack of unconventional acts.
The notion of La Mama as non-elitist is like the inverse snobbery of its audiences. If you can profess to like seeing home-made theatre in a tiny upper room, where—if they followed one commenter’s suggestion of providing rotten fruit—no one would throw it because the pips would get you on the rebound, you belong to an elite indeed, compared to the comfy-chair, easy-park, money-for-entertainment expectations of the rest of us.
We need to organise a RWDB night out at the La Mama. Treat whatever’s playing as an English pantomime, and it could be fun!
Otherwise, stack the audience with Tourette’s Syndrome sufferers. Could be the most engaging audience they’ve seen for years.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 04 at 07:31 AM • permalink
Alison, as others have pointed out, most of us here are not in favour of money taken from taxpayers being used to fund sport. You’ll also find that a lot of us resent our taxes being squandered on businesses, farmers, unions, the ABC, films and solar power stations.
You’re right that the arts enrich many people’s lives (including my own), however, I would rather choose what I see and support rather than have a bureaucrat or politician force me to pay for something I have no interest in seeing whatsoever.
The arts would still exist under a libertarian model, however they would have to be more responsive to the tastes of their audience. As with all things, authoritarian approaches to funding don’t work and only lead to mediocrity.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 11 04 at 07:52 AM • permalink
I know that the STC is subsidised. The point I was making is that people will put their hands in their pockets for quite expensive tickets if the show is worthwhile.
Government should not need to throw big lumps of money at theatres if patrons are willing to pay. The STC could probably ratchet up its prices and disdain all subsidy if it had the guts to get off the tit. Buy why bother taking the risk of cranking up prices if some beauracrat will just write you a cheque?
Can anyone tell me what it costs to see “The Boy From Oz”? Did that needs subsidising? How about tickets to U2? The Rolling Stones?
I know that some might think that “The Boy From Oz” is tacky and low-brow, but the punters are queueing up to see it.
I think someone has already pointed out that this represents the market in action. The punters are getting all the entertainment that they want from TV, movies, footy and cricket and the odd live theatre or musical that is pitched at the masses.
Perhaps I should emphasise the word
entertain. People want to be entertained. Shakespeare knew how to entertain the people of his day. He doesn’t work so well now because we are living in a different age. Most people can’t be bothered to tune their ears into the language.
Mozart knew how to entertain. I reckon he was a rock god in his age. He was the Mick Jagger or Robbie Williams of his day. People these days want to listen to Robbie Williams. That’s their preference – live with it. If teenagers can fork out over $100 to see Robbie, then adults can just deal with forking out two or three times that amount to watch Mozart or some wierdo dance troupe.
The music industry seems to thrive without much assistance from the government – why can’t the yarts?
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 11 04 at 07:58 AM • permalink
- I haven’t been to a live show for years. The last time may have been Bell Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where the three witches were dressed like Star Wars extras. Oh…clever. But I usually drag myself to one Australian movie a year – ‘drag’ in this context meaning ‘enforced compliance’ rather than ‘colourful costume’, because just about every homemade flick I’ve seen since Mad Max 2 irritated me something fierce.
“Studied amateurishness.” I can’t remember the source, but that expression pretty well sums up for me the Australian film industry, and by extension the arts scene in general. There’s so much determination put into being bloody Australian that issues such as the actual quality of the work fade into nonexistence. To borrow from Jorge Luis Borges, being Australian is either an inescapable act of fate or an affectation.
And it’s nonsense to say that art will wither if the government closes its purse. If you want to do it, you find a way.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 11 04 at 08:21 AM • permalink
Jack Hibberd, a play of whose opened La Mama in 1967 and who is the best of the crop associated with the place, suggested in 2000 that there be a two year moratorium on state funding of theatre. Then, once we knew where the land lay, who was up to it and who wasn’t, the Australia Council might be able to selectively help the surviving companies, the way government does all too much in other aspects of business. This looks too far into the future for me, but such is the view of Mr La Mama.
Cutting subsidies should in now way stifle free speech. If you are broke and want to speak to a crowd, put on a play for free at lunchtime in the open air – try the Pitt St mall. Buskers do it all the time. No one is restricting your right to say something – all that they are doing is refusing to pay you to put your point across. If your point is that important, you’ll happily communicate it for free.
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 11 04 at 08:27 AM • permalink
Ordinarily I would devote all mental energies to writing a concise response to Alison’s cogent points explaining how conservatives are opposed to subsidizing sport activities and coliseums. But I have to deal with kilo’s brazen assault on a woman’s right to display her breasts in a play for money.
