You see a lot of cinema and music come out of Canada because the government puts a lot of effort into funding it, something as a Canadian I'm quite proud of and believe is a great use of tax dollars:
Not just Canada. The Scottish band 'Boards of Canada' was named directly after the National Film Board of Canada as the members of the band had grown up watching films and animations of the film board.
Indeed, I watch A LOT of DW Documentaries, they are amazing, high quality and always extremely varied in their subject matters. I am enterally greatful to the Germans for funding this. If you're German and reading this: Danke schön!!!!
I think it is great that we fund the arts pretty well, despite the feds getting a little eager with it sometimes.
I think there's some kind of distinction to be made about what actually makes it out of Canada because we make it cheap for things to be filmed here, and what is created here regardless and aided by financing. My hunch is that music and film are somewhat different in this respect
It's interesting that you're proud of this and think it's a great use of tax dollars. To me it is the great shame of Canada funding bread and circuses to this extent rather than pushing the production possibility frontier out through actual research funding/ focusing on bringing research from the lab to the industrial scale production line. This seems like mostly a waste, especially since there are quite a lot of private options for entertainment content. I hope we can continue to disagree so utterly and vehemently while also maintaining civility. That is something I think we both can agree is great.
I have no idea what "production possibility frontier out through actual research funding/ focusing..." is even remotely supposed to mean, but the Canadian government invests in a wide array of areas including industry and research. In fact the SRED (scientific research and experimental development) tax credit is quite possibly the most generous research and development credit generally available to companies in the world.
Yes, i am aware that some of what the government funds may be considered useful for increasing productivity through technological advancement. I wasn't commenting on that subset of the gargantuan spending machine that is our government. I was commenting on the clear waste of money funding the modern equivalent of bread and circuses that is this portion of the spending.
What business does government have to choose the culture you experience? This is like the idea that it is perfectly fine that government funds all science research. It's this really what government is there to do?
It's great that you like it, but what if I don't like the culture/science it spends my tax dollars on? How can I like something that people are forced to pay for, whether they like it or not?
I think government is already terrible - spending other people's money inefficiently on pensions, wars, surveillance, mis-education, big pharma, etc - I don't think the arts are anything it should be funding. What is the difference between funding the arts and propaganda? How is this not simply about driving whatever agendas government is promoting?
I have so many issues with the idea that government is a benefit to us, the idea of it sponsoring the arts is only indicative of the already massive overreach it has. And then to cheer it's actions, happy that government forcibly extracts more from the people it purports to serve! It boggles the mind.
Canada is a democracy. If you're not happy with your representation, you should pick that up with your representatives. The way you describe being forced to pay sounds like you think you're living in an autocracy.
Art is awesome and brittle. It's very hard to make a living from art. Public funding of it is essential to a healthy society. And, i don't think that art that is funded publicly has to be popular. The goal is the opposite. Commercial art has to be popular enough to survive. The idea of funding it is to free the artists from those constraints.
Its very hard to make a living off bad or average art. Most art/music/text is garbage that people wouldn't be willing to pay for. It's similarly difficult to make a living microwaving hot pockets in a town full of five star restaurants.
> Its very hard to make a living off bad or average art.
If your implication is it's easy to finance good art, I disagree. Where I live, most good theater productions are state funded. Production costs a lot. People aren't lining up around the block. Those who are lining up aren't willing to pay that much. A new wave of art marketing is improving things, but not enough. End of the day, art isn't very popular. The options are to subsidize, or let the industry die. If the art industry is as good as the money it brings in, then let it die. If its value to society is more than that, subsidize it.
The commercial or non-state-funded theater productions (where I live) generally have little artistic value. They're populist and safe. Their priority is to be easy to market and to be a safe investment (think marvel movies).
Art that doesn't move people isn't good art. You can argue all day long how great a show is but if nobody wants to see it (or at least enough to cover the cost of creating it), it isn't. (Sometimes things are discovered posthumously sure, but that's a rare exception)
We would never subsidize a restaurant that served food nobody wants to eat, why subsidize art that nobody wants to see?
Orson Welles couldn't get his movies funded. Van Gogh never sold a painting. Mozart was near broke most of his career. The list of great artists who struggled to fund/sell and generally make a living off their work is so long it's a cliche.
