Posts by Keir Leslie
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But do you think that, say, the Workers' Party ought be able to spend $500k or whatever the eventual average works out to?
And I think that's a separate issue from the identity of the allocation and cap; I don't think that if the allocation & cap is inequitable it ought be replaced by a higher cap and yet not a higher allocation.
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re Media 7 : That young turk asking for a bigger public handout for RNZ is dreaming, especially when the other business driven fella said he could spit out a shitload of programmes of equal quality for what RNZ gets now.
Well yeah, 'cause talk is fucking cheap isn't it? If he isn't willing to take the damn contract on the spot he's full of the proverbial.
I dare say I can say I can spit out fifty golden sovereigns an hour, but that doesn't mean I actually can. And given the empirical evidence against that notion, you'd be a damn fool to take me up on that, no matter what I said. Likewise the business driven fella; odds-on he's talking bullshit.
(by the way Kyle I honestly can't remember Te Papa charging entrance to the national collection, which is what Russell was talking about. A bit of a reading fail there, given Russell made no assertions about touring blockbusters.)
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OK, i'll bite. What real world is this ?
The one where TVNZ returns a dividend, where people listen to music made more than five minutes ago, where the 1930's involved a really quite large gulf between the high and lowbrows certainly as large as today's.
You know, reality.
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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.
Well, no, I don't go. It's horridly middle-brow, darling. It isn't a very elite event in a lot of ways.
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).
Actually there's a pretty massive gulf, which is the difference between the Louvre and the King of France's private collection, or again, between Phidias and the Emperor's tame metal-worker.
& wtf, Attic drama's just like AC-DC? Right. Also, Danyl, what the fuck are you smoking that there wasn't such a gulf between high and low culture in the 30's? I mean, that's about the stupidest thing I've read in weeks.
I am hardly a true believer in the objective marvellousness of high art etc etc, and I suspect I'd probably be more art-is-basically-oppression than almost anyone here, but it might be nice if the people arguing against Concert FM's funding started to show a familiarity with the real world (yes I am being nasty, but honestly, if you keep saying things that are basically untrue...)
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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.
Yeah, this is really just barbaric in that dull classical sense; 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.
Secondly, what do you mean `stage productions nobody watches or [...] symphonies nobody listens to'? You might want to go off and get some evidence for this one.
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.
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Well, yeah, basically. I mean, some NZ music gets money from the government through a different structure than NZ art music, so looking at one structure is fundamentally unfair and biased.
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Just out of interest, how many string quartets have received NZOA money?
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Craig, I really don't see where you get that reading of what I wrote from the text.
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I was not actually calling for Concert FM to be shut down, more that I was disagreeing with the notion that it was (in it's current form) a Must Have that the market could never provide for.
But it is. It is something we must have, and it is something the market could never provide.
It is not the best thing we could have, and it certainly isn't the best thing it could be. But then, in 1950 the National Gallery wasn't the best thing it could be, but shutting it down would still have been a bad thing.
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As you say, it's popular: so why not let the market pander to this popularity and let Concert FM spend the limited funds it has on things that the market won't actually deliver ? Such as traditional Maori music, which is also "part of the New Zealand cultural heritage, so perhaps it is be worth funding a radio station that allows people up and down the country to hear it."
This bears no relation to reality whatsoever. You can have Concert FM, or you can have a crappier version. Possibly if you have a good Concert FM it can be improved in the future. But you aren't being offered that traditional Maori music option instead. It isn't on the table.
There's something important about the perfect: it shouldn't be the enemy of the good.