Stephen Harper Cuts Funding for the Arts

There is a lot of raucous uproar about the funding cuts to the arts in Canada by current Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Here's Bromby's opinion. This one steams me a little...

Bromby appreciates the arts, he has a degree in dramatic arts and a background in the theatre. The arts thrive because we live in a fairly prosperous society that enjoys being entertained and values art. Most of these people do not mind paying to be entertained or to pay for books, movies, music etc.

Good art has an audience and gets 'funding' from the people who appreciate it.

Bad art has no audience and needs 'funding' from people with pull in government.

Cutting funding to the arts does not hurt good art - it simply makes being a crappy artist an unsustainable career. We don't need more crappy artists.

OK 'crappy' is a subjective term - so then how is it decided who get funding and who doesn't? Are you telling me the government has a system of determining which artists are worthy of funding? People argue that just because art is not commercially successful, does not mean it doesn't have merit. The artist should be allowed to pursue the noble cause of art for art's sake, and the hard working store owner and police officer should foot the bill through their taxes for these delicate geniuses who are simply too precious to do real work.

People argue that the free market is cruel to artists - because it degrades the complexity of the artistic human soul to produce 'commercial' art. 'Commercial' simply means art that someone else would actually value and be willing to pay for. I hate to generalize but if no one would value it or pay for it- isn't that art simply bad? Why should hard working Canadians subsidize the decadent lifestyle of the artist pretentiously producing art for their own amusement and for the amusement of a minute group of elitists that feel the tastes of the general public are not sophisticated enough to appreciate it.

Art that is produced only for the gratification of the artist is masturbation - why not have the government subsidize that too?

- Bromby