It can take a generation or several for this kind of work to matriculate into greater culture. Their value is immeasurable and uncapturable. Artistic and cultural works precede market economies by tens of thousands of years.
A restaurant meal has an audience of 1 and is gone forever a half hour after it has been made.
I've seen his films, were they made without funding? Of course not, so what you are really saying is Orson Welles didn't have a unlimited bucket of money to do anything with.
> Van Gogh never sold a painting
Van was profoundly mentally ill. It's not surprising he wasn't able to make a living doing anything let alone art.
> Mozart was near broke most of his career.
This was a long time ago prior to industrialization. The alternatives available to Mozart would've been much worse and paid much less. Poverty was much higher back then, Mozart did well.
It's not a democracy, as you then explain - it's a 'representative democracy'. You choose 1 person (from a selection of 2 or 3) and then they make all the decisions for the next 4/5 years. If they don't do what they said they would, this is fine - their pension is not at risk.
Democracy is where you choose, or at least input into, the decision-making process.
Forcible extraction of wealth, to be invested as the government sees fit cannot be justified by the fact that art is brittle. Art is awesome I agree, I don't want propaganda as art.
> Art is awesome I agree, I don't want propaganda as art.
I totally get that and invite you to take a look at the art films sponsored by the film board of Canada. I have been unable to see any pro-government narrative in anything I’ve seen made with government money. It’s usually films which are just non-commercial and would otherwise not have been made.
You should spend your dollars how you like. Talking about the best way to spend dollars extracted forcibly (aka stealing) is a different question. It is stealing, if I don't want to pay, right? And it's ~40% of most people's income - far more than when one was expected to tithe 10% to the church.
Re seeing a government narrative - how would you know? Do you see any films in support of trump, against the military, against government, promoting traditional Arab values, castigating Israel for taking no refugees, etc? These aren't causes I agree with btw, I mention them as blindspots in the presentation of reality that is provided, and that is a type of propaganda for the long game.
Canadians especially (though Scandinavians are similar) have high level of trust and tolerance in government - where any external authority of your money, actions, etc is unwarranted. There is no agreement that we signed to allow for such unfettered control.
Well, Democracies as states are a lot more than the specific selection of the members of the legislative process. But for the sake of argument, a "representative democracy" has the people vote who is going to represent them in the legislative process for a time period. Your wish is that everyone allways participates in the legislative process? That's no more "real" democracy than the other, so let's be honest and call your approach "direct democracy" because that's term those who deal with this shit professionally use.
FWIW, "direct democracy" has somehow acquired the status of a mystical saviour. It is usually flaunted by those who feel a lack of control and harbor the unproven assumption that they are part of a (silent) majority. I'm not saying that's the case with the OP. But the idea seems to be everything would be better because you would be involved in all decision making.
But I've got bad news for you, so would be all the others. Those, who disagree with you. Those, who are following the liars with easy answers to hard problems. Those, who are smart enough to form a party and steamroll individuals. Those, who have more influence beyond the decision-making process. Those, who don't care. Those, who are not well informed on the topic (this includes all of us most of the time, BTW.) But that's just the obvious stuff.
There are other hard questions: What will be decided directly? On what level? On what level of detail? Who would decide what to decide today? How do we decide? Who would decide how we decide? Who would phrase the questions? Who would provide the options? Who would count the answers? Who would implement the decisions? Who would be accountable? And so on.
At least in Germany there is a large body of literature about this topic and the general consensus seems to be that the central problem is not who makes decisisons, but the last one, accountability. You alluded to this by saying a representative could change their mind and their pension would not be at risk. Direct democracy is unlikely to solve that problem, or if it does, you could port it to representative democracies just as well.
You think I'm making a political point. I'm making a moral point - that stealing, initiating force, threatening force are wrong, and cannot be made right regardless of how one tries to dress it up. A wrong cannot be turned into a right. Government is based on immoral actions and lies. This cannot be avoided.
People however suffer from Stockholm syndrome and want to defend their abusers, so mine is not a popular opinion.
> You think I'm making a political point. I'm making a moral point - that stealing, initiating force, threatening force are wrong, and cannot be made right regardless of how one tries to dress it up. A wrong cannot be turned into a right. Government is based on immoral actions and lies. This cannot be avoided.
