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In response to this post from yesterday:

I have to say that I think this is bullshit - things may work differently up in Canada, but I think that the gist is the same. I happen to know a group of quite risque playwrights and avant garde puppeteer/performers who receive public finding and the contribution that they make to the city is significant. They are absolutely brilliant artists who happen to need a leg up - and not in 10-20 years, through the education of the public, but right now.

Now, I am also keen to support the education side of things, taking the arts education of young people very seriously. Such funding has taken a hit from gov't cutbacks, as has physical education, and this needs to be reformed.

I suppose it matters what kind of leash she is referring to. There are many different kinds.

Me: This reader isn't alone in the skepticism of this Paglia quote. I told Hannah about it last night and she rather crooked her eyebrows, said "eh", basically dismissed it and returned to watching Letterman.

I do think it matters what kind of leash she was talking about—good point there. I also think it matters whether she'd find support for individual artists' training and education acceptable, instead of support for artist livelihood in lieu of a steady job.

Paglia is one-part provocateur (moreso in her past, but even still today in milder forms). This quote is from 1995, when the "NEA wars" were far hotter than they are now. She also said, in that piece, that "PBS, NEH and NEA haven’t a clue how removed they are from the populace as a whole" so I think that is the context of the opinion that funding should not go to individual artists, because they might be tied to a PC mindset that she (and I) found so repellent.

One cannot separate PC from its roots in French poststructuralists and the Frankfort school. PC is watered down totalitarianism, a kind of Marxism not of a social kind, but a cultural one. The objections to PC is that 1) it substituted dialogue and organic development of language for fiat and created a slippery slope where everything, per usual, is reduced to "power", and 2) it cemented a victim mentality as means for empowerment. Of course there are/were enormous needs for debates about discrimination based upon race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and gender.

But debate is far different than imposition, the modus operandi of what was rightly criticized. There was no extreme form of PC—PC was extreme by nature. If you disagreed with a PC enthusiast, you risked being shunned or branded. And while we are in a post-PC era, or the beginnings of one, the lack of real debate and dialogue about controversial issues lives on, in the near impossibility of sane and civil disagreement about, for example, the Iraq war. I was called a "good German" by one reader, merely for posting an excerpt of a President Bush speech. This was a stupid name-calling, of course, but if you think it is rare in the American Left, you are kidding yourself. Recently, Andrew Sullivan rightly appauded the rise of humor where PC-attitudes once ruled.

But back to the point. The question is whether one is able to make edgy art without state/city money. Money from private agencies is another issue, and less problematic. And this is an issue that cuts close to home. I recently applied for a grant (up to $1000) from the City of Chicago. It can go to tangible things, like artist training and materials for use in the artwork. If I get some money from this grant (fingers crossed), I'm going to use it to pay for continued lessons with my composition teacher. This grant can absolutely not be used for mere livelihood. To me, money for mere artist livelihood is money I'd rather go to teachers, or to support crumbling schools.

A tangential point is that I've always wondered about issue of integrity in agit-prop arts organization (such as political puppetry, which Hannah was a part of several years ago) who criticize capitalism in one breath, then thank various city/state/private agencies or companies for the vital funding required for their continued existence—an obvious case of biting that hand that, in part, feeds you.

Obviously some of what goes on in the name of capitalism is rightly called out and examined; yet, I find it problematic to do so when it undergirds the presentation, though. This is so small artistic problem. I find that it undercuts whatever critique of capitalism suggested by the art. Frankly, I can't take it seriously. Though I will always marvel at the visual aesthetics of live puppetry. The artists and theatres in the form that I'm familiar with have done visually stunning work.