It’s called A R T . kilo, did you not read anything Alison wrote. We must support the arts. I support the arts. Not all arts, true. But the bouncing whoa-my-mind-sure-jerked-back-to-this-play type of arts. Call me a sponsor if you will. A Cosimo De Medici of Ohio.
And as if that’s not enough, I support diversity. American, Asian, black, white, Japanese. I support all women’s right to show me their hooters, especially jiggling them with their hands in exchange for a pair of shiny beads in front of the Cats Meow on Bourbon Street.
Sure kilo, try taking away women’s rights and privileges. First breasts. And then the right to drive. Then vote. Before you know it, she’ll be covered in a tent while cloistered in her home away from the eyes of good intentioned men. Not that anyone would ever really clamor for that.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 04 at 08:59 AM • permalink
From KK’s comment way above, here’s an example of the sort of thing the government has to support because most people sure as hell aren’t going to pay to see it:
Tesssa as Athena struts forth to sultry jazz from behind the video screen onto which her image initially projects (above left), and assists Zeus in the re-ordering of his Kingdom, including mobile-phoning Hermes to have projections warning against Promethean defiance sent out to all the major cities of the Earth, suggesting refurbishments of the Mt Olympus Inc. headquarters (’…chrome thrones’), and massaging his aching head.
I know you folks can’t wait to line up to buy tickets for that.
Oh, and as for kilo, he’s not a unitard, he’s a banana hammock. Much more hideous.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 04 at 09:58 AM • permalink
- Ms Scroggin said it herself..
“La Mama is unique in the world
No other city boasts a company of this nature>
She also says
“Little Alison is like a toddler let loose in a sweet shop”,”I’m good at foolish statements”,”you’d think I’d understand my perverse nature by now”,”your hostess with the mostess”,”I diagnosed myself with prelyrical anxiety”,reviews plays “My Head is a sledgehammer”,”Now I’ve got the Shakes” and “Now that Communism is dead my life feels empty”.
She has an admirer
“Astringent but precise and passionate perceptions -thy name is Scoggin”-George Hunka (Superficialities)…
One good thing …she says The Deep End on radio national is kaput.
Alison Croggon is big enough and smart enough to take care of herself so I’m not going to try and give a defence of her position. But I’d like to add my two bobs worth to the other theme that is dominating this board and that is the pack of whinging prima donnas that feel the necessity to latch themselvs to the public tit in order to sponge a living off the taxes of hard working Australians; elite sportswomen and sportsmen, public librarians, court appointed advocates, politicians and all those others who are engaged in occupations that if left to the ‘market’ for recompense would find themselvs peddling their arse on Fitzroy St.
Oh but of course that is not what anyone meant at all. Its just fun to put the boot in regardless of fact. Thought experiment; a service is provided that is popularly subscribed yet if the participation of a small percentage is withdrawn that service becomes uneconomic and therefore the service is withdrawn. A minority thus determines the existence of what has been delivering utility to a majority. And this is how markets are fundamentally democratic? Markets can be efficient distributors of resources throughout an economy but there is a profound danger in making them the untrammeled arbiter of social engagement.
Boo hoo some nob had a bad night at the theatre and that becomes the reason to dismantle subsidy. Well while we are at it some pissy little sprog from Scotch pissed me off the other day so lets take the subsidy away from private schools. All you parasites that accepted a home owners grant I want my money back, its hard enough making the rent every month while underwriting your entry into the property market oh and the baby bonus as well, if I can’t be there at the conception I’m not going to be there to subsidise its arse wiping. And it goes on and on and on but lets give the elbow to the arts because I saw a play at the Malthouse that made me sleepy and had a lot of poofs in the foyer.
Thought experiment; a service is provided that is popularly subscribed yet if the participation of a small percentage is withdrawn that service becomes uneconomic and therefore the service is withdrawn. A minority thus determines the existence of what has been delivering utility to a majority. And this is how markets are fundamentally democratic? Markets can be efficient distributors of resources throughout an economy but there is a profound danger in making them the untrammeled arbiter of social engagement.
I hope if the Howard government loses the next election it will use this logic to stay in power.
As for withdrawing subsidies (and, yes, I know you were being sarcastic):
Private schools – fine, as long as public education is means tested.
Home owners grant – should not exist.
Baby bonus – also should not exist. Sure, Australia needs babies, but the baby bonus encourages unsuitable people to become mothers. Look for a spike in crime in about 15 years. Check out the work of Steven D. Levitt on abortion and crime.Reading your post, I get the impression you were working yourself up into a real tizzy writing it, or working your way through a bottle of red. Or should that be chardonnay?
