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November 26, 2003
Free trade and culture. Is it a public policy issue? Should the liberal state be concerned with protecting its national culture when cutting bilateral and regional trade deals. Some think so. Others do not.
The argument for the state's concern with, and shaping of national culture is given by George Miller, the name behind the "Mad Max" and "Babe" films. He says we are:
"...witnessing nothing less than the spiritual death of Australian storytelling on screen... we exported all our top actors and directors but none of our stories.. sleepwalking Australia had slipped back into a comfortable habit of complacency.. our filmmakers no longer had anything new to say - the boys were making Tarantino movies and the girls relationship movies - and had no different ways in which to say it. We had neutered film culture by slashing the AFI..."
In his comments on this statement David Tiley over at Barsita says that the old system, which had nurtured directors such as Peter Weir, Fred Schepsi, Gillian Armstrong, Jocelyn Morehouse, PJ Hogan, Phil Noyce, Bruce Beresford, Michael Jenkins, has disappeared. Commercials have been deregulated, the tax systems has been replaced by the cheaper FFC, Film Australia has been cut, and the ABC has been slashed. David says that all this:
"... has happened in a decade in which the digital revolution has brought huge capital costs, the Americans have developed their formidable production machine, our best people keep leaving, the rest of the world has learnt how to do quirky, the audiences are declining, budgets in television are devised by vampires, and we have become addicted to spectacle."
He says that his fear that globalisation is destructive since the whole world is dreaming Tarantino whilst a generation focused on consumerism, on competition, on spectator sports, is losing its heritage. The net result is that we are left with an impoverished public culture reduced to strange ideas about Gallipoli, mates and the evils of independence.
The conclusion of the cultural nationalist argument is that the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US will result in Australia becoming a media colony of the US.
Boilermaker Bill, a columnist over at Crikey.com.au, will have none of this. Commenting on the recent AFI Awards shown on ABC he says:
"....If they said it once, they said it a hundred times. A Free Trade Agreement was going to deny Aussie kiddies Australian stories in Australian accents. For what's supposed to be the cream of our creative and cultural communities, the seemingly endless parade of poseurs parroting the same anti-free trade mantra showed a distinct lack of creativity."
Bill's argument? Well he takes exception to the style of the visual literati. He says that for an awards ceremony that was supposed to attract viewers at home:
"... the speeches showed either arrogance or an indifference to the audience. For all their passion and purity of purpose, they lacked persuasion. I wonder if any of them in the cold hard light of day would realise that their display on Friday evening reflects what's wrong with contemporary Australian film, and to a lesser extent, television - and what's wrong with their campaign against the Free Trade Agreement. They were telling rather than showing. And they were either preaching to the converted, which was arrogant, or they had no idea what would communicate their message, which is an indictment on their so called story telling skills."
Fair enough. But why shouldn't the state step in and subsidise this culture industry? Bill does concede some points to the cultural nationalists:
"... Of course I want to see Australian stories - but I want them well told. And yet far too many Australian films come to the cinema undercooked and undernourished. More often than not the acting and production values are high quality, but they're let down by a story and script that's patronising, slap happy, or just lacking the verisimilitude of contemporary life in Australia. I look at the theatre pages of the New Yorker every week with envy: the sheer variety of stories is amazing."
Australia is not the US. If we want quality product full of diversity then we Australians have to nurture it. Boilermaker Bill acknowledges this:
"So, instead of trying to keep the competition out, how about lifting the quality of Australian story telling. Far too many scripts smack of the writer thinking they know it all after attending a Robert McKee workshop, and reading the Cliff Notes of Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces. For a start, how about we invest in scriptwriting workshops, and make leading writers available to mentor up and coming screenwriters? How about we co-opt cinema and television reviewers - who make their lives from watching and critiquing our films and shows - to work with writers? I'm even in favour of tax breaks for film and television - after all everyone else does it."
Is Boilermaker Bill a closet cultural nationalist after all? Nope. In the end culture does not matterfor him:
"What worries me most is that the luvvies will distract us from what's really important in the FTA negotiations: such as preserving our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, maintaining our labour and environmental standards, and getting a fair shake of the American markets. That's the story I want to hear - and I don't give a bugger what accent I hear it in."
In the end Boilermaker Bill does not really care about our national culture. It is not an important public policy issue. As Boilermaker Bll says:
"The US FTA does raise a number of important public policy issues requiring careful consideration. What's going to happen to the Wheat Board's export monopoly, or the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme? How will the FTA affect our car industry? Will it be good or bad for the global trading system? Some of these issues could have real consequences for ordinary Australians. But the impact of the FTA on Australian culture is not one of them."
Boilermaker Bill's focus on 'accent' displaces the culture industry as an industry. What disappears into the background with 'accent' is media producers, cross media projects, investments, employment , exports and profit. Boilermaker Bill has yet to wake up to the existence of the information economy.
Since it means nothing our future cultural industries can be sacrificed for gaining access to US markets for agricultural producers. That is John Howard's position as he moves to cut a deal with the US over free trade.
We should remind ourselves that is in a context of a looming international trade war that is being driven by a protectionist USA, which is closing off more and more of its domestic market to exports from China, Japan and other Asian nations. It is okay for the US to be protectionist but not Australia in a globalized world.
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Now Gary what you have to imagine for a moment is a bunch of neocons taking over our publicly funded arts and film boards as well as the ABC. Now one of their flunkies, a particularly obnoxious little right wing death beast, decides to warm up the art world with his creativity. This artwork involves a copy of the Victorian EOC's pet Act, a Koran and a liberal qanyity of juicy pig manure. He naturally receives a generous grant to let his creative juices flow, with a view to photographing it for the next Adelaide Arts Festival promo poster. As well he manages to get the ABC to fund a doco on the trials and tribulations of the young artist getting the artistic juices really flowing. Get the picture?
As a taxpayer you might just have the odd small objection to some of these goings on. Similarly with some taxpayers and the last lot of Arts Festival posters(I think it was JC dressed up as Hitler and the Virgin Mary getting urinated on as I recall) Whatever, some folk may have a few objections to funding what they see as an appalling display of bad manners, whatever their cultural or religious background.
This is why some of us believe you should fund the education of film-makers rather than the films themselves. Likewise with subsidising the training of fitters and toolmakers rather than subsidising the production of Holdens(or Leyland P76s)
Some of us who have struggled and grappled with pushing our own little barrow in the market-place with modest success, are of course somewhat bemused by the wailings of film-makers. It's a familiar cry of the less successful- IF ONLY people would buy MY wares at MY prices and quantities, then all OUR problems would be solved. Thank goodness wiser heads like John Button didn't listen to the car unions,etc when they uttered it. Now they work three shifts around the clock to sell Monaros to Americans among others. Of course there are probably a few Leyland P76 devotees who long for the good old days.