Culture at the Crossroads

Session 5: Culture Seminar “John Fogarty” Buenos Aires, 27 April 2007 “Australian Culture” Malcolm Gillies [email protected] Vice-President (Development) The Australian National University If you look at the twenty-first century’s most consulted lexicon of knowledge, Wikipedia, you find that the national entries on “culture” have some compulsory core elements, and then a series of distinctive national features. The core elements are generally arts, sports and food. The distinctive cultural “extras”, beyond this common core, include architecture, religion, education, language, hobbies, tourism and recreation.1 The entry on “Culture of France”, for instance, gives prominence to the crucial role of the French language to so many French manifestations of culture. The entry for “Culture of Argentina” reflects upon the importance of sociability to Argentine society, as seen, for instance, in the celebration of Friends’ Day each year. “Culture in Australia” gives prominence to certain distinctive social values of mateship, suburban home ownership, cultural cringe and the tendency to back the “underdog” against those of undisguised wealth, status or talent, the “tall poppies”. While these Wikipedia entries are unauthorized and sometimes almost chance texts of individual authorship, none the less, they well capture some core pan-national elements of twenty-first culture – arts (including film and cinema), sports and food (also variously described as “cuisine” or “gastronomy”) – as well as such national variants as language, social relations or cultural 1 See, for instance, entries for “Culture of Argentina”, “Culture of Australia” and “Culture of France”, in www.en.wikipedia.org. 2 cringe.2 Between Australia and Argentina the most common core cultural feature is a love of football, most distinctively a code known as Australian Rules as against Argentina’s renowned love affair with fútbol (soccer). Culture, then, “is that which gives us a sense of ourselves”, concluded the Commonwealth Cultural Policy statement of 1994, Creative Nation.3 That very word “culture” has different emphases for our different nations. Argentina and France, for instance, have Ministers for Culture – in France’s case the Minister is also the Minister of Communications; in Argentina’s case, he is also the Minister for Education. New Zealand adds another variant by having, at various times, a Minster of Culture and Heritage and Britain currently has a Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport. Yet, Australia does not have – and, I believe, no Australian state or territory currently has – a Minister of Culture. The closest the Federal Government comes to such a minister, is the Minister for the Arts and Sport, safely overseen by a Minister of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Why is this so? One answer lies with the identity of a figure called “Sir Les Patterson”. For a fictional character, invented by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries, “Sir Les” gains a very large entry in Wikipedia.4 This entry helps to explain an Australian aversion to concepts of high “culture”, and a long-term national skepticism about the enduring value of most cultural enterprises. “Sir Les Patterson” is “obese, lecherous and offensive, this farting, belching, nose-picking figure of Rabelaisian excess is an antipodean Falstaff”.5 In fact, “Sir Les Patterson” is Australia’s cultural attaché to the Court of St James in London, and a form of anti-cultural re-exported nemesis upon 2 In “Culture of Canada” (www.en.wikipedia.org) there is a deviation from this formula, with a particular emphasis upon multi-culturalism in Canadian society, as well as on Canada’s closeness to – sometimes domination by – American culture. 3 “Introduction” to Creative Nation: Commonwealth Cultural Policy, www.nla.gov.au/creative.nation/introduction.html. 4 “Sir Les Patterson”, www.en.wikipedia.org. 5 “Sir Les Patterson”, www.en.wikipedia.org. 3 Australia’s colonial homeland, Britain. (Indeed, so effective was his creation that when the Cambridge (Debating) Union staged a mock ceremony of award of an honorary doctorate to “Sir Les”, Cambridge University officials were most concerned that it might be interpreted as a real award of the University.) “Sir Les” is the antithesis of Barry Humphries’ other fictional character, “Dame Edna Everage”. While she is “female, refined, Protestant, and from Melbourne”, he is “male, uncouth, Catholic, and from Sydney”. He is racist, sexist, and – coming from Sydney – hates Australia’s distinctive, and Melbourne-based, code of Australian Rules football. His common disdain of distinctive Australian arts, sports and food is seen when, as Wikipedia reports, “he coated a leather football in cream cake, and fed it to a camel”.6 With a higher visibility than almost any of Australia’s dwindling number of non-fictional knights, “Sir Les Patterson” has, effectively, over the last three-and-a-half decades queered the pitch for the word “culture” in official Australian nomenclatures.7 He personifies