Silly bint!

Why would I do that? I don’t think we are disagreeing at all. Political smarts is not the same as pragmatism, or the ability to stitch together an income out of grants, teaching, commissioned work and sheer risk taking, which we have both done.

Here’s an example of lack of political smarts: the federal government has pushed the screen community to create one unified voice for some time. The various guilds formed a peak body called The Australian Screen Council. Right now, it is falling apart as the Writers’ Guild and the Directors’ Guild have a horrible stoush in which one or the other party is being v. dumb.

All the individuals in these orgs have plenty of survival skills. The ones that don’t have largely been weeded out, as per my post above.

Now, you know what I hate? This thing of, say you have a man whos Anglican and maybe every month or every few weeks he goes out and picks up a guy. Today, in this fascist environment its “youre gay! Youre gay and youre secretly homophobic! You are self-loathing! You are hiding behind the mask of respectability!” What if hes just Anglican and likes to sleep with men now and then?…I dont like the situation because right now its bad for gay people!

And yes, while I think Vidal was equally loony in his bisexual continuum ideas, I think he – and others like him were right about not constructing a cultural identity around ‘gay’. I don’t know why people would want to lock themselves up into such a prison.

Camille Paglia – hardly a bastion of Christian morality – makes a similar point (not that she’s particularly coherent):

“Now, you know what I hate? This thing of, say you have a man who’s married, he has children, and maybe every month or every few weeks he goes out and picks up a guy. Today, in this fascist environment it’s “you’re gay! You’re gay and you’re secretly homophobic! You are self-loathing! You are hiding behind the mask of respectability!” What if he’s just married and likes to sleep with men now and then? …I don’t like the situation because right now it’s bad for gay people!”

But yes homosexualist these goes more to the gender feminist politburo and the Queer set, the NSW education department and the ABC Fascists in the making.

Before I respond, one thing I must clear up. I most certainly do NOT “hate” anything about you or your views. You are letters on a computer screen, not Ivan Milat! I enjoy differences and intellectual argy-bargy on blogs precisely because it is an environment where half-assed ideas, passionately held commandments, thought-processes can be “tried on for size,” have the hem adjusted, a little let out in the middle WITHOUT having to go through all the anxious pussyfooting and politicking that are required (for very good reasons I might add) in seminars, businesses, the pub, blah, blah, blah.

If I found myself “hating” somebody – or even their views – whom I had never even met, I would call the men in the white coats myself!

Now it’s time for me to take another break from the intertubes, this time to read Marshall McLuhan whose writing is a very obvious pre-emptive plagiarism of Foucault and Derrida.

OK, so we’re talking at cross-purposes, with a little help from our mutual detestation of each other’s hopelessly distorted, ideologically blinkered world-views. I was unaware of Gore Vidal’s use of ‘homosexualist’ until Geoff Honor mentioned it. saint’s use of homosexualist as a pejorative is overly familiar to me. Here’s an example.

(GT)

OK, you are a dab hand at proofing. Do you also take dictation? File? But seriously, I do not know who “saint” is. My point is that over the past decade – especially in the universities – there has been this boneheaded alliance between “Gender Studies” and “Queer Theory” where they try to tell poofs and straight sheilahs that they are really diesel dykes. After one week, even the most enthusiastic homosexualist would convert to breederism.

It may be worth saying that the proposals belong to venerable logic – in the past the philosophies have been called “demand side funding” – supporting marketing etc etc – and “audience development”. Both these strategies are very appealing on many levels, not the least being the pleasure of staying out of direct funding to artists, and the inevitable subjectivities of this.

Patrick’s argument about closing kinders to feed feral artists depends on the comparisons you make. While he is writing about a certain direction of political prejudice, I can go the other way. A number of people in the past have said things like: “One air force jet would pay for all Australia’s orchestras..” etc. (I have no idea if that is true, btw.) But I can tell you that it costs much more money to train a Qantas pilot than anyone in the film business.

Arts funding is already very embedded. As an arts consumer, Patrick could take a quick squizz around his shelves and ask how much depends on the public purse. It is a salutary exercise.

Peter Garrett, by the way, was explicitly telling artists in his travelling workshop before the election that most artists had jobs, and it was better to subsidise their form of income than the art. Hence, the education stuff in the 2020 proposals. I agree with him – one of the most insidious problems for artists is the collapse of the relative value of the wages from their day jobs.

While that is a general problem, and much worse for struggling families etc than for an artist forced to get a full time job rather than play the piano, there is a particular issue with cuts in the sector. Remove writer programs in schools, and the income of kids’ writers takes a horrible dive. Increase the workload and rigidity in the academic system, and its no longer possible for a filmmaker to teach and make films.

(to end with a personal bitch – the wages on the writing end of documentary film have not gone up in more than fifteen years.)

The great man would take his last breath if he knew that homosexualist was being coopted by the gruseome alliance between the gender feminist politburo and the Queer set.

I don’t think saint qualifies as a member of either party in that ‘gruseome’ alliance. What is a ‘gruseome’ and what’s the pronunkiation? My guess would be ‘gru-se-oh-may’.

Some etymology would be helpful too.