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 11:31 AM • permalink
I hope you use a spittle screen for your computer, burnie.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 04 at 11:46 AM • permalink
Whoops had a contrary opinion so obviously I must be barking mad and dribbling in front of my screen or a chardonay drinking socialist.
Yep those points have made me see the light.
Muzzie zapper a flip comment aint an argument. Muscle up big boy and give us some thing by way of solids. Crash try and make a point and Andrea…oh why do I bother.
Muzzie zapper a flip comment aint an argument.
I’m surprised you expected more, given the tone of your last paragraph in #134. There are plenty of comments on this thread that I agree with, so in this case I’ll leave the presentation of arguments to the ‘big boys’. BTW, I don’t make flip comments; I’m not John Kerry. Perhaps you meant flippant.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 02:01 PM • permalink
Also, you might like to compare the reaction to your post to the general level of respect Alison received.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2006 11 04 at 02:09 PM • permalink
Now, now, I’ve had some very nice naps at performances of classical music. Believe me, as a sometime-insomniac, I would gladly pay for tickets to more classical music performances.
I used to act; I was in those sorts of plays where people would get mad and walk out because the plays would insult their beliefs/ideas/morality. You know what? Those types of plays are usually pretty stupid, and there are few reasons to put them on.
Now a good Shakespeare play, or decent Greek drama, those make people stay in their seats–whether to doze or enjoy, who cares?
It’s not your ideas, burn, it’s your delivery—even if you agreed with us, your exaggerated outrage (without the fillip of entertaining humor) is off-putting and rather embarrassing to witness. I suggest anger management classes.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 04 at 04:10 PM • permalink
Thought experiment; a service is provided that is popularly subscribed yet if the participation of a small percentage is withdrawn that service becomes uneconomic and therefore the service is withdrawn. A minority thus determines the existence of what has been delivering utility to a majority.
Assuming we aren’t talking about public goods (and art isn’t one), it can’t have been providing much utility to that majority if the threat of a small increase in price (as a result of a “small percentage” of consumers deciding to stop buying it) immediately makes the bottom fall out of that market. It indicates that the majority has plenty of better uses for their money.
I’d submit that economic thought experiments perhaps aren’t one of your strong points.
Defenders of art subsidies never cease to amaze me, considering that they are ostensibly intelligent and educated people.
I can’t at the moment recall who said it (or if I’ve got the quote right) but an American expert in Constitutional Jurisprudence once said that yanking a museum’s or theatre’s subsidy is like burning books.
Really? There is no much nonsense packed into that statement (or the original, which I’m pretty certain my recollection approximates closely) that it is hard to know where to start.
A burned book is a book destroyed. But an art exhibit not funded by the taxpayers does not entail destruction of the art.
I am quite certain that the trendy postmodernist crowd would easily come up with private money to display the art if the taxpayers’ funds were unavailable to them. (And if they can’t, then why on earth should the taxpayers have to foot the bill?)
Moreover, while book burning violates someone’s liberty, namely, that of the owner of the book, abstaining from subsidizing art violates no one’s liberty. While I do support the building of museums and theatres, for that matter: buildings can always be reused, artists and and actors/playwrights have no right to the taxpayers’ money.
Any claim to the contrary must explain why they have a right to it. It just makes no sense.
My analogy of book burning is employed here as a sample of an aggressively symbolic way of dramatizing that some thoughts are unthinkable. It is a favorite measure of totalitarian governments.
Refusal to subsidize art in no way communicates that some thoughts are unthinkable. It simply says that the taxpayers are to be free to think what they want when it comes to their own hard-earned money.
All these points are so obvious that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the defenders of art subsidies are just being disingenuous. Their protests are a smokescreen designed to stifle the opposition.
People generally don’t like to be identified as book burners and enemies of freedom of thought and expression. I suspect many will remain silent in the face of the onslaught from advocates of subsidy (present company excepted, of course.)
Freedom of expression cannot possibly include the right to force someone to pay you to speak or paint. Anyone who refuses to see that has long ceased caring about the truth.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 11 04 at 04:55 PM • permalink
- Slightly O/T, re comment in #128: as I said earlier (or elsewhere in another thread of Tim’s; I can’t remember),if John Bell and others stopped their damn tinkering with Shakespeare, in their determination to make his plays somehow “relevant” to contemporary audiences, and actually set them in the context of their Elizabethan period, people might go and see them and appreciate them.
