Blamblog - Brett Lamb's Blog

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Division 101

Harris via Harper Valley.

It's become pretty clear that Harper's arts cuts are a divide & conquer strategy in the ol' Mike Harris style. And it works by playing to common prejudices, even if reality is somewhat different:

"I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people at, you know, a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren't high enough, when they know those subsidies have actually gone up -- I'm not sure that's something that resonates with ordinary people,"

See? There are two types of people in the world: "ordinary" people and "rich" artist "elites". The "elites" are blowing taxpayer money on galas and the "ordinary" people need someone like Harper to put a stop to it. Kinsella spotted it:

Did they kick at this hornet's nest deliberately, or did they merely trip on it? The next few days will tell. At the risk of sounding like a Philistine, I can assure you that if the denizens of Deepest Annex leave their million-dollar homes and take to the airwaves to bray and shriek about the cuts, and liken them to an apocalypse and whatnot, they will lose Middle Canada -- and play right into Stephen Harper's hands. If, however, the artistic community plays it smart -- by cooling the rhetoric, speaking in French, and detailing the significant economic benefits of a thriving culture -- they might just win, and thereby do some serious damage to the Conservatives' lusted-after majority. Art is the triumph over chaos -- but can it triumph over politics?

To further inflame the issue, the conservatives cut funding quietly by redirecting funds through Canadian Heritage (the Globe crunched the numbers and exposed this last weekend) so that they could accuse the arts community of getting upset over nothing, making them seem even more like spoiled brats in the eyes of so-called "ordinary" people.

Here's a test you can perform yourself when the weekend papers come out (or Toronto Life or whatever): look up the society pages and check out the pictures from any recent galas. Do you see lots of artists or do you see rich people who aren't artists? If you're unsure of who's who, the artists are the awkward minority, looking out of place in the corner because they don't often get out of their basement studios to attend galas in their Value Village sneakers. And note how many of the wealthy people in those photos are Tories (for example: William Thorsell? Tory.).

The fact of the matter is, almost everybody who works in the arts in Canada is really, really poor. I'm sure there's someone, somewhere who is swaddled in government cash for life ... but I've never met them. Even the few who make a decent living could make far more money doing other things. I split my work between corporate projects and arts projects and the budgets of mundane, low-level corporate projects (ones that, when completed, get tossed out because the VP gets shuffled) would be viewed by most people in the arts as vast mountains of wealth.

I think there are people who wish there was an artistic elite because it sounds very romantic. Galen Weston Jr. -- son of a billionaire businessman, not an artist -- created the Spoke Club to help foster such a thing. But most of the people I've known who work in the arts are ordinary people who inhabit their communities ... they're not separate from other people. Look at some "big" names as examples: Alice Munroe lives in Clinton, not Rosedale. Timothy Findley lived outside of Cannington. Colm Feore lives in Stratford. Greg Curnoe not only lived in scrappy London, the region consumed his work.

Harper's division strategy also works because people who work in the arts don't agree with one another on how the arts should be funded (for example, lots of people think money spent on that mega-fest, Luminato, would be better spent directly supporting artists). So, the issue also gets people within the arts sniping at each other. It worked the same when when Harris went after the teachers. Everybody against everybody.

As a strategy, it's a cynical play on people's emotions ... but the Harris gang made it work for them and Harper's having luck with it so far.

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