Just one illustrative point – a mighty strong recommendation was the beefing up of teacher training and skills in the arts, with ongoing professional training (and obviously better pay – I think everyone said that). More and better jobs for teachers, surely? No, it was reported as only a scheme for artists in residence (taking jobs AWAY from teachers). Not all the journalists’ fault – after all, they can only report what they’re given. But still.

Thank you for reclaiming “homosexualist.” . Gore Vidal coined ‘homosexualist’ as he quite rightly argued ‘homosexual can only ever be an adjective to descibe an act; it can never be a noun. And I object to being called an adjective.’

The great man would take his last breath if he knew that ‘homosexualist’ was being coopted by the gruseome alliance between the gender feminist politburo and the “Queer” set.

Quelle horruer!

The (high) arts have always survived on special funding. In the past it’s been the aristocracy. We don’t have that anymore, and realistically government money is the only alternative. Yes, there are risks and arguments against it being up to government bureaucrats deciding who should get how much to put towards what various programs, but opposite that is the very real risk that if the government spends nothing on the arts, then most forms of art that didn’t appeal sufficiently to the short-term interests of the masses would die out fairly quickly – we’d lose our orchestras, galleries would have to sell their masterpieces, and films and theatre productions that weren’t special-effects blockbusters or sing-a-long musicals would become a thing of the past.
What I have seen suggested though is that the funding should be channelled towards early educational programs – e.g. exposure to the arts in primary school these days is virtually non-existent, and yet without that early introduction, many people end up turned off by forms of art that take a bit more time and effort to appreciate than modern popular forms of art where the focus is much more on immediate and broad appeal.

The survivors tend to be quiet. They have work to do

One lifetime is not enough to put together the body of work at mind, let alone have that time and energy – and inspiration – lost to endless talk. It is possible in (at least some areas of) the arts to just get on with it.

Sometimes, too, because the arts are so valuable (overall) to the nation’s wealth, that this value is willfully passed off in attitude so as to make a person feel they deserve by right to have their idea – or their wanting to live that life – given support. Get a group of those people together and ‘the arts’ gives off a repulsive sound, as too many years and so much jibber has proven.

‘Arts funding’ – where it is valuable if not necessary – is complicated by these misappropriating attitudes. Detrimentally. The problem, for my two bobs, is not about money, it’s about management (in the real world). Fund the teaching, and development, of that! And do it before any particular creative idea is even mentioned, so as to instill it and not to lose it.

While the matter of funding the public broadcaster is as clear cut a case of debatable need as can be, surely the question has to be asked here: did the Creatives make it clear that they would do themselves no favours if their communique gave even the faintest impression of “we need more money”.

It would have been better for the Creatives to communicate simply that (systemic) failing within the areas of the arts have been identified. That’s in the least. That might have started getting people to listen again.

Moreover, it could be a valid case that when there is a need for fiscal constraint, that is the time the arts should come into their own, and get the job done. That’s when the community needs it most. Were these identified and acknowledged? And did it highlight even more the absolute need not to present as the tired old whinge?

Putting the public off is not going to achieve anything. Switch the focus from money to management and you have a chance.

The public take out, according to valid perceptions raised here, and by ommission of anything Big (read workable and valuable) in media, is yet more of the godawful talktalk and that misappropriated ‘need’ of “we need more money”.

That was always going to be the elephant in the room.

Added to all of this is the obvious fact any media will jump on the funding thing: the kneejerk was also always going to be there too. Was that acknowledged and dealt with?

So once again the general public get a halfbit circus, so unnecessarily.

It should also probably be said that people are not asking for the dreaded handouts; in the screen sector, people are asking for the opportunity to do work, for which they are paid.

Except, if I have understood the points which preceeded this, they are asking to be paid by the government.

That one per cent idea was, as Ken points out, incredibly bad PR. Can you imagine telling the kid whose local football club just lost a $10k federal grant that the ‘arts’ were getting a billion or so in chump change? What’s the idea – that he thinks ‘oh cool I should be an artist’ or that he hates art and artists and Labor forever??

Not to mention that the idea is, in addition to bad PR, stupid beyond comprehension in its own right: What about the single mum whose pension gets cut by a sloppy mistake because one per cent of Centrelink funding went to some dumb art program? Etc, etc.

Finally, how the f*** can anyone have such a sense of entitlement as to even think of such an idea? If I dig and refill a hole in my backyard for 10 years, I will have expended a hell of a lot of effort, but I do so aware that I am not being paid because nobody cares about it! Same if I write/paint/perform something that no-one ever reads/looks at/watches.

I don’t have anything against art, in fact I am a downright lefty hippie in my consumption patterns (‘arty crap’ is second only to restaurants in my discretionary spending), but I am happy to pay for what I want to see/read/watch etc.

In the screen area, I am fond of saying that most of the noise is the sound of failure. It is a democratic area, in which anyone can set themselves up as practitioners, but most of them slide very slowly down the wall into oblivion.

Yes. And it’s the same with writing.

In the screen area, I am fond of saying that most of the noise is the sound of failure. It is a democratic area, in which anyone can set themselves up as practitioners, but most of them slide very slowly down the wall into oblivion.

The survivors tend to be quiet. They have work to do. That is a very general rule, but there is truth in it.