What’s so meaningful to the 21st century about Richard III as a 1930s Fascist dictator? Hey, if we’re going to go down that track, how about making Richard a George Bush character – a hateful, war-mongering, tyrannical, oppressor? Or casting Othello as Saddam Hussein, racially oppressed by the Israeli Shylock? Now there’s relevance for you. The theatre would be sold out to all the lefties, no need for subsidies, art reflecting the popular will, etc
To my way of thinking, if someone pays your wage, you have an obligation to do what they tell you to do. If the boss walks in, hands you a shovel and says, “Go shovel that pile of shit”, then you can either tell him to shove it and walk out and find another job, or get to it with gusto. You takes the money, you does the work.
If artists are going to accept money from the government, the government should be telling them what to put on. That’s a fair exchange if you ask me. I give you money, I own your time and talent. If the government gives say the RTA a pile of money for roads, it can tell the RTA what roads to build and where to build them.
Personally, I reckon Tony Abbot could write some great plays. The themes would probably revolved around the Pope punching poofs. I’d pay $2 to see a musical by Bill Heffernan (assuming the other $98 that it costs to put on a drama about sheep would be subsidy).
If you take that line, accepting money from the government is in fact the greatest threat to free speech. Hitler was a great funder of the Arts. Goebbels and Goering and all the rest were great collectors of art. However, they were pretty particular about what they liked, and artists that they didn’t like usually ended up sucking Zyklon B. Stalin and Mao also commissioned a lot of art. Saddam commissioned a lot of paintings and statues of himself (I seem to remember a tank recovery vehicle pulling one down a few years ago).
John Howard should insist that La Mama gets federal funding and then enforce a year long staging of plays about the greatness of Bob Menzies. Or plays that trash Gough.
Artists with any integrity should run a mile when a smiling MP turns up with a cheque. True independence of thought and action will always be compromised by subsidy.
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 11 04 at 08:17 PM • permalink
#149 I believe with your post, the nail has been hit well and truly on the head.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 11 04 at 08:25 PM • permalink
PS. I once slept through AC/DC as well. A mate had a spare ticket and we saw them at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. It was Friday night, it had been a long week, I had two beers before the show and I just couldn’t cope with the endless guitar solos at the end of every song by Angus. I think I woke up for “Hells Bells”, but promptly fell asleep again after they stopped the gonging.
It’s not only high culture that can be boring as batshit.
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 11 04 at 08:25 PM • permalink
Firstly, I dislike the practice of referring to people by numbers in these threads. It’s dehumanising, and in long threads like this one, rather confusing, as you have to keep on scrolling up and down until you reach the previous number.
Secondly, I reckon a RWDB night out at La Mama would be an awesome idea, though youse all would have to scrub up well, and not hit the turps (heavily, at least) until afterwards.
- Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 11 04 at 09:00 PM • permalink
Firstly, I dislike the practice of referring to people by numbers in these threads. It’s dehumanising, and in long threads like this one, rather confusing, as you have to keep on scrolling up and down until you reach the previous number.
Yeah guys, I put permalinks in the comments for a reason.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 11 04 at 09:04 PM • permalink
Just a note: whether Daniel Keene is my husband (which is fully disclosed on my blog) makes no difference to the fact that he is among the most produced (one year, the most produced) contemporary playwrights in France, with his work on at major stages – not only the Theatre de Ville, but also the only Australian playwright ever to be on at Europe’s biggest arts festival, the Avignon Festival, and with more than 50 productions around France and now Europe in the past few years. Along with Joanna Murray-Smith, he is Australia’s most successful theatrical export. Those things happen to be fact and have nothing to do with my opinion. Easily checkable. Try Theatre-Contemporain.net
But seriously, TimT, what if you had posted any number of comments on a thread?
I assume you are suggesting we type name and post number(s)in order to refer to a specific comment or conmments? But would one not have to “keep on scrolling up and down” anyway, to ensure you read the right post by the right person?
Honestly, having a number tattooed on your arm is dehumanising; being referred to as a number on a blog is, well, help me out here folks…
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 11 04 at 09:07 PM • permalink
Just a note: whether Daniel Keene is my husband (which is fully disclosed on my blog) makes no difference to the fact that he is among the most produced (one year, the most produced) contemporary playwrights in France
You cannot imagine how much respect you’ve been shown when virtually no one has made a comment about what you just said. As for me, I will only say that I can well understand how you are very proud of your hubby. Best regards.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 04 at 09:13 PM • permalink
Alison. Unless I am mistaken, the reference to your husband was made in the interest of “full disclosure” and was (is) germaine to the discussion.