Don't tell me what I'm thinking, thank you. But for the record I thought your argument looked pretty much like a No True Scotsman and I wanted to make you aware of this.
Furthermore, I offered a perspective on the troubles direct democracies as a form of legislative process have and why they are not less, but more, susceptible to manipulation. I probably should have let out the second paragraph, it did not add anything to my argument, but too late. I am afraid this is not going to change a thing, because I'm probably already sorted into the "sheeple" or "hostage" bin, but claiming to make a moral argument instead of a political one, does not reinforce your earlier statement.
So, here is the strongest version of your new argument I can come up with, but first an assumption: You write "government" but seem to mean "executive". The executive is a different branch of government than the legislative we talked about earlier. The legislative makes the laws (by direct vote, through representative, by the will of God, whathaveyou), but does not enforce them. The executive enforces the laws, but does not make them.
Anyway, now the arguments. I can actually see two:
1) An executive threatening force to enforce laws (i.e taxation) is morally wrong, because threatening force is morally wrong. Why?
2) An executive threatening force to enforce laws (i.e taxation) is morally wrong, because taxation is equal to stealing and therefore morally wrong, because stealing is morally wrong, because... why?
I think 1) is the much stronger argument but the line of argument breaks down much earlier. I'm not necessarily against any of these lines of argument but I'm somewhat dangling in the air here. They do not explain why taxation is equal to stealing, and it does not explain why threatening force to enforce the law is morally wrong. I, for one, can think of a few cases where it seems perfectly justified (e.g. arresting an attacker) so this seems at least to be not a universally applicable claim.
But, of course, this depends on what you actually think how moral and ethics work. Are you a deontologist? Or are you more of a teleologist? Are your morals value or virtue based? These are important questions to discuss to understand your argument.
You cannot say "representative democracy" without "representative", sorry, I mean "democracy". You know, there are multiple forms of democracy, including ones called "republic".
I do not consent to bring re-presented - I present myself. The whole thing is a slight of hand illusion, without consent or agreement. It is simply the tyranny we are born into, but we think it is fine, as this is what we have been told. It's quite self-serving when you think about it.
'You want to take 40% of my life's efforts? Take 60%, but make sure you give tax exemptions to the film studios with some of that money!'
This deeply un-democratic attitude, which seems to be based on pure selfishness combined with a perceived exceptionalism, is really troubling.
If you think a democracy, regardless of form, asking for taxes is tyranny you lack even the slightest trace of history or civics. And you show clearly, that you simply are not willing to participate, and take even the smallest responsibility, in modern society. True authoritarians, fascists and wannabe tyranns are happy to use that attitude to erode democracies.
Standing by nodding while your government provides weapons, propaganda and conducts other immoral actions with their immorally extracted wealth from those all around you, is selfish. Why do you condone theft? You wouldn't think it was OK if those around you stole, or is a corporation stole, but it's OK that the government does it.... How? Which other mafia protection rackets do you like?
Put simply, if it is not voluntary, if it is forced, it cannot be justified, regardless of how the party doing the forcing justifies of actions. It doesn't matter how many people are doing the forcing, what they call themselves, how many books they write to justify their actions (law, civics), how must they tell you it's for the greater good, etc. To think it is right is to suffer from Stockholm syndrome - you are justifying your abuser's actions. You wouldn't think it was alright for a husband to take his wife's money, or boss not to pay his workers, or a neighbour to take money from the old couple next door... so why do you think it's OK that government does this?
People are confused - this is not a political issue it is a moral one. Politics ought to come after we agree the morals. It is fine for people to form free, voluntary associations, build roads or whatever. It is not right to force this association, and it can never be made right. It is wrong. Stealing, initiating violence, threatening violence is wrong. Might is not right, and can never be made right.
In a vacuum, what you say is true. But, you exist in a society with others. As such, disagreements occur. Sorting this out is an issue. Solutions to this vary, but one solution to it, seeming accepted by Canadians, after a lengthy chain of social argument and negotiation, results in public funding for the arts.
