What this blog is about

It's an art blog.
Mostly about theatre... but also a healthy dose of pop culture, politics and shameless self-promotion.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

We're All Fools

Harper might win a majority by cutting arts funding... and we artists are helping him do it.

Don't ask me how I feel about Harper's cuts and his outrageous comments. I'm as hurt and and angry as the rest of you, but there are more important issues here than my feelings. Or yours.

As a political maneuver, this was brilliant. (er... diabolical?)

Harper had to deal with a couple of small problems: he was being attacked by all the party leaders on a number of issues and he needed to consolidate his base support while, at the same time, attract swing voters at the centre of the political spectrum.

Regionally, he was working long before the writ was dropped with massive pre-election spending in order to warm up the electorate. Conservatism at its most basic level (I thought) is against taxpayer's money being spent like this, especially on frivolities like a UFO sighting commemoration.

As the economy gets worse and worse during this campaign, he looks like he's doing his due duty in managing the economy by cutting "frivolous" arts funding. He tells artists that we have to "stick to a budget."

Now these cuts were made a while ago, but they didn't receive a lot of press. But we as artists must challenge them. Because we're constantly under attack. And the arts need to be defended. And so Quebec artists, bless them, use the Gemeaux awards to shame Harper and the ideology behind these cuts. But unfortunately, outside of Quebec, this plays right into Harper's hands.

He calls us "fat cats" and says we live in an "ivory tower." He says that the furor over these cuts won't resonate with "ordinary Canadians," i.e. regular folk that work hard for their money, not like them bum artists living on the taxpayer's dime, the worst kind of corporate welfare. (Ick.)

All of a sudden the arts (for the first time that I can remember) have become a major election story. Let me tell you why, in my opinion, this is not a good thing for artists.

What has been accomplished here? Let's take a look:
1) Harper has consolidated his core support. Even those who may have felt alienated by his concession on Afghanistan, can rally around on Harper on this issue. These cuts are ideological in nature and appeal to many of the same voters who support life sentences for children.
2) Harper hasn't lost any support from the centre spectrum voters; in fact, he may have gained some traction. Think about it: we're an electorate that is having trouble understanding the Green Shift. Trying to explain how cuts to programs that send artists overseas are a bad thing... is damn hard. Unfortunately, Harper's comments about artists being "whiners" is ringing true (at least in English Canada).
3) The left still remains split. While artists have succeeded making a lot of noise about the value of art, we've only been denouncing Harper and we haven't thrown our combined weight behind a different candidate that will champion the arts. And we, just like the rest of Canada, remain divided into camps of ideological or strategic voters.
4) The other major parties have jumped on the band wagon. As passionate as I am about the arts, the pragmatist in me knows that it won't win an election. So while this is a major election story, it's not an election issue. But all the other party leaders think they smell blood in the water, and at this point, are desperate for any conservative weakness that might have some traction. This is not it.

The two major election questions are the economy and Harper. He has made the election about these issues, and the more the other leaders are sidetracked away from them, the more this plays in his favour. Especially if they continue to be unified in their pro-arts, anti-Harper response... if there's no distinction, then there's no mending of the left-of-centre split.

Now I realize that Harper needs Quebec to form a majority, and yes, cutting Quebec arts funding IS actually a major election issue... in Quebec. But in BC and especially in Ontario, it's the economy stupid.

So what do we do about it?


1) Keep making noise... but be strategic. This election is about Harper. He's coming to us in a fuzzy sweater and trying to woo the centre by claiming he makes common sense decisions for the good of Canada. But THIS decision is steeped in ideology. Same as his crime bill. This is a pattern: what journalists like to call a narrative. (He's also being mean about it - another narrative). This is the narrative that we must promote: if he follows far-right ideology on the arts and crime, then what does this mean for health care? Education? WHAT WOULD HARPER DO WITH A MAJORITY??? (You get the idea.)
2) We have to back one of the other parties. Any one. But we have to consolidate our vote. This is a tremendous opportunity: the other leaders are listening. What can/will they do to consolidate our vote?

E-mail this post to every artist you know. There's still time...

~talbot

3 comments:

MK Piatkowski said...

Aaron, I love you but I've been on this for weeks now. We've been waiting for the opportunity to make this an issue. It's now happened and we have to jump on it, get dirty in the sandbox. I've been one of those in the trenches debating Harper's supporters by giving them sound economic reasons for the programs that were cut, pointing out how this is a bad business decision, and highlighting the misinformation out there. I haven't seen daylight in two days.

This is about more than Harper's attack on us. This is about how we are being perceived as being outside the mainstream of society. If we don't speak to the electorate as one of them, sharing their concerns about how the economy appears to be going to hell, they're going to tune us out. Telling them this is a pattern isn't going to sway them because he's playing the economic card. The cuts are being positioned as ineffective, wasteful programs that benefited people who didn't deserve to be supported.

The only way right now to even be heard is to play the card right back. Which means talking about art as investment. Anything else is preaching to the choir. If we're going to change any votes, we need to recognize what the concerns are out there right now, and they sure as hell aren't that we're heading to a right-wing society. It's that people are afraid of losing their jobs. That's why this is playing so well.

And maybe this is what you're saying. I'm tired because I've spent 10 hours today on this computer in this dark room typing and reading and getting really pissed off at the stupidity out there. I'm not going to email this post. Instead I'm going to point people to the great work being done on Facebook by the groups leveraging the power of social media: Against Cuts to Foreign Touring, Faceless for the Arts, Save Prom Art, and the new group that just formed today, Ordinary Canadians Do Support the Arts. Then there's the great blog that's started up, Play Anon , that was created specifically to talk about this issue and has some fantastic links to the other work that's happening out there.

And then I'm going to beg people to comment on news articles because that's the battleground - public opinion. Doubtful that we can turn the hard-core Harper supporters, but we can use the tool we are especially gifted with, communication. There are people out there willing to understand if we speak their language.

Aaron Talbot said...

Hi MK;
Thanks for reading. Yes, I know you've been on this; I follow your blog.

You know what: I hope you're right. I hope we can sway the electorate with ideas and sound arguments. But I don't know how much they will resonate with those who are not directly involved with the arts. I don't know if they care enough.

I've been posting on newspaper forums too. But when there's 200 posts on a forum, they get lost very fast.

Maybe I'm wrong. And I'm filled with hope that with many artists framing the argument that these cuts are an attack on our canadian identity will carry more weight.

I'm not saying stop the work you're doing; far from it. I'm just saying that we have to bridge the gap between the arts and other issues in the campaign. And I think Harper's ideology is showing: I think if we can show Canada that he's not what he claims to be, but is exactly what we suspected all along, then we might have a fighting chance...

Fingers crossed, anyway.

Anonymous said...

I am all about strategic voting this time around, and when the election is over I will go back to arguing about the need for proportional representation.

there are some very good resources on the web to do with strategic voting:

http://www.voteforenvironment.ca
http://www.anyonebutharper.ca

and the Department of Culture ( http://www.departmentofculture.ca ) looks like a really fucking good and well organised effort by some Toronto artists to campaign against the conservatives in the 905 belt. they're planning an action on Wednesday the 31st.

(and the arts cuts do play well in Quebec: Harper's making a bid for the ADQ's right-of-centre supporters.)