An excitable acquaintance of mine, big on
conspiracy theories, maintains that Canadian television news won’t feature
Canadian artists unless their work sells for exorbitant prices or is stolen or
vandalized. This is because the Harper government wants to limit the
dissemination of a variety of opinions and distract us from real and
alternative issues that writers and artists deal with as representatives of a
diverse society. This is also why, she says, Canadian news covers popular American
movies, American TV shows and hockey stories that are as inane as players
getting the mumps or the Edmonton Oiler’s losing streak. Hockey is the soma of
the masses!
In Canada
coverage of the arts varies provincially. TV Ontario and CBC radio do a
passable job of covering the arts, but our national news programs can certainly
be criticized for not covering the arts as well as they should. With 24-hour
news cycles, you would think they could at least drop in a half hour show on
the arts in Canada somewhere. They should be embarrassed that they don’t.
Unlike regular
sports, science, health, or business contributors and commentators who we are
familiar with, the closest CBC or CTV has to a regular “arts” contributor is
Ben Mulroney, yikes!, or a regularly featured film critic. It would be
wonderful if the CBC and CTV at least had an arts contributor as prominent as their
science reporter, Bob McDonald or financial news commentator, Pattie Lovett
Reid.
Unless a
prominent Canadian writer or artist dies, or when a former CBC/CTV reporter
turned novelist puts out a book, there is very little coverage nationally of
the arts. And when we do see writers, because we only hear about painters when
they’re dead, we keep seeing the same few faces over and over again. How much of
Margaret Atwood or convicted criminal Conrad Black can you take? And they’re
both in their seventies. Where are all the young talented Canadian artists?
By comparison the
Americans do a pretty good job of covering the arts, maybe not on CNN or other 24-hour
news programs, but PBS does, as do morning news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC. And
then there are the satirical news programs on the comedy channel, The Daily
Show and the Colbert Report, where both have one interview segment, sometimes
two, featuring a diversity of artists. And then there are the other late night
comedy shows, which might not feature many fine artists, but the diversity of
the popular arts covered is refreshing and surprising by comparison.
On many American
programs, writers, painters, poets, sculptors, designers, architects,
playwrights, etc. are continually interviewed to discuss their latest works or
their extensive and often historic involvement in the arts. And every once in a
while you will see Canadian writer or actor on these shows, with extensive
interviews on the PBS NewsHour. All this coverage of the arts contribute to
building a rich and diverse culture in the United States, one in which we
Canadians are familiar with and ultimately copy, whether or not we’re talking
about popular art or fine art.
Unless you make a
real effort, or are part of the scene, you wouldn’t know if there was some kind
of new art movement in the visual arts or new poetry or new theatre or new
anything going on in Canada. Unless it’s something like Cirque du Soleil,
raising truckloads of money, or has won an international award, the public is
unlikely to hear about it.
We do hear about
the Giller Prize winners because a real effort is made with a live televised
broadcast. And we do have televised award ceremonies; the Junos for popular
music, the Screen Awards for film, Gemini for film and TV, but have you watched
any of these from start to finish? It’s nice to hear that Canadians are getting
awards, but it’s very likely that you know little to nothing about all the
nominated artists. There’s little excitement for these shows because we hear so
little about anyone being nominated. It’s like watching an award ceremony based
in Quebec or a European country.
At least the
award ceremonies announce what might be really good and valuable for us to look
into, when we get the time.
It was a rare
occasion, and delightful to see two of Thunder Bay’s own talented animators
Shayne Ehman and Seth Scriver followed around at the Toronto International Film
Festival where they won the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film. We need
more of this kind of thing, but not just for award winners, but for all the
hard working artists who produce great work, whether or not they get grants or awards, for we live in a large country and not in Toronto.
That national
Canadian TV news can’t cover the arts better than a couple comedy shows on
American television says a lot. But is there a conspiracy involved? Hmmm.