Samizdata

This from Friedrich Blowhard is right on the money. It’s a piece about the financing of “high” art in America, and identifies one of the the key facts: the tax laws.

It was not clear that there would be an endless succession of extremely wealthy art-fanatics who would be willing to spend their money behind the scenes to prop up these institutions. The solution, oddly, was the 1894 income tax law, which included a provision that charitable donations to nonprofit corporations organized for “educational” purposes would be tax-deductible. This presented the wealthy with a choice of paying the government taxes or donating to nonprofit enterprises, which was a choice many less-than-religious supporters of the arts were willing to make – especially if they got to be a certifiable member of the social-cultural elite in return. In short, the income tax provided the incentive, and the nonprofit corporation the vehicle, to broaden the group “supporting” the uneconomic arts.

The biggest givers, while no longer required to assume a heroic burden like that of Mssrs. Morgan or Higginson, got another perk as well: they got control of the enterprise because they sat on the board. These wealthy, prestige-seeking board members, often determined to use their art institution to civilize the masses, had an intensely conservative effect on the material that was actually presented and how it was presented – no more of the wild and wooly hybrids of “low” and “high” art which we saw were financially successful for decades in New Orleans-style opera and on the vaudeville stage. No, by jingo, we were all going to take our “high” culture straight. So much for giving the customer (the American public) what they wanted.

→ Continue reading: High art – low art – art

It’s that time of the week when most of Samizdata’s readers and most of its writers like to creep away from their terminals and live a little. Time for another Brian screed with MORE in it.

But how can I reconcile my refined tastes with Samizdata’s preferred subject matter just now of monsters and war and mayhem. I’ve been making no secret lately of my liking for the blog written by The Two Blowhards, and for their sustained determination to talk about “culture” and not just about such things as politicians, Islamofascists and the exact guns and bullets and training manuals being used by the USA’s latest mass murderer. So what can this screed be about?

Well here’s a question that may connect these two camps: Why do so many of the villains of popular entertainment like classical music?

Not all fictional villains love classical music. But if a character in a TV adventure show does love classical music, then the chances are, overwhelmingly, that he’s the bad guy. One need only hear the tinkling of a classically played harpsichord or the smooth sound of a classically played violin to know at once Who Did It. → Continue reading: Classical villainy

Brian has commented on a left/right difference in art punditry. I differ with what he said only because I’m uncertain it matches what he does and why he does it. His High Arts (and low!) commentary has been been a breath of fresh air.

Artists, artist wannabees and art students like to write about art because that is what they do. It’s their passion. What they think about when life isn’t messily intruding on those More Important Things.

A few years ago a large part of my writing would have been in the music biz vein. I was playing as near to professionally as I could afford to. At the moment I’m spending all my time with technology and still trying – badly I might add – to make a living. At times I wonder if tech should be the hobby… but then I talk to a friend whose record label is failing and whose tour gigs are falling off and I realize it doesn’t work well either way.

Although I write a lot on technology and policy, catch me at the bar while a Rock gig is on (well, during the break when you can talk anyway – I always stand near the speakers) and I’ll talk your ear off about “the biz”. I drive my business partner up the pub wall at times. I point out the features of the electronic kit the lead guitarist is using, what keyboards they have, the qualities of various amps and speakers and of course the pros and cons of why CF Martin makes the best acoustic guitar, whether a Strat or an SG is a better electric and for what, direct feed versus amp miking etc. etc…

I would posit libertarians are more like the Left when it comes to the arts. It’s the socially liberal side of the equation which we don’t share with the Right. Some who once thought they were Conservative may disagree. I ask them: “Why do you think you were politically homeless before you found us?” It’s because you weren’t Left and you didn’t fit on the Right. The vice-versa thing heppened to me on the Left.

Libertarians are neither Right nor Left: go find a Nolan chart. We’re, well… sort of, you know… UP¹. We’re the new kid on the ideological block and most of the writers in our corner have been philosophers, policy wonks and political pundits.

Samizdata is out to change all that. Libertarians have a life style as open as the philosophy itself. We’re here to show that.

¹ = Extra credit for those who recognize my literary misreference.

Alice Bachini is now taking terrorism seriously. (The blogspotting link refuses to work. Scroll to Monday Oct 22: “Taking Terrorism Seriously”, if you aren’t already there.) So I will now pick up the torch of triviality (importance of) and ask: Madonna, crap actress or what? I’m going to argue for the or what position. At some length, I’m afraid, but what the hell? It’s been a rather slow Samizdata day so far.

BBC 1 showed a Madonna movie last Sunday evening. My Radio Times makes no mention of it, but does mention the movie Black Sunday, which they didn’t show. This is the one where Bruce Dern hijacks the Goodyear Blimp in order to zap a Superbowl crowd with knitting needles, and presumably they cancelled it so as not to give those Arab terrorists any clever ideas, or maybe because, what with the bad guys in this movie actually being Arab terrorists, they didn’t want to show a work of fiction that had now become insufficiently fictional. It’s odd that, isn’t it? – although I’m not disagreeing. Odd also that I settle down to blog about triviality (importance of) and profundity has immediately barged its way back in. That’s terrorism for you.