Also, you did not mention it despite numerous references to his name here above. The article under discussion also does not name Mr. Keene as your husband.
Andrew R. can speak for himself, but I had to go to your blog to find this out.
I am pleased that your husband has found success and would venture to say the appeal of his work rather than the size of his stipend may account for that success.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 11 04 at 09:17 PM • permalink
Firstly, I dislike the practice of referring to people by numbers in these threads.
Yeah, I have to agree with Mr. 152 up there.
(good gawd McEnroe, I’m having to do your schtick, we need you back 24/7)
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 04 at 09:19 PM • permalink
… environmentally friendly?
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 04 at 09:23 PM • permalink
Re: the question of compromise from State funding. Actually a real question with a complex set of answers. It holds equally true for those Renaissance artists who were employed by Italian nobility, and the letters between them and their commissioners make pretty funny and familiar reading, artists of any calibre being notoriously disobedient and recalcitrant.
If art is considered important (an assumption that clearly few here agree with), it has to be paid for by someone. Though I suppose many people like their artists dead or starving. The State is a good modern compromise for the work that is – like Paradise Lost, Carmen, Ulysses, Madame Butterfly, and countless other masterpieces in even the most conservative of canons – not a commercial hit on its first outing. That goes for almost everything new, thoughtful, lifechangingly brilliant, etc. Some people value this stuff. It’s traditionally been valued as part of the equation of what makes a civilised society.
And it would be good to get some actual information into this fact-free area, instead of windy generalisations about the “silent majority” who hate the arts. (Cross posted from my blog).
One third of Australians strongly supports the arts, for reasons of enjoyment and a range of intellectual and emotional benefits, which include national identity. One third feels, for a range of reasons to do with access and feelings of exclusion, hostile towards the arts. The other third falls in between, and can probably be characterised as 50/50. Those who feel hostile tend to be male, living away from capital cities, poorly educated, younger, with children. Their feelings of hostility are mostly to do with social exclusion. Those who place high value on the arts tend to be female, highly educated, urban. (Source: Australian and the Arts, Saatchi and Saatchi, 2002).
Even that one third who highly value the arts are a considerable portion of the populace and surely in a democracy have as much right to be considered as those who are hostile. (And they probably pay more taxes than those people who don’t value the arts, who tend to be in a lower social demographic.) And that one third that feels hostile isn’t going to feel any different if they don’t have any access to them, which won’t happen without programs that take the arts to rural areas, help people get better informed about what they actually are, and feel included (or that they are not “sissy”) and so on.
It’s worth noting that the arts that are being cut or facing cuts (like the Community Cultural Development Board, or La Mama itself, or Queensland’s only Indigenous theatre company) are often those which in fact provide access to communities which otherwise do not have a cultural voice. Make no mistake, the rich will always have their art – and their cultural voice – because they know it’s empowering.
It makes a difference when people have a chance to actually experience art. I’ve personally seen the transformative effect they can have on people’s lives (programs in prison, etc). It all gets back to the question of what a decent, civilised society actually is.
And I thought commenting on a blog on Sunday with a Goodies rerun on the tellie was cause for self-examination. At least I’m not the most-produced contemporary playwright in France.
In an informal forum where regulars have taken to addressing Ms Croggon as Alison, she refers to her own husband as `Keene’ (nb the permalink). In a forum in which people say they never knew La Mama existed, one person saw Koskie’s Metamorphoses imagining it was a Greek play and another wants to take the togas out of Greek plays, one could be forgiven for thinking that she was trading on ignorance for referring to her husband so impersonally, whatever his CV.
- Thanks for your contributions, Alison. For my part, I would be greatly encouraged if I saw more playwrights attacking the dark forces moving to destroy not just the arts brigade, but western society. Instead of plays attacking islamofascism, we are offered things like Two Brothers, which you rightly reviewed as being the wrong way to deal the subject of asylum seekers.
Perhaps those dark forces are feared by the scribes? All the more reason to deal with it.
I have no patience, however, for a worldview which says that the root causes of asylum seeking cannot be addressed – instead we must hand-wring about the seekers while denigrating or resisting all attempts to change the regimes and dysfunctional countries/societies which they seek to escape from.
Your summation of Andrew Bolt’s world view as simplistic and Manichean smacks of the same sort of exclusional debating tactic used on him this morning on Insiders, where the panel attempted to dismiss him as on his own in being a global warming sceptic.
The extreme reactions to writers like Bolt and Albrechtsen expose many on the left to ridicule. They are, whether you find them simplistic or not, intelligent commentators who raise valid points.