You are just one voice. Take a moment to image a world filled with people exactly the same as you, carbon copies. In that world, which ones of you is happy, which one of you is sad, or do you all live a meager solitary existence because of your lack of willingness to accept what the present you accepts as selfishness and so seek out your utopia of the individual.
Political answers are one solution, as you say. Tribalism is another. Neither are right to me.
What an actual answer could be like, I don't know. I tend to think that conscious adults do not need to be guided like children. Eg in a social setting you do not need the police - people are capable of managing themselves - in fact they will better manage things without a 'management class'. The self acclaimed authorities are actually the worst of us, parasites on the work of others. The basis of government authority too has no moral basis.
Might I point out too, that normalising theft, force and infantilisation of the masses will not lead us to utopia either. Calling immorality 'right' or 'good' while it is plainly not, is also not a right or good action in itself - it is to embrace an illusion. These actions hasten dystopia, right?
So, in the first place individuals need to understand what basic morality is (the golden rule: do not treat others as you would not want to be treated) and then live their lives accordingly. It is not what the law, your teacher, a judge, a priest, or whoever says - you know what is right already, innately. Don't initiate violence or harm (eg lying) in others.
If more people lived according to their consciences, the change would tranformative. That means police, army, teachers, medical staff, etc would need to reflect on their actions and stop initiating violence and harm. Don't code the dystopian control grid of the future. As I see it, any progressive future change has to come from each individual acting according to their conscience. And in the first place these means that one should not justify immoral acts, even if it is the government undertaking them.
I don't feel like you understand the point I'm trying to make when I suggest a world filled with exact copies of yourself. I do this only to suggest that even in this ideal, like-minded case, conflict will arise, i.e. two yous will not be able to come to a consensus on who is morally at fault given a circumstance.
Consider merging onto a highway. At some point you merge ahead of a car, and at some point you merge behind a car. There is some epsilon around around this point where you lack the perfect behaviour to make the objectively correct decision due to limited human processing capacity. Suppose an accident occurs, then subjectively both yous feel you did the moral thing. Is someone at fault, yes, the person who was within epsilon wrong. Pragmatically you may say no one was at fault, accidents happen. At which point the question becomes how big is an acceptable epsilon. And so on and so on, more questions upon questions. Which need to have answers, which provoke disagreement. Which is why I say you are right in a vacuum, but we don't exist in a vacuum.
A criticism of my argument would be that reality does not work that way and that everything is deterministic, and then we're back to desiring a machine that we can build that will say yes and no and right and wrong. If that machine can exist, we don't have it yet, and if we did I promise at least one person will say it's broken.
If you must, find one thing that is broken in your life, and try and devote your energies to fixing it for the next generation. If the ideas you are promoting are that, so be it. But this road is very long and very difficult and the majority are like me, too lazy, and mostly just coping. A quicker buck is made selling snake oil and using that wealth to buy leisure and hire lawyers. Morals be damned.
> Consider merging onto a highway. At some point you merge ahead of a car, and at some point you merge behind a car. There is some epsilon around around this point where you lack the perfect behaviour to make the objectively correct decision due to limited human processing capacity. Suppose an accident occurs, then subjectively both yous feel you did the moral thing. Is someone at fault, yes, the person who was within epsilon wrong. Pragmatically you may say no one was at fault, accidents happen. At which point the question becomes how big is an acceptable epsilon. And so on and so on, more questions upon questions. Which need to have answers, which provoke disagreement. Which is why I say you are right in a vacuum, but we don't exist in a vacuum.
I understand your example - I don't know that I have a clear answer - at any rate let us accept that there is an ambiguity there. How does the current system help resolve this?
Perhaps you will say there are laws, judges, etc that will do it. In which case, it would be surely be possible to find a solution without that system, by simply finding someone acceptable to both parties to arbitrate, no?
I certainly don't think like is deterministic - not sure why you're bring that into it.
One can certainly choose a hedonic lifestyle ("morals be damned"). Or one can choose to uncover and learn about oneself more deeply. Or something else. For me, there's only one path that has value of meaning personally. But, even the hedonist that can apply reason, ought to be able to agree that initiating harm is a wrong, not a right.
Canada's effectively a single party state anyway, there is no material difference between our two parties and they both serve at the pleasure of a few elites. Nowhere in the developed world does voting have less value.
