Posts by Danyl Mclauchlan
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Was thinking of, say, a hypothetical state-funded hip-hop/Maori language/Pasifika radio - if such a thing existed, cost $5mil a year, and was threatened with extinction
Well, as we all know it is impossible to listen to hip-hop in any other form than a taxpayer funded commercial free radio station, and that to force people to pay for their own Notorious BIG and Wu-Tang Clan albums is barbaric and inhumane. And it is important to me that other people are able to grow up and listen to The Chronic without being distracted by sponsorship announcements - after all, it's enjoyed by such a wide cross-section of society. So you got me there.
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if the (turn)tables were turned, and it was a state-funded cultural/musical institution dear to you lot that was threatened with extinction . . .
Try me.
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our taxes pay for many things that we may not like or use.
Most of those things are easily justified: it's easy to make a moral AND practical case for the preservation of Mt Aspiring, or the DPB, or whatever. But the argument for Concert FM is something along the lines of: 'it doesn't cost much, I want it and fuck you.'
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The point is that the music that she loved and helped form her does.
Much as I love Nina Simone I'm still lost as to why New Zealand taxpayers should fund a radio station to play music that she may have liked for years after her death. We live in different worlds.
I'm struck by the assumption that some high art can justly be funded and some can't.
Paintings are, apparently, all good. Our national collection is housed at Te Papa, which cost $300 million (or 60 years' operating budget for Concert FM) to build, and $36 million annual to run. And that's just one public gallery/museum.
So why is art music different? Again, given its place the cultural ecosystem (it also makes important recordings for broadcast, for example) the $5m for Concert (compared to the $80m for TV alone) seems fair value.
Well, you know I'd slash fuding for TVNZ and just pay for Maori TV. Re Te Papa/paintings, I'd argue that works by Charles Goldie and Peter McIntyre are somewhat more relevant to our nation than the Well Tempered Clavier.
There are regular exhibitions around the country of European art works but they tend to be funded by the twin demons of sponsorship and visitor fees.
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Danyl, if Prime Minister Peter and his wife Janet Fraser et al were still alive they would argue strongly for ongoing government support of the arts. The NZSO, the RNZ Ballet, public art galleries and public radio and such like were started (or nationalised) by the first Labour government, so that they would be accessible to everyone, not just the elite.
And that was a very worthy aim back in the 1930s when our country was amazingly isolated, our population was concentrated in rural areas and small towns, there was less of a divide between high culture and popular culture and our society was not so saturated with arts and entertainment that you had to struggle to avoid it.
there's something that separates Athens from Persia, and part of it is that in Athens art was democratic & public and in Persia it wasn't.
I'm guessing you don't make it to a lot of NZSO concerts. I go a couple of times a year: it's a pretty elite event. Not a lot of light between that and the court entertainments in Darius's palace; the festival of Dionysis had more in common with the ACDC concert (which I did not attend).
(Although given the massive phallus's worn during comic performances, maybe Beastie Boys or Insane Clown Posse would be more apt.)
You also might want to consider the importance of cultural infrastructure for the economy on a industrial planning level & of course flow on effects --- see basic research in the sciences for example.
I have no idea what you're talking about. I do research in basic sciences for a living. Maybe that's my problem . . .
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I pretty much felt that was what Danyl was saying from the start - "If you must cut something could it be this instead of that?". I didn't actually read him to be advocating any cuts of any kind at all.
Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt but when it comes to arts funding I really am as big an asshole as I seem. I think that in a small, poor country like ours the government should direct it's money and energy into areas like education, welfare and healthcare, not paying ballet dancers to stage productions nobody watches or composers to write symphonies nobody listens to.
There's a strong case to be made for arts funding around Maori culture, because that's unique to us. And I guess there's a case to be made for pop-culture productions like Outrageous Fortune with the added bonus that lots of the people who pay for it actually watch and like it. But government funding for most high culture artists and projects mostly seem driven by a desire for politicians and civil servants to play arts patron with somebody else's money.
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your Socratic dialogue would work better were your sock puppets not thoroughly stuffed with straw.
I'd try harder if I were arguing for real. The thesis that you guys are entitled to an ad free classical radio station and that attempts to take it away are part of a conspiracy to destroy society are really too absurd to take seriously. I'm just amusing myself.
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Public art galleries exist so you can see original art without having to buy it.
But you do have to leave your house and you don't get to keep the artwork, so they're roughly analogous to libraries. Surely the government should provide a service where they go from door to door handing out framed prints of flemish oil paintings to everyone. It would be barbaric not to.
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Danyl, are you saying that audio quality doesn't matter in the dissemination of music (of whatever genre)?
Yes. I mean, no, of course, not, but the argument for Concert FM went something like this:
Pro: Having the taxpayer fund my radio station is the only way I can listen to the music that's so important to me.
Anti: You could buy your own music.
Pro: You mean I should spend my own money to listen to the music I want? How barbaric!
Anti: You could rent it from the library for free.
Pro: God, how neoconservative! And also inconvenient.
Anti: How about downloading it from the internet then? Also for free.
Pro: Ugh. With those horrible compression algorithims? Why can't someone else just pay for my music for me?
Anti: Well, why should they?
Pro: (Sigh) You're SO obtuse.So if audio quality of your music is really important to people then they might want to invest some time or money in buying or borrowing high quality recordings. That's how it works for every other genre of music and every other form of art in existence.
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Not to mention how the liberal Left in this country has bought pretty much wholesale the neoconservative arguments about trimming the fat and using the market to support anything that moves.
'Neoconservative arguments'? What is this? PAS bingo?
Just to stand on my own soap box for a second: when someone argues for the state to fund something what they're actually saying is that they want their fellow-taxpayers to fund it. There's a mentality on the left that public revenue magically appears in the crown accounts in infinite amounts but the reality is that people have worked hard to create that wealth and since we're a very small, reasonably poor country there's a very limited amount of it.
So when people say that they should get their own radio station that plays the music they like with no ads and the taxpayer should pay for it I think it's reasonable to ask how such expenditure can be justified. And when the response is a laughable tantrum about neoconservatism and complaints that the same music available for free on the internet is of lower quality then it really just reinforces my initial prejudice.
I can't help but feel that the right would have less sympathy with voters if the left didn't have this tendency to piss away taxpayer money on self-indulgent white elephants. Which would you rather have: a commercial classical radio station or Paula Bennett as Welfare Minister?