I heard an interesting tidbit* a while back. It was off-hand and I don’t know if it’s entirely true but it made for good reinforcement for the way I was feeling that day which was good enough for me: It went, the USA and the UK are the only two countries that don’t received cultural support from their governments. Consequently, where do (arguably) the most renown movies and music come from?<\/p>\n
Hm.<\/p>\n
Is it possible that forcing a people to suffer and fight for their passions causes the results of those efforts to be greater than coddling and supporting them with handouts?<\/p>\n
As a self-made producer for ten years as well as a recent recipient of such a handout I’m pleading ambivalence at the moment but I thought that this was an interesting observation.<\/p>\n
Does survival of the fittest (or more entertaining, as the case may be) rear a better product and thus a healthier industry giving rise to a self-sustaining class of entertainment professionals? Or, put differently, does supporting that class of professionals with grants foster a measure of mediocrity in the final product that holds the entire industry to a limitation? Not to mention enforce a certain sense of unspoken (perhaps unintentional) control over those same professionals ever criticizing the system in which they are attempting to exist for fear of being denied future handouts.<\/p>\n
Maybe I’m too close to it to see the truth. Maybe I’m just not brash enough to outright poop where I eat. I don’t know. Or maybe it’s just time to have this conversation. We can have a conversation can’t we?<\/p>\n