> The way you describe being forced to pay sounds like you think you're living in an autocracy.
No. He's describing tyranny of the mob. Which is worse than an autocracy. At least in an autocracy you know you are being fed a pile of bullshit.
> Public funding of it is essential to a healthy society.
No it's not. It's called government propaganda.
> The idea of funding it is to free the artists from those constraints.
No. It's to constrain artists to agenda.
What you are really saying is I agree with the government propaganda and hence support it. That's all you are saying.
In a democracy, government should be apolitical. People like you prove that democracy is actually a bad idea. It's funny how the foundation of modern democracy ( US ) was created on distrust of government and elites, but the 'democracies' that worship british royalties was founded on slavish worship of authority.
> Guy, I don't know who you're upset with or why, but it's not me.
I'm not mad at ya. Just your stupidity.
> You know that just means the perils of being a minority in a democracy, right?
Hence why the US is a republic.
> What on earth are you talking about?
'It's funny how the foundation of modern democracy ( US ) was created on distrust of government and elites, but the 'democracies' that worship british royalties was founded on slavish worship of authority.'
The government is using tax money to fund the creation of consumer products, while consumers vote with their wallets that they don't want those products. Doesn't sound very democratic to me.
> “It's great that you like it, but what if I don't like the culture/science it spends my tax dollars on?”
Boo hoo? What if I don’t like the spending on fighter planes and fossil fuel subsidies?
My options are the same as yours: move to a country that doesn’t fund this stuff, or vote for politicians who will cut the funding.
> “How is this not simply about driving whatever agendas government is promoting?”
A valid question that is at the core of how funding for arts and sciences is structured in the West. There are many levels of indirection in place exactly to avoid direct interference from elected officials and to have experts in each field making the decisions on what deserves funding.
> My options are the same as yours: move to a country that doesn’t fund this stuff, or vote for politicians who will cut the funding.
Why should I move? Can I state the fact that this is a tyranny? Must I love the tyranny? Can I say that government is far, far beyond whatever use it may have served? Can I say, that it is no longer the servant, but the master? It chooses my art!
I don’t know which country you live in. If it’s Russia or China for example, then yeah, I’m sorry, you don’t get a real say.
But if it’s a democracy, then you can always go start a political party yourself if nobody else has taken up this cause.
In most countries, voters don’t seem to love the idea of eliminating funding for arts and sciences. It’s a very small part of the total budget for any state, and it tends to have appeal that connects with the purpose of having a nation in the first place (“who’s going to make movies in our language if we don’t?”)
I live in S E Asia. Here Korean occupies a uniquely elevated place in the minds of the young. This is directly traceable to the huge amount of effort that the Korean government has spent promoting and supporting it's culture: K pop music, Korean TV dramas, Korean movies. All this translates into dollars in diverse ways, such as Korea being the number two language that young people want to learn after English. Such as tourism.
Check out the book the creative economy for more depth on this phenomenon.
I agree 100%. Not that I mind support going to tha arts, but the process funds artists who optimize for funding instead of who are recognized for good art. Canada's art and cultural scene (like our science and tech scene) sucks, it's a bunch of watered down government agenda friendly politically correct crap, and largely funds the same club of favored people.
As far as wastes of tax dollars go, government funding is a minor problem, it's the hollowing out of the arts to be the crap that we have that's the bigger concern. Look no further than the fact that every good Canadian artist immediately goes to the US if they get some success. It's the same with startups/tech. The lame ones stay in Canada and mooch off the government, anyone remotely good gets out. Yes I know shopify is a counterexample.
> and largely funds the same club of favored people
Without taking a side, I have an anecdote that might be able to shed some light on why that's the case.
While living in Canada, I met a woman in charge of administering publicly funded contemporary visual art grants. She said those grants only go to successful artists. "Why do already successful artists need the grants?" I asked. Her answer was that the point was to raise their profile – and Canada's – internationally.
From the government's perspective, it's a bid for soft power, like funding athletes who have a shot at winning an Olympic medal.
