Old people with serious inhibitions fucking with art
Uncle Steve needs to stop hiding in the closet.
Dean Jensen, Volunteer Staff
There is much big talk going on around Parliament Hill these days, much of it ado about jack shit. However, there are foul things afoot; one of which being the controversial Bill C-10. The proposed bill that the conservatives are aiming to push through Parliament would make it possible for the federal government to cut funding to any film or television production which it deems “offensive.” This funding, which all applicable Canadian productions are presently able to receive, comes in the form of a tax credit once production has been wrapped up. “Bill C-10, currently at third reading in the Senate, contains an amendment to the Income Tax Act which would allow the Minister of Canadian Heritage to deny eligibility to tax credits of productions determined to be contrary to public policy,” Charles Drouin, of Canadian Heritage, recently stated.
David Zitzerman, a Toronto lawyer, believes “such a provision could potentially lead to the government acting as ‘morality police’ [since the] existing definitions of pornography and obscenity in the Criminal Code should be sufficient for the government’s purposes.” Many arts groups, as well as concerned citizens, are lobbying the government and their representatives in the House of Commons, including David Cronenberg, a filmmaker, and Susan Swan, novelist and chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada. “We don’t like being told what kind of art we can make by the federal government,” Swan said.
However, Conservative MP Dave Batters, who claims to speak for “many, many Canadians,” (I’ve never heard of him) says: “The purpose of Telefilm is to help facilitate the making of films for mainstream Canadian society — films that Canadians can sit down and watch with their families in living rooms across this great country.” Batters fails to address the issue of Canadians without families, or the types of films they might be inclined to watch, as apparently those people don’t count.
Another man who claims to speak for Canadians is Charles Mcvety, an evangelical crusader who is taking some credit for Bill C-10. Mcvety, who believes films “promoting” homosexuality, graphic sex and violence, should not receive public funding. “It’s fitting with conservative values,” he told the Nova Scotia Chronicle-Herald. “I think that’s why Canadians voted for a Conservative government.”
However, Canadians did not vote for a Conservative government, as that government is in a minority. (How many times must I reiterate that?) “The platform they’re suggesting,” David Cronenberg, a filmmaker, claimed in the National Post, “is akin to a communist Chinese panel of unknown people, who, behind closed doors, will make a second ruling after bodies like Telefilm Canada have already invested.” Indeed. The Conservative government has taken to making most of its decisions “for the good of the country” behind closed doors of late, as they seem to believe they have a God-given right to decide what is best, and not one mandated democratically, and only barely at that. Martin Gero, a director, succinctly summed up the issue in the Globe: “It’s old people fucking with the Canadian film industry.”
So fuck those people. “Art,” particularly “edgy, relatively low-budget films” such as Cronenberg’s, which consistently performs well over seas and do much to undo the backward, provincial image Canadian artists have fought long and hard shake off, should not be curtailed to fit into an outdated, closeted family-values mould. Should all Canadian art be fit for a conservative living-room setting? I fucking hope not or I, for one, am out of here.
Canadians have a right to make art, and artists who can compete on a national, let alone international, level should not be hampered by uptight, conservative definitions of what is and what is not fit for public consumption. Just because the tight-assed goofs who have somehow taken power have problems dealing with homosexuality — or sexuality, period — does not mean that Canadians should be punished financially and curtailed artistically for not being afraid to work with such themes on a public stage.
If Uncle Steve and his buddies in Parliament want to hide in their closets, ignoring sexuality and other (heaven forbid) potentially uncomfortable aspects of the human condition, such as violence, then they can go right ahead and take cover. But if they decide to fuck with the rights of artists to portray the world as they see it, then we should run those pathetic dinosaurs out of office, and fast. A public tarring and feathering, aired in prime time over the CBC would, in their case, be well within the public’s interest.
Dean Jensen would hate to see Uncle Steve’s idea of a good time.