I need to be convinced that there are plays with quality points to make – not just Raysonesque caricature – before I will give up either cash or my evening to attend.
#162 While there have been broad-brush dismissals of the arts here, there have been very many who acknowledge the importance of various arts to their lives. That doesn’t entail throwing money at arts organisations. You’re not against the arts by not wanting subsidy, especially in particular cases where the Dramatic whatever quango several steps removed from Hitler-Howard might just be checking that public money is well-spent. Most art is bad, but subsidy regimes entrench bad art.
Some of the hostility you’ve encountered here might arise from obvious political stalking horses: you may not mean by `decent, civilised society’ the left-wing wish list, but we’ve seen enough who do.
In a forum in which people say they never knew La Mama existed, one person saw Koskie’s Metamorphoses imagining it was a Greek play and another wants to take the togas out of Greek plays, one could be forgiven for thinking that she was trading on ignorance for referring to her husband so impersonally, whatever his CV.
Oh for crying out loud. I’m the one who brought up Metamorphoses and I didn’t imagine it to be a Greek play. I freaking slept through it. But for the record, when I saw the author was Ovid, I knew it was Roman (based on having read Anne Rice’s book Blood and Gold, or maybe it was Gold and Blood). But by that time, I thought so what. These philistines won’t catch it.
And yes, I’m the one that suggested—
(my gosh, this is like having to defend myself to MentalFloss)
— replacing toga covered senators (note –> by this time I knew it was Roman, hence the use of the words “toga” and “senators”) with neocons and—
Oh hell. Ok, I’m a trogolyte, I admit it. What now? Do I have to buy a season’s ticket to next years’ series at La Mama? It can’t be any worse than Playhouse in the Dark Park Where Muggers Lurk.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 04 at 10:36 PM • permalink
I believe the word is spelled “troglodyte”…
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 11 04 at 10:50 PM • permalink
- Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 11 04 at 10:51 PM • permalink
Andrew R, I haven’t the slighest idea who you are. But I can say that I find Alison a great deal more congenial than you. I have seen virtually no hostility displayed towards Alison from the commenters here.
(snip part about being an arrogant condescending bastard)
The issue is more than support or lack thereof for the arts. It’s the conservative’s goal of keeping the government’s budget balanced and sensible. Money is not unlimited. It must be targeted at those areas that bring the most benefit to the people as a whole. Once we reach a certain point, we must allow the rest of the GNP to be retained by those who earn it, thereby creating the greatest amount of benefit after going through several levels of the mutiplier effect.
(snip part about resenting people who criticize other people for not supporting what only first people personally feel are important)
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 04 at 10:59 PM • permalink
- Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 04 at 11:00 PM • permalink
I’d say that state funding the arts is a compromise, but not necessarily a good compromise. There are too many contradictory impulses at work …
– a state that wants to be seen as generous but also wants to get value for money;
– artists who want to be seen as independent from government, but who also need to survive and therefore don’t want to offend governments too much;
– audiences with widely differing tastes in the arts, but without any necessary influence at the box office;
– competing interests groups/unions (the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, for example) who have an interest in influencing the direction of government funding;
– Other political groupings (right-wingers, conservatives) who feel ‘excluded’ from the resultant arts industry and feel cheated because their money has been appropriated from them.
It’s a testament to the arts industry that it has so far MANAGED to find a compromise between most of these groups, but the compromise is always a shaky one. And it relies on a flawed assumption: that there is nothing wrong with appropriating taxes for this sort of thing.
And there is no obvious way forward for Aussie arts, either. It would be good to encourage more corporate money, but the results can be … questionable.
For better or for worse, many people associated with the arts are snobs, and it does operate very much on the principles of exclusion and inclusion.Here in Melbourne, for instance, in succession, we’ve had:
– The Age Melbourne Comedy Festival
– The Age Melbourne Writers Festival
– The Age Melbourne Fringe Festival
– The Melbourne International Arts Festival (for which one of the major sponsors is, wait for it, The Age).It’s pretty obvious who these festivals will attract: readers of and subscribers to The Age. Folks like me who prefer the Herald Sun or The Australian will tend to be excluded.
I, for one, don’t want to see a corporate model of arts sponsorship that would just result in a monopoly by one or two companies.
