Well, That's Not Good

After the serious cuts to the CBC and Telefilm, the National Film Board has had to announce it is closing its offices in Toronto and Ontario.

The National Film Board is responsible for funding quite a few short films that have gone to the Oscars. The NFB office on St. Denis and Maisonneuve includes the Ciné-Robothèque, where you can view any of thousands of films the NFB has funded over the years. Many of them are hard to see anywhere else. For example, when I was researching a comedy set among the Inuit, I was able to walk in and see documentaries from the 1950's about the traditional Inuit way of life, showing the dogsleds and the igloos.

Some of these films are available at the Bibliothèque Nationale, but most aren't. In other words, the NFB is the place in Montreal where Canada's audiovisual heritage lives. Er, lived.

I have no idea what they're going to do with all those video stations. I imagine they'll have to sell them off for nothing or junk them. So if a progressive government comes in after four or five years, it will cost a bundle to replace them.

The Conservatives seem to think that Canadian culture is overfunded. In a country that still subsidizes men to go out on the ice and bash seals to death, I'm not convinced that slashing film and television supports should be where the cuts are made. Culture attracts brainpower. Culture attracts tourists.

But let's set aside for a moment all the benefits that places like the NFB and Telefilm have brought Canada (e.g. Canadian movies at the Oscars, Jessica Paré). Strictly as a business proposition, cultural subsidies attract highly mobile entertainment investments which then ricochet around the economy. The seal hunters aren't going to transplant themselves to Brazil if the Canadian Navy doesn't take care of them. But filmmakers and game makers are in a global market. Canada's loss will be someone else's gain.

So this is a damn shame.

When I Hear the Word "Culture" I Reach For My Wallet

Britain is cutting arts funding.

I think this is a terrible idea in general. People visit Britain for its culture. (I still remember the banner across the British Museum the last time I was there: THE BEST DINOSAUR EXHIBITION IN 65 MILLION YEARS. And it was.) They certainly don't go for the climate.

Culture is not a luxury good the government should provide only in good economic times. It's a service industry like other service industries. It employs people. It promotes tourism. It sucks in dollars from overseas. Someone who spends a government-funded day at the Tate also buys a hotel room, a bunch of meals, some clothes on Kings Road, taxi rides, and perhaps an air ticket.

Conservatives complain about the annual budget of Telefilm Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts and the various music organizations and so forth. But those organizations have created the Jim Carreys and Celine Dions of the world, who get paid in American dollars and then pay Canadian taxes on them. I think we get our money back.

Of course, culture also provides people with a feeling that they belong to a society, without which the whole place falls apart. Where would Quebec be without its movies and festivals and music? Maybe Canada doesn't have enough arts funding for its somewhat fragile sense of itself? But that's an argument for another day...

This is What I'm Talking About

Laurie Finstad's dark thriller/drama DURHAM COUNTY has finally made it to the States, on the new Ion network, so it's finally got a New York Times review. And a nice one too. But I thought the lede was interesting:

Any lingering illusion that Canada is a milder, blander version of the United States is dispelled by “Durham County,” a Canadian-made crime series that begins on Monday on the Ion network.

Countries make culture in part to bind themselves together. Countries without a strong sense of themselves through culture will fall apart. But another reason for nations to fund their own culture is international relations. If you don't export movies and TV, no one will have any idea who you are. Other countries might know what you can make, and if you have guns they'll respect those. But at a basic level, exported popular culture is how we learn about each other.

So everybody has a very good idea who Americans are, if it's slightly distorted by a million crime dramas and all those reality shows. And Americans have a very good idea who the British are, if it's slightly distorted by highbrow fare like UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS and PRIME SUSPECT and THE TUDORS and ELIZABETH. Oh, and Ricky Gervais and Simon Cowell. And Americans know who the French are from Truffaut films. And Americans have a sense of the Australians from CROCODILE DUNDEE and Peter Weir films

But relatively few people outside of Canada have a clue what Canadians are like, because Canada exports a lot less popular culture than it ought to, given it's a nation of 22 million English speakers, roughly on par with Australia. Americans think that Canadians are milder, blander white people but otherwise just like them. And yes, life in Canada is milder, except for the weather, because Canada has a functioning health care system and America has madness, and Canadians don't shoot each other nearly so much in spite of owning just as many guns. But Canadians aren't particularly white anymore, and we're not bland, and we're just as capable of being atrocious to each other as Americans are.

When you don't know someone, you tend to make assumptions about them, and assumptions have consequences. How can Canada expect America to take it seriously as a nation -- over, say, the Northwest Passage, or softwoods, or border crossings -- if Americans have no idea who Canadians are as a people?

Shows like DURHAM COUNTY are worth making just because they're fun, scary, creepy detective shows; and if you like the dark, Laurie Finstad and director Adrian Mitchell ladle out darkness enough for any appetite. But, together with FLASHPOINT and CORNER GAS and the other exports, they go a little way towards giving the rest of the world a sense of who we've become. And that's a value in its own right. Okay, Steven Harper?

Alberta Minister of Culture Discovers He Can't Censor!

The Alberta Minister of Culture discovered to his surprise that he has no way of denying funds to films whose political opinions he disagrees with. He was miffed to find out he'd signed off on an Oscar-nominated documentary showing some of the environmental problems with the exploitation of Alberta's vast oil sands (pollution, toxic waste, etc.). Now he's looking to change the laws.

Canada has pretty strong government support for culture, combined with a strong attitude that politicians shouldn't try to dictate culture. I don't know what the situation is like in other Western countries. But I'd be surprised to see the Texas Ministry of Culture getting in a twist about a documentary they supported because there is no Texas Ministry of Culture. (Google "Texas" and "Ministry" and you get an entirely different kind of ministry.) I'm not sure there's any governmental support for culture in Texas.

On the face of it, it does seem odd to ask a provincial government to support a documentary criticizing what's going on in the province. In a democratic society, we believe criticism is good. If something's wrong at the tar sands, Albertans ought to have a chance to know about it.

It's interesting that the very same Conservatives who object to government telling the oil industry what to do, want to tell the culture industry what to do. I don't think it's a good idea for government to be in the business of picking which movies to support, any more than you want government tell oil companies where to drill or which drill bits to use. Government has a role in saying where not to drill, and what you can't put on television before kids go to bed.

I definitely don't think government should pick which stories to tell. Let's let the audience weigh in on that. I'm a little more on the fence on the question of whether government should have to fund, say, a Michael Moore-style propaganda piece, or, let's say, a wingnut documentary about how immigrants are ruining our sacred national identity.

What do y'all think?