one key manifestation of that distinctive “cultural cringe” in Australian society. In this paper I look particularly at the arts and creative industries, not because they are the most important ingredient in Australian culture – sport would certainly have to take precedence there – but because they are most instructive of many of the changes that are occurring in Australian society in relation to the balance between “high” and “low” culture, and patterns in national, state, regional and community cultural engagement. Later, I look briefly at the emerging interrelationship between creative arts, culture industries, creative industries and concepts of “creative class” within the Australian context of emerging creative and talent economies.8 6 “Sir Les Patterson”, www.en.wikipedia.org. 7 Although not originating the term, “culture vulture” is frequently used by Australians to refer to someone with more than a passing interest in, specifically, the arts. 8 See, further, Malcolm Gillies, “Rethinking Australian Innovation”, National Press Club Address, 17 August 2005, www.chass.org.au/news/items/270805.htm 4 One reasonably reliable indicator of the distinction between “high” and ”low” in Australian culture is the level of government subsidy. “High” culture tends to be expensive and is accessible to relatively few, but often highly influential, members of society; hence, its generally high subsidy levels from government, although, with the visual arts, in particular, Australia is recently showing growing levels of private philanthropic support. “Low” culture is consumed by the masses. If successful, it has the opportunity to earn profits. If unsuccessful, it disappears or transforms, unless there is particular stray political or social reason why it should be supported. Most forms of sport and many of food fit the “low” cultural category. They involve a high percentage of the population, and gain (except for some areas of “elite” – perhaps “high culture” sports -- such as track and field athletics) relatively low levels of per capita government subsidy. Because of the large numbers involved, business and media sponsorship is more often forthcoming than for “high” culture. Using this criterion of level of per capita government subsidy, the “arts” range from “low” – film, fashion, popular music (including musicals), popular dance – through medium – visual arts, drama – to “high” – classical music, opera, ballet. A 2005 report into Australian orchestras gave the following instructive statistics for a subsection of the performing arts (Table 1):9 Main activity of organization Govt.fund.Box Office Fund-raising Other Total Total income % % (b) % (b) % % Symphonic and choral 49.9 29.6 12.6 7.8 100 Aus$105.4M performance (a) Popular music performance 0.5 60.4 4.5 34.5 100 Aus$110.9M Drama production 29.3 44.9 10.0 15.8 100 Aus$91.4M 9 A New Era: Report of the Orchestras Review 2005 (Canberra: Department of Communications, IT and the Arts, 2005), p. 32, www.dcita.gov.au/orchestras. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Performing Arts 2002-3 (Catalogue No. 8697.0, Table 2.2), September 2004. 5 Dance production 33.8 38.3 13.5 14.4 100 Aus$52.0M Musical theatre production 1.3 86.9 0.8 11.0 100 Aus$143.4M Opera production 38.4 * 10.8 * 100 Aus$75.6M Other 13.9 * 3.9 * 100 Aus$43.3M Total 21.9 53.3 7.3 17.8 100 Aus$622.1M (a) Includes philharmonic and youth orchestras, vocal ensembles and instrumental groups. (b) For the purposes of this report, box office takings is box office income and fund- raising is corporate sponsorship and private donations. * Not separately identified in the ABS publication. Music and Theatre Production Organizations: Income Sources by Main Activity of Organisation, Australia, 2002-03 Table 1 This table demonstrates that government funding comprises half of all support for symphonic and choral performance – in fact, for professional symphony orchestras that support is around sixty per cent10 – as against around one per cent government support for popular music performances and musical theatre, both of which generate a majority of their income from box office takings (and popular music a high percentage of income also through recordings). On the other hand, in contrast to the popular music, theatre or dance, the “higher” artistic manifestations all gained between ten and fourteen per cent of total income through corporate sponsorship and private donations – a very low figure compared with North America although quite respectable in many European contexts. Sitting in the middle, with good although not majority income from box-office takings, around thirty per cent from government funding and a developing profile of fund-raising and other income support, is the middle-brow art form of drama. 10 See A New Era, pp. 27-31. 6 One particular feature of Australian culture, disguised by the above table, is the nation’s strong state cultural base, and, with that, a strong sense of professional artistic entitlement for each of the six states of the federation (although not the two territories).

Load more