In Praise of Government Funded Art

I hear alot of people complain about "their tax dollars" going to pay for arts and culture. The refrain is always "if they are any good they will make money without subsidies". Putting the economic arguments aside for the moment, these arguments can only be made by people who do not know anything about art, culture, or history.

People who know alot about the arts can tell you about artistic merit, about why certain things that are not commercially viable are worth preserving but beyond the artistic arguments there is the broader area of culture. At a very basic level artists contribute to our culture by talking about who we are. They relate the realities of society, the daily lives of our people, our hopes, dreams and fears in a way that literal historians (who deal primarily with hard facts) cannot.

Much of what we know about prior civilizations we know through their art and most of it was government subsidized (or subsidized by the church which in many parts of the world, for a very long time was a form of government and collected taxes). The great wall of China, the roof of the Sistine Chapel, the great pyramids of Egypt, the work of the classical composers, and the texts hand copied by monks, the works of many of the renaissance artists, were all subsidized by tax dollars. Most of these were not 'commercially viable.' Without tax subsidies most of the works of Shakespear, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Mozart, Beethoven, even the Bible would be lost in the winds of history. Sadly much of the work of European and African descended North Americans has in fact been lost. Because it was not considered valuable many texts, early jazz, folk and blues recordings, and even early film is gone because it was not thought worth preserving until it was too late.

In the Modern West times are truly good for some artists, over the last hundred years it has become possible for some artists, musicians, writers, etc., to be financially successful without wealthy patrons or government backing, but that is not the case for most and is actually becoming less true as the means to produce and distribute media becomes more widespread. That is, at any rate, beside the point.

I do not believe, and do not think most thinking Canadians believe that everything about our culture that is worth preserving and supporting is 'commercially viable.' Most people think in the short term, they do not consider while making commercial purchases the value of allowing talented artists to continue practicing and refining their art so that they may become more viable down the road, they do not consider what is being said about us through their art. I don't think that most people want future generations to remember us by Canadian Idol, Desperate Housewives, and Nickleback.

Even if Canadian consumers thought more long term, Canada is a nation of just over 30 million. Without Government support our artists would be dwarfed by larger markets or forced to leave Canada in order to be 'Commercially viable'. Many artists, as everyone knows, leave now and while Canada certainly shapes their view and experience you also know that once they are living in Los Angeles or New York that their work becomes less and less reflective of Canada.

The concept of commercial viability has become the curse of our age. We have already allowed the CBC (on the television side at least) to deteriorate to the point where commercial viability is a chief concern when deciding what to put on the air. The CBC must ask itself whether advertisers will be interested, whether they can get enough eyeballs and even whether the show might be picked up by networks overseas.

On of the reasons I started publicbroadcasting.ca in the first place was because I knew that much of what was best about Canada was not commercially viable, it was not reflected in commercial media, and it was not popular in the US or Europe. All that glitters is not gold. Whether Stephen Harper and his Bush style neo-con government realize it or not history only treats any civilization as well as the government treats arts and culture. Without our art, music, literature, and film future historians will only be able to study us though our weapons.