Angry in the Great White North

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is not scoring points with artists, not that many would like vote Conservative anyway:

Art has suddenly become an election issue. Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared "ordinary working people" don't care about elitist artists attending rich galas. And the Liberals and NDP have pledged to reinstate $45 million in arts funding cut under the Conservatives.

Is Stephen Harper some sort of barbarian?  Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion would like you to think so:

"We have to stop this man," Dion said. "He wants to turn everybody against everybody, Canadians against their artists."

I wonder if Stephane Dion would make the same comments about Marc Garneau, the former astronaut and the Liberal Party's star candidate in Westmount-Ville-Marie.  Marc Garneau is very dismissive of the arts, as Quebec poet and professor Paul Chamberland recounts in When an Astronaut Spits on Rimbaud, referring to Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet of the late 19th century:

Today, during our interview, Paul Chamberland offers his reflection on current events.  An astronaut, Captain Marc Garneau, who spits on Rimbaud...

A caricatural example of this degraded state of society is that of Quebecois astronaut, Marc Garneau.  At the inauguration of the Etats generaux de l'Education, in Montreal in April 1986, the military man attacked the very people who had propelled him into space, "the specialists in pure mathematics or the poetry of Rimbaud."  "Their work," he said, "even if it contributes to our cultural enrichment won't put our country back on track.  Even if man," added the astronaut, "doesn't live on bread alone, he can live on bread for much longer than he can live on culture."

Paul Chamberland of course reacted to these words in our interview.  "When you see an astronaut saying that specialists of Rimbaud are useless," notes the poet, "it is because behind that discourse of cultural management is another completely cynical discourse which makes culture out to be simply a question of representation.  With that type of discourse, Rimbaud is simply locked out, as Denis Vanier would say, especially from his own era and for the benefit of the brute forces keeping him out.  How could we have got to the point of having vessels in space if there hadn't been the 'Bateau ivre' to carry the idea?  When I see that an astronaut is spitting on Rimbaud, I say to myself that we have really fallen low if we aren't even aware of the sources of technological invention.  That is why we must once again re-root art in its necessity."

A few things stand out.

Paul Chamberland talks a lot.  It's probably a poet thing.

Second, Marc Garneau's attitude towards the arts is not unlike Stephen Harper's.  Art has its place, as per Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  Art is nice, but Garneau's attitude is that people need food and jobs and homes.  Art doesn't help with those things.  Art is a luxury.

So perhaps Stephane Dion can cut Stephen Harper some slack.  Or maybe Stephane Dion can ask Marc Garneau to explain his comments concerning Rimbaud and bread and the importance of art.

Because even Marc Garneau has to admit that $45 million buys a lot of bread.