Recruiting for the Digital Revolution, one hater at a time.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

An open letter to those who agree with Conservative funding cuts to Canadian culture:

We all like to defend our positions. And once they're published, I just don't know that it's in our nature to change our minds. We become increasingly invested in a point of view. In the case of your view regarding cuts to government funding of the arts (in particular, film), I would like to try and convince you that it is important to have Canadian films and TV, even though I'm probably wasting my typing fingers. I agree with you on this: to date it doesn't LOOK like Canadian film and TV is very important. The stuff seems irrelevant and, even worse, it seems really crappy! But I think it is a big, scary deal to hand our film and TV entirely over to American voices and interests.

Film is the most powerful medium for conveying ideas in human history. That combination of sight and sound, the transporting power of the images, the ability to take us to places we'd never see otherwise, ALMOST like we were really there, is unique. The impact of the "art form" on our psyches has been undeniable, even if only on occasion. Film (and I include TV) causes a shift in tastes and politics and fashions very quickly and across great numbers of people. It captures our hearts and minds. And so is it any wonder that every dictatorship has tried to control the films its artists create? Check out Nazi Germany's "Triumph of the Will."

Of course, audiences don't rent a DVD starring Adam Sandler in order to actively improve themselves or learn or change. We watch to be entertained. But growing, changing and learning is a by-product of the experience over time. I mean, are you telling me that there aren't TV shows from your childhood that have made indelible impressions and changed your heart and mind? Seeing black people on Sesame Street didn't affect your six year old brain? What about NOT seeing black people on television. I'll never forget Mr. Dressup, and probably he taught me some things I am not even aware of. These days, like you, I mainly watch American media. It's better. I hate most of the stuff made in Canada. But I think it's a frightening proposition to abandon all attempts to express our own views and values. Are we not a bit different from the U.S. at least? If not, why do we even have a border!! Aren't there certain ideas we want to protect? Ideas we want to engender in the existing and future generation? Even if it's simply the idea of a free and open society that allows expression of even controvercial views? Yes, I think even Three's Company is expressing values (even at the time, a guy living with two girls was sort of controvercial!).

I for one believe that a society that allows for free artistic expression grows and matures. The debates and free flow of ideas makes us smarter, more tolerant, more inventive. Basically it gets us out of Hicksville and even makes us more competitive in a global marketplace. Hey, lots of great inventions have been inspired by the fantastical stories in books and movies. Have I convinced you that film can be very important to influencing the hearts and minds of a population? If I haven't, there are much better arguments for the case made by others. I encourage you to read some of them. And if you accept, at least for the sake of argument, that film is important, then I don't know how we can just relinquish our screens wholesale to another country. Oh, and you're probably saying that the funding cuts are anything but an infringement on our freedom of artistic impression, since you'll argue we should be able to express ourselves freely without government money anyhow. I beg you to read on.

If you accept that media culture is important to our sovereignty as a nation, then the second important truth to consider is the fact that WITHOUT government support, the expensive film industry would essentially vanish. You're saying that's not a bad thing. Mainly because the Canadian stuff sucks. But the fact is, without government subsidy, there would be NO film industry. We'd have no Cronenberg. We'd have no Kids in the Hall. We'd never have seen Mr. Dressup or The Decline of the American Empire. And that's a fact. Again, I should probably refer you to the reams of studies and analyses by academics and policy-makers alike that have basicaly realized the same thing. Just as it is in every country in the world, other than the U.S, there is simply no film industry without support from tax dollars. Italy funds it. Sweden funds it. England funds it. France, Japan, Russia, Iceland, Brazil. Why do they all fund it?! Because on some level they know they can't afford not to. And a lot of their stuff sucks too.

Maybe the most unsettling part is that financing film has always been about spending a lot on many things just so that a little bit of it can be good. It seems like a bad investment. However, that's just the nature of it, even in Hollywood, and even more so in our beavery backwater. You cannot predict what will be mesmerizing based on the first pitch of the idea. You have to give it your best guess, spend the money, and then wait for it to reach the box office, where it either flourishes or dies on the vine. I admit that there are many, many BETTER ways of funding film with government money than the current model. I actually think a lot of the current funding agencies are borderline corrupt. And we really shouldn't be making so much stuff that sucks. But I don't want a Canada that makes no films at all (save for a few YouTube videos made on a video camera, because there's no doubt that filmmaking is an expensive art form). And so I advocate better management of the money, not a lethal poisoning of the system.

I for one think there are uniquely Canadian ideas embodied in art--in theatre, literature and film--that we need to preserve. And if they disappeared we lose soemthing significant to our identity as a nation. We don't lose it by canceling a single crappy Canadian TV show. Maybe we don't lose it even if we cancel lots of them. But the cumulative effect, over time, is that we lose our voice in the end. Eventually we don't have a voice on those screens at all, though I admit we barely have one now. So I really, desperately want people like you, to argue for BETTERING the financing of Canadian film and TV, not arguing that we shouldn't care and we don't need it. I think yours is a natural but easy conclusion drawn from information we receive on the surface: turn TV on, TV sucks, turn it off and swear at the government for "wasting my money." Yes, we should be making more stuff we're proud of, and if we did, I wager that opinions like yours would be pilloried. Can you imagine making the case that we don't need Alice Munro and who cares if she never existed or never gets published again? You'd come off as dumb and devoid of feeling too.

So now we have to dig deeper and figure out why all these countries have seen the financing of film as important since the advent of the art form. And then fire the fuckers who don't seem to have a clue about how to make programs we can be more proud of.

Sincerely,

H.H.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

The future of TV and Internet convergence can be found in the wonderful, addictive, oh-so-obviously futuristic No Fat Clips. Watch it...and watch it...and watch it.

Start with: Crossbow, or just explore on your own. It's phenomenal.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

NO FAT CLIPS!! is Short and Very, Very Sweet

"Aggregator" is just another word for "broadcaster" in the online digital age--a place where selective content is aggregated in one place for the pleasure and efficiency of an audience. YouTube isn't an aggregator in this sense, since all they do is take anything and everything, constantly (and successfully) vying for the most voluminous collection of videos, most of which is senseless, artless and uninteresting (not to mention oftentimes racist and homophobic).

And My Damn Channel is more like a producer, in fact. Their content is so worthy because the sensibility behind their "programming" is so spot-on. The online series backed by My Damn Channel consistently offer smart, entertaining counter-TV programming. My Damn Channel doesn't link to content other than the stuff they have backed themselves, and it just happens that the stuff they back is too damn fun (give me Wainy Days any day or night).

So, it was just a matter of time before I came across no fat clips!!, a kick-ass "aggregator" in the truest sense of that term. A single portal that links me to the kind of stuff I desire, lovingly culled from the ocean of a hundred million videos. They don't produce anything; they just thoughtfully aggregate it. I'd never have seen something as beautiful as Crossbow without it. Indeed, the site has never failed to disappoint me yet, only confirming in my mind that the future of "TV" is in the hands of artists and their allies, clasped together by the likes of no fat clips!!

:-)