I don't know why, but my gut reaction to anything "Canadian" is automatic embarrassment. This is especially true of the arts. Sure, there are exceptions gross in number--Alice Munro, Guy Maddin, Richard Wagamese, The Sweet Hereafter, Da Vinci's Inquest, Joni Mitchell,--but in general, "Canadian-ness" is not a positive attribute, arts-wise. It feels forced upon us.
How many of us suffer through sub-par works of art on a daily basis? Mediocre poetry on bus station billboards, book stores stuffed with pompous and clever 'character studies,' our airwaves held hostage by Celine Dion for a portion of every hour, all under the banner of promoting "Canadian" art.
I find TV to be the most galling example. Nothing is more humiliating than turning on the CBC and seeing their slate of pleasant, non-threatening, awful television shows. Has anyone ever laughed at Corner Gas? Or Little Mosque on the Prairie? The Americans and British run rings around us, TV-wise. And it's not because they have more money or better actors, it's because they're willing to offend people.
Good art is offensive--maybe a more polite way of saying that is, good art runs the risk of being offensive. The greatest American novel, in the minds of Ernest Hemingway and many others, features a character who refers to his best friend as Nigger Jim. And every few years someone tries to ban that book (Huck Finn) from schools. No such fight ever goes on with Canadian art.
(That's not true--Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" was banned in Spain. But the Spanish know as much about art as Canadians do.)
Now here's the rub--Canadian art is, for the most part, state-funded. It's in the government's interest not to offend people. But of course, The Powers That Be can't run the risk of being seen as fuddy-duddies. Hence the popularity of the faux-edgy state-sponsored art work, e.g."Gay Love on the Reservation."
The point isn't that homosexuality or reservation life couldn't be part of great art, but that those traits neutralize the artistic impulse if they're added to an art work to spice it up, rather than being of the essence of that art work. Meaning, if you're writing about gay guys on the reservation, or about anything else, there better be a good story at the heart of it.
That's the difference between a movie like Philadelphia, which says, "let's celebrate gayness as intrinsically noble, and reward ourselves for having the correct view of gayness," and a play like Angels in America, which looks at nobility through the lens of gayness. One is a story of cardboard characters and cheap sentiment; the other is a work of true drama and therefore creates genuine emotion.
On paper, it's a lot easier to pitch a Philadelphia than an Angels in America--and the pitch is what government-funded art revolves around. Does it sound arty? Will it reflect well on our institution? Then here's some dough.
If it sounds arty and can be explained easily, then it's probably disingenuous and no good. If you don't believe me, try explaining your favorite movie to a friend who hasn't seen it: "See, it's about this family of mobsters...a guy finds a horse's head in his bed...and they hide a gun behind a toilet...heck, I don't know, just see it."
Now try explaining the plot of a Lifetime Network movie: "A woman learns to love her mentally retarded sister."
Tolstoy believed that what defined a work of art was its inability to be distilled--meaning, the only way to understand what a work of art is, is to experience it.
The quality that makes the Canadian government sign a check is a quality of no use to the artist, and possibly of serious harm.
Learning to write or paint or play music is a skill. Learning to pitch is a separate skill. Unlike a talent show, which attempts to commodify art, an Arts Council attempts to commodify the pitch itself. Hence, the nice, pleasant, utterly unwatchable TV shows that fill the CBC's timeslots.
Contrast this with the BBC. British television features a string of abhorrent main characters, vile authority figures, and non-politically-correct treatments of social issues. The result? Black Adder, Prime Suspect, Faulty Towers, Cracker, The Office, and so forth.
The organizing principle of all these shows is not to enlighten, but to entertain. To entertain is to speak to someone as equals--"Here's a joke I think you might like." To enlighten is to speak down to someone--"You need to change the way you think, and here's why."
This is not to say that popular art isn't without its problems--anyone who has ever heard Nickelback can testify to that--but the problem in both cases is one of pandering. The soulless alt-rock band panders to its audience, while the television pitchman panders to the council. In both cases the results are the same--works of art that may be fashionable and may be popular, but which are empty at their center.
The flip side of the bland and vacuous art work is the stylistically-challenging-for-the-sake-of-being-stylistically-challenging art work. This could be seen as a reaction against the bland and vacuous, but they have more in common than they'd admit. The Canadian author who says, in effect, "storytelling is childish and bourgeois, so I will fill six hundred pages with my incoherent ramblings in order to disabuse you of your desire for a story," is cut from the same cloth as the mullet-headed singer who starts his show with, "Winnipeg is the rockin'-est city around!" Neither treats the audience as an equal. Neither is in the business of truth.
Canadian authors excel at postmodern, hip, empty works of art. We don't learn how to write for an audience--we see that as disdainful, as prostituting our talents. Literary theory is seen as the real proving ground--once you get the proper theory behind you (usually some mixture of Marx and Freud taken from a post-WWII European intellectual who himself [and it's usually a guy] never produced any art worth a damn), THEN you can start to write.
I believe literary theory and literature have as much to do with each other as a hot dog and a warm puppy.
A lot of people bemoan the reductions in arts funding that the Provincial Liberals and the Federal Conservatives have rolled out. But maybe in a way, this is what Canadian artists need-- a kick in the ass, a chance to reflect on why we make art and what role it's supposed to fill in our community. Does a Canadian Content law that shoves fifteen minutes of Nickelback and Celine Dion down our throats every hour really nurture an arts scene? Are there better ways to do this?
If we're willing to honestly examine the governing wisdom of the Canadian art scene, we will see a disjunction between the conditions which produce great art, and those which produce the warm glow of self-satisfaction that derives from "supporting the arts." Maybe, when the political pendulum swings around and arts funding comes back, we can use that money for works of substance and vision, and avoid the cheap, the dogmatic, and the offensively inoffensive. Now that would be a Canadian-ness I could get behind.