Ok, I change my mind. Andrew R, you’re an arrogant condescending bastard. Chances are you already suspect it.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 11 04 at 11:17 PM • permalink
Overall, the main problem with state subsidies for the arts isn’t that it provides an early-career lift for genuinely talented artists (which I’ll assume includes Daniel Keene since, subsidies or not, one doesn’t rise to the level Ms Croggon mentioned just by sheer inertia). I’m as libertarian as they come, and I don’t much mind some level of arts funding.
The problem, however, is the gravy train that inevitably develops for no-talent mediocrities who swim in the wake of the actual talents. And whenever this is pointed out, the arts community tends to wave away the objection with “art is subjective” or “there’s no accounting for taste”. (Or even worse, hogwash such as “good art thrives on offending the audience”, where “offend” is usually encrypted as “makes them think”.)
Overall, I think one of the reasons that public funding for the arts is held in such low esteem is that there’s now an entrenched art “industry” with an assembly-line influx of (and I’m tempted to put that word in scare quotes) university-educated artists who know nothing of seriousness, have no style of their own, and wouldn’t dream of creating anything unless the government check has already cleared.
I don’t mind some public support of artists who have presented the ability to create quality work (and like it or not, that generally means popular appeal of some kind), but much of the time things seem to work the other way around now – first comes the handout, and then maybe there’ll be a non-useless piece of art. Artists used to have to prove their worth before a patron would take them on; nowadays it’s simply expected that the state will be patron to anyone who asks, and many artists feel offended if anyone even dares to question that status quo.
Well, I don’t think Alison’s done much of a job of persuading us of the ‘critical importance to democracy’ of funding her artistic passions, and I don’t think we’ve done much of a job of persuading her that she and her artistic buddies do not have a God-given (can we say that about arts people?) right to a life on the taxpayer’s teat.
But an interesting discussion none the less.
#165- good point; the crew that the left/liberal yartz community give tacit support to forbid all performance art, and going by the statues of Buddha in northern Afghanistan aren’t too peachy-keen on static art either.
As to the figures and demographics quoted, they seem to smack of elitist assumptions as well; what Saatchi and Saatchi regard as art isn’t likely to be the same as what is appreciated in bogandom. And if bogans don’t like long windy and verbose performances portraying western culture as worse than the wildlife in Satans underpants, why should they sub it?
Disclosure- I am well educated, reasonably well off and like a lot of art- I buy what I like, and don’t expect others to subsidise my commercial decisions; I also invest in art I don’t much like, but which is attractive to well-heeled idiots with no taste.
Art is a commodity, and no commodity is imporved by subsidy- it tends to lower quality, encourage sloth, limit diversity and cause atrophy.
There is no defence to your rather daffy claims.
Alison, you state figures that show that a large number of Australians (and wealthy and influential ones at that) support the arts. Yet even with such a huge, well-off audience, you can’t make a buck without sticking your hands into taxpayer’s pockets! You guys really need to take a long, hard look at yourselves.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 11 05 at 12:32 AM • permalink
BTW- if the figures quoted are accurate, you’ve shot yourself in the foot by bringing them up; if the most prosperous 30% of the population support the arts, they surely have the dibs to pay for their pleasure- expecting the less well off 70% to pay for their pretensions is what usuall y brings on revolutions, tumbrils in the streets and ruling class noggins being waved at the crowd- a form of performance art much appreciated by the lumpen proletariat.
As to access and equitity, another much used canard to support subsidy, why is it that the most impoverished urchin can find $100 plus to park their arse in the crowd at a Kylie gig, but wouldn’t cough the cost of a packet of baby fags to attend any load of bollocks at say the Melbourne festival?
Habib – good point! Asking the poor to subsidise the pursuits of the rich isn’t terribly progressive…
Arts subsidies are just upper-class welfare.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 11 05 at 12:44 AM • permalink
I’m all for art, and lots of it. Having spent months tramping around Europe spending most of my time looking at galleries and museums and palaces and churches and stuff, I would not class myself as a philistine. Having said that, an awful lot of stuff in those galleries was dreck. Like most things in life, 95% of what you get is pretty ordinary and 5% is outstanding.
However, I don’t see why the state should be in the business of trying to pick “winners” in the arts world. I am not talking about “winners” as in commercial success – I am talking about a “winner” being a great piece of art. The softheads can go on and on and on about it moving people, creating passion, changing the world etc – I just say that when I see a “winning” piece of art (be it sculpture, a play, a movie, a book, a sketch, a painting or whatever) then I come away with a wry grin on my face thinking “that was a great piece of work”. I’m not going to gush about it. In fact, what I generally want to do is buy it. Most of the time, I can’t afford it, but if I like it, my hand goes for my wallet.