You'd be surprised to know that Hollywood also receives funding from the US govt. For instance to use a fighter jet, the military would offer a steep discount to a film producer provided there's a few changes to the script
It’s socialism under disguise. Gov props up various institutions to create jobs programs. Some of these are OK, but yes, I don’t want my tax payer funds in any culture stuff. In America, we have so much money dumping into bullshit DEI programs. These are all fake made up jobs that add very little value to our national progress. NRC has been printing laws ad-nauseam for 50 years. I don’t have a problem with Government existing and providing services, but there needs to be strong accountability. We have zero oversight over the performance of Gov. NYT will never investigate poor productivity in the deteriorating state of Gov, media has become the voice of the state. When culture is propelled by Canadian Gov, you’re creating a mass brainwashing campaign at tax payers expense. Propaganda films.
To be fair, the people are just doing what they’re incentivized. There is no malaise here, but the nature of government is to expand endlessly.
Canada’s government worries me deeply, it’s becoming more totalitarian by the day.
Les hivers de mon enfance étaient des saisons longues, longues. Nous vivions en trois lieux : l’école, l’église et la patinoire; mais la vraie vie était sur la patinoire.
"The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places – the school, the church and the skating rink – but our real life was on the skating rink."
The Hockey Sweater was my favorite book growing up. I hope Canadians continue to enjoy it for generations to come.
This short documentary is a portrait of the early era of computing and the process and implications of the digitization of large amounts of information. Examining the arduous work of assessing and documenting the geographical landscape, including sampling and analysis of soil, forestry, timber, wildlife, resources, industrial sites, and many other aspects, we see that human beings alone couldn't handle the vast amount of information that is collected. A new kind of computer (an “instant library”), the Canada Land Inventory Geo-information System, was developed to help manage and develop Canadian land. This film examines the workings of this new and mysterious machine.
Yes, I directed it. It turned out well enough, and it had a decent run on the festival circuit. As someone who grew up watching NFB shorts, it's kind of nice having something in the archives.
Curious fact: wonderful Scottish electronic music duo Boards of Canada took their name with inspiration from the national film board of Canada and the soundtracks their heard on its movies productions as kids growing up in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boards_of_Canada
> This feature-length documentary from 1974 takes viewers inside Fidel Castro's Cuba. A movie-making threesome hope that Fidel himself will star in their film. The unusual crew consists of former Newfoundland premier Joseph Smallwood, radio and TV owner Geoff Stirling and NFB film director Michael Rubbo. What happens while the crew awaits its star shows a good deal of the new Cuba, and also of the three Canadians who chose to film the island.
Films on this site can be streamed free of charge, or downloaded for your personal use for a small fee.
They just omit/forget/ignore the fact that you (I guess) have to be in Canada for that to work? Sometimes it feels like people don't understand the "Inter" part of Internet. Much annoying, "The Colour of Ink" seemed really awesome but all I get in nasty distant Sweden is the trailer. Sigh.
It's worth mentioning what, at least in my mind, is a peer to the NFB: the Heritage Minutes. Sort of like The More You Know, they were (are?) usually shown in-between children's TV shows.
There's no irony or shame in their presentation, they are upfront about their motive to educate. Despite that, they were very popular and widely quoted.
And I don’t know if you consider it a “peer”, since the NFB was commissioned to produce, but “Hinterland Who’s Who” by the Canadian Wildlife Service is iconic (and indeed to where my mind goes when imagining Boards of Canada’s influences)[0][1].
Its funny, as a canadian i get geofencing preventing me viewing usa stuff all the time. This is the first time i have ever seen the shoe on the other foot.
Oh, this reminds me of my favorite animated Christmas film that was funded by the NFB. Noel Noel[0]! I saw it as a kid, and only rediscovered it last year, and now it's a Christmas tradition in my house. The story is a delightful poke at the consumerist aspect of the holiday and the English narrator was Leslie Nielsen, which was always warm and nice to listen to.
One of my favorites is Hunger[1] by Peter Foldes from 1974. Featuring early computer animation, mid century minimalism, unsettling and striking score, and poignant satire about greed, lust, gluttony, and the grotesque imbalance between abundance and poverty.
The NFB made a great documentary called Wuxing People's Commune that doesn't appear to be available on the site. It's available on some other sites and is worth watching if you get the opportunity.
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/culture/arts-media/film-vi...
Film and video tax credit: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/funding/...
Canada Music Fund: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/funding/...
Funding available generally: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/funding....