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At 12:15 PM 30/08/01 +0100, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>One of my first experiences of
visiting Canada was of visiting a Boston<br>
Pizza and ordering a Guiness. It said on the menu that this was an
imported<br>
beer. What arrived had no relation to Guiness as I know it.
It had been<br>
brewed by Molson and had been imported from Ontario. The best description
I<br>
could give of it would be Molson (itself a pretty unappealing beer)
with<br>
caramel added. In trendy soulless bars in Britain Guiness is often
poured<br>
carelessly (it needs care) and then embellished with a little shamrock
drawn<br>
in the head, but this Canadian Guiness really took the biscuit.
Molson is<br>
as good a representative as any of the superficial culture that the
arts<br>
need to challenge. Sponsorship by these sorts of organisations is
a<br>
dangerous business, leading sometimes to artistic compromise and
sell-out.<br>
<br>
It is probably true that in Britain a single opera house gets mre money
than<br>
the entire Canda Council, but it is also true that these sorts of<br>
institutions swallow so much public funding that very little is left
for<br>
anything else. A friend of mine told me recently that the Royal
Ballet<br>
takes 95% of The Arts Council of England's dance funding. In Wales
an<br>
excellent tradition of community theatre has been sacrificed for the sake
of<br>
a flagship black hole called Theatr Clwyd, supposedly a flagship
for<br>
English-language theatre in Wales, in fact an elitist institution of the
old<br>
guard. Public funding of the arts in Britain is unfortunately more to
do<br>
with corporate entertainment for tourists on behalf of UK plc and
very<br>
little to do with the real needs of a people in a hypercapitalist
culture.<br>
<br>
Robert Persson<br>
bossanova@ntlworld.com</blockquote><br>
<br>
Hello Robert,<br>
<br>
Yes, I see your point about the dangers of blandness in corporate
culture; although I must take issue with a couple of aspects of your
argument, which I think are, however accurate in their cynicism,
ultimately rather reckless.<br>
<br>
First of all, as inexplicable as it is to those who prefer European beer,
the inescapable fact is that Molson's beers taste the way they do because
that is how most Canadians like their beer---not because of the
incompetence of their brewers, who are in fact hired from all over the
world at higher rates than almost anyone else pays, and not because of
any stinginess in terms of ingredients or brewing time, either of which,
I have it on good authority, are really infinitesimal considerations
within the overall budget. Bottom line is: if people wanted the
beer to taste different, it would. Now, you can always argue
brainwashing by advertising or whatever, and naturally, that is not
something that can be proved or disproved; but finally I believe that
tastes in beer are just like tastes in brands of pop or in types of milk
and unlike tastes in culture (or even wine or cheese)---given competent
brewers, there's not really much of an argument about quality to make;
it's mostly a matter of what you're accustomed to, not ignorance, not
mindlessness, just taste. Guinness, being itself a vast
corporation, would of course alter their product to suit the market, even
if that meant aping Canadian beers. So, no, I don't accept the
argument by analogy that any arts funded by Molson would necessarily be
bland arts, though I do accept that they would have a somewhat popular
basis (in contrast, say, to Lufthansa funded projects, which are, by
policy, usually "avant-garde").<br>
<br>
But even if we agree that there is some danger of compromise in the
presence of corporate funds (and I do certainly share that concern): it's
either that, or government funding, or private funding---each of which
holds its dangers. As for government funding, you agree you that
government funding of the arts is pathetic in this country, but then
suggest that it doesn't really matter because they're so
establishment-minded anyhow. Well, I could take issue and point to
many good things done with government funding, but it hardly matters
anyway: more government funding is simply not in the works right
now. And we can complain about that, but in the meantime,
that leaves private funding. But who are these private donors and
what are they interested in funding? Dare we use the Medicis as our
example? There are not many of those, and as for their moral
character... So, obviously, there is no possibility of funding that
does not raise the danger of compromise. The need for money is
inherently compromising. All funds, without exception, are
tainted. <br>
<br>
So the only alternative left is to attempt to maintain our moral purity
by doing without money: whittling our art down to that point at which it
can pass through the eye of a needle. Well, as somebody who makes
theatre constantly---and with a laughably small budget for many years
now---I can assure you that poverty is a far greater compromising factor
in my art than any other consideration. If I don't say exactly what
I want to in my productions, that fact has almost nothing to do with the
sorts of meretriciousness which your argument presumes. It's
because I don't have enough money. And while I would prefer to see
the money coming from the general population (i.e., the government), I
have taken funds from sources I find truly loathsome---charity bingos,
for example---in order to keep the vital supply going to projects I
believe are worthy. <br>
<br>
So, while I might share much---indeed, most---of your cynicism, I refuse
to draw the conclusion that the battle is irrelevant and therefore that I
should retire from the field, my purity intact. <br>
<br>
In my view, in matters like this we are still struggling with the ideas
so disturbingly explored in Shaw's <i>Major Barbara</i>. To do
without Bodger and Undershaft is not a real option: to think we can is
deluded. So there are only the choices of pretending we are living
without them and thus living always as children, or acknowledging that we
are living with them and struggling to remake the world (or, at least, to
make art) in our own way.<br>
<br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Yours<br>
Craig Walker<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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