New Podcast Episode; And a Ramble

Over at The Projectionist's Lending Library we have a new episode--our season finale--about Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven and the 1980 PBS TV adaptation of it. Check it out. 

​Toward the end of this episode, Erik and I go on a tear about public funding for the arts. This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I grew up in the rural American South and there was at that time a kind of reflexive distrust for arts funding; I think the controversies over Piss Christ and things like that were still fresh in everyone's mind. I absorbed that at the time, but gradually I kind of just slipped into thinking that, no, public funding for the arts is probably a good thing.

I didn't feel that passionate about it, though. That's changed. If the past ten or twenty years have shown anything, it's that culture in general has become dull and mechanical. In my previous post I shared a video of Alan Moore talking about Harry Potter. I'll post it here again because I think Moore's right. 

Moore's right. It's not that there isn't anything good coming out at the movies; Luca Guadagnino's Queer and Robert Eggers's Nosferatu are two movies that I enjoyed a lot and that I think are positive contributions to the culture. In the podcast, I talk about Piranesi by Susanna Clark and Dayspring by Anthony Oliveira. There's good stuff out there. But lately I've been overwhelmed by a sense of general depression covering most forms of media, where the truly strange or interesting is either pushed to the sidelines or mimicked (sometimes convincingly). 

We need more strange stuff out there. We need more weird art. And the corporate model is very difficult for this sort of thing. That's why I'm so passionate about public funding for the arts. Back in the day, one argument against public funding is that it was going to works that people didn't understand or that might offend some people and "why should my tax dollars" etc etc etc. But, of course, that's precisely why we need public funding. Because art, lots of it, simply isn't commercial. But it's good. It's a public necessity. Because art is what pushes us to imagine new realities and explore beyond what we normally experience. Public funding for the arts puts interesting art in the sight of the people, some of whom might be confused or enraged, but all of whom would not have the opportunity to encounter it otherwise.

These are very un-organized thoughts. And with the ascent (reascent) of the philistine administration of Donald Trump, which is anti-human and so anti-art, it's unlikely that we'll see PBS or any other public services get substantial increases in funding. But it's a dream worth having.

​To close out, here's a video of David Lynch (RIP) talking about making art. Lynch was one of the true masters of the strange and the illuminating. He's meant a lot to me for a long time and I'm sorry to see him go.