We saw what happened in Victoria and SA when the state owned banks tried to pick winning businesses – total failure and bancruptcy. Why do we think that the state can pick winners from the arts any better? Beauracrats are just hopeless at this type of thing. At least if I buy something with my own money and it turns out to be bollocks, I have only blown my own cash.
The sad fact about life is that dreams don’t always come true. Some little nerk might dream of being a great actor, but they are in fact shite. The biggest problem with subsidies is that they stop these prats from finding their true vocation, which is probably stacking shelves in Coles. The hordes of mediocre meatheads get in the way of the truly talented ones coming through.
If the market informs you that you are crap, you get the message that it is time to put on a suit and try a more boring career. Subsidies have the horrid effect of drowning out that message.
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 11 05 at 01:15 AM • permalink
By the way, you could say that The Age is like art. It presents itself as being informative, moving, provocative, engaging, entertaining blah blah blah blah blah.
Does it require a subsidy to stay affloat?
If not, please explain.
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 11 05 at 01:21 AM • permalink
What’s wrong with a 9 cent lead asprin?
Posted by mr creosote on 2006 11 05 at 02:54 AM • permalink
Nailed it on the head, Habib. My family and I are poor, and we sure as shit don’t like funding tripe like “Two Brothers”.
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 11 05 at 03:08 AM • permalink
- Actually as someone who has seen some wonderful theatre at La Mama, I beg to differ. Funding cuts are perhaps a threat to La Mama, and the sponsorship of new and terrific theatre, but not to Australian society.
It is a shame though. La Mama has provided some great playgoing experiences for many people. Better get out the directory and shop for new premises…Posted by carpefraise on 2006 11 05 at 06:01 AM • permalink
- Posted by carpefraise on 2006 11 05 at 06:03 AM • permalink
#159 Alison. Unless I am mistaken, the reference to your husband was made in the interest of “full disclosure” and was (is) germaine to the discussion.
[quote}Pssst! Mental Floss,you mean “germane”…
Posted by carpefraise on 2006 11 05 at 06:55 AM • permalink
Great art was always market driven. The masters of yester year were hired to produce their works by those that wanted works done and the masters produced according to their market.
Otherwise, painters would work up pieces and attempt to sell them to the public.
Since we’ve begun “fostering” the arts, we’ve lost art. Now we have bizarrow world shit like Eggy loading up with paint enemas and crapping “art” onto canvas.
What’s left to the “art world” tends to be braindead disfunctionals and drug addicts producing political propaganda while hiding behind the “art clause”.
You want real art? Stop all public funding and let the real artists emerge from the sewage of posers, pretenders, fakers, loosers and moochers.
The one thing I haven’t heard mention here is business support of the arts. The company I own dropped around AUD50,000 this year to support community projects in countries where we operate (East and Southeast Asia). We work closely with the groups involved and provide on-the-ground support in the communities in which they live. My staff and I get a tremendous amount out of these projects emotionally because we know people’s lives are improved. None of these projects is in any way arts related, but they could be I guess, if somebody could prove to me that theatre or the arts in general could provide the kinds of help that our existing investments do. We don’t go around tooting our horn, and most people don’t know what we do, but we try to put something back into the places where we work.
Why doesn’t La Mama look to business to raise some money? Or why not tap some of the people who’ve made good money out of the arts and owe their start to La Mama? It’s always struck me that relying on governments is inherently problematic because the winds of fashion change overnight and what’s in today is out tomorrow. Perhaps we’d never give money to the arts, but I’ve never really thought about it. Perhaps La Mama should look around for businesses that benefit from having the theatre in the neighbourhood, or from business that could get some sort of return by kicking in AUD10,000 each. Or look for an angel investor.
I’ve got no problems with governments sponsoring the arts in general (levels and recipients can be debated, but I’m not against helping out the truly talented). But I think business can be a good friend of the arts if we think we’re getting some sort of return, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be financial. I sink money into projects because I think it’s the right thing to do and my staff gets a kick out of doing stuff that makes them feel good and isn’t necessarily work related. Surely if La Mama is as popular as it seems (and I’m not from Melbourne and have no idea), then 15 businesses could come up the money needed.
Nope. Sorry.
I may have the retard’s name wrong but it was headline news for awhile in the “not so long ago”.
This “artist” shaves himself hairless, head, face and body.
He presents himself before his audience in the nude. Loads up his bowls with an egg tempura based load of paints.
Squats over a canvas and creates what the devotees fan over as “master pieces”.
Page 1 of 1 pages
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Damn! Another part of the Anglosphere sunk.