Anyway, Madonna. The movie BBC1 did show was Body of Evidence. The plot concerns a woman who picks on rich old guys with heart conditions and then shags them (very kinkily and dominatingly) to death, after first ensuring that the will gets changed in her favour. → Continue reading: Madonna: too scary to be a star

In response to a recent Bruce Bartlett column identifying the top forty “conservative” pop songs of all time, blogger Radley “The Agitator” Balko comes up with his own list in a column for TechCentralStation.

My first reaction to Bartlett’s column was: “Ugh! This list reads like Dave Barry’s ‘Book of Bad Songs’.” How can the list be so overwhelmingly dominated by soulless, ham-fisted schlock? Even the handful of great songs seem out of place — James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” is an all-time R&B masterpiece, but was the Godfather really proffering a conservative worldview, or is Bartlett reading way too much into it? Could it be that statists are just better rockers than us pro-market types? There have to be more hip tunes that carry a conservative message.

Radley Balko’s list is better and fresher, with songs by the Kinks, Vernon Reid and Bob Marley. He also acknowledges the Canadian rock trio Rush, which built an entire concept album around Ayn Rand’s “Anthem”. Good choices, Radley — but there are a handful of classics that both Bartlett and Balko have overlooked.

The finest “conservative” rock song of all time is “Trouble Every Day” by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Now, Zappa wasn’t exactly a Goldwater / Reagan conservative, but remember — pro-democracy, pro-capitalism demonstrators in Czechoslovakia made Zappa’s “Plastic People” their anthem.

“Trouble Every Day” originally appeared on the Mothers’ double LP “Freak Out!” in 1965. Written in reaction to television coverage of the Watts riots in Los Angeles, this tune manages to savage the news media, ridicule the “root cause” mantra of left-liberals, and even take a timely swipe at LBJ’s Great Society. Over a bed of wailing harmonica and Frank’s own razor-sharp blues guitar, he ridicules local press coverage of the riot:

You know I watched that rotten box
until my head began to hurt
From checkin’ out the way
the newsmen say they get the dirt
Before the guys on channel so-and-so,
and further they are certain
That any show they’ll interrupt
to bring ya news if it comes up
If the place blows up,
they’ll be the first to tell
Because the boys they got downtown
are workin’ hard and doin’ swell
And if anybody gets the news
before it hits the street
They say that no one blabs it faster!
Their coverage can’t be beat!

Next, he captures the hypocrisy of the rioters (and their apologists) with startling conviction:

Well, I saw the market burning
and the local people turning
On the merchants and the shops
that used to sell their brooms and mops
And every other household item,
watched a mob just turn and bite ’em
And they say it serves ’em right,
because a few of them were white
And it’s the same across the nation,
black and white discrimination
Yelling “you can’t understand me”
and all that other jive they hand me
On the papers and TV,
and all that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day …

Finally, Zappa has a few choice words for would-be revolutionaries, three years before John Lennon excoriated those “minds that hate”:

You know we’ve got to sit around at home
and watch this thing begin
But I bet there won’t be many
who live to see it really end
Because a fire in the street
ain’t like a fire in the heart
And in the eyes of all these people,
don’t you know that this could start
On any street, in any town,
in any state, if any clown
Decides that now’s the time to fight
for some ideal he thinks is right
And if a million more agree,
there ain’t no Great Society
As it applies to you and me,
the country isn’t free

This is a conservative jam if ever there was one. Do I have more? Of course I do. How about Leonard Cohen’s “The Future,” a nightmare vision of totalitarianism and the destruction of western culture? How about Ben Harper’s “Oppression,” a stirring reminder that we all hold the power to overthrow tyranny? How about CCR’s “Keep on Chooglin'”? Okay, maybe not that last one.

Do ‘snuff’ movies actually exist or are they merely an urban legend? I use the term ‘snuff’ movie in its traditionally accepted sense i.e. an act of murder which is committed to film or videotape and then replayed in order to provide some warped sexual gratification for the viewer.

I have been prompted to raise this question by a showing of the film “8mm” on British terrestrial television this evening. According to the makes of the film, snuff movies do exist but you have to go to considerable trouble (and expense) to obtain them.

I have never seen a snuff movie but even if I had been shown such a movie how could I know for sure that the ‘grisly murder’ I was witnessing was not, in fact, a very convincing simulation? After all, realistic and gory murders are simulated in mainstream movies all the time so the expertise clearly exists.

Another thing that occurs to me is the problem of marketing such a thing. How (and to whom) do the producers sell their snuff videos when they can hardly be advertised even in the most questionable publications? Furthermore, I am not aware of any criminal convictions (in the UK at any rate) in respect of the making or distribution of snuff movies.

On the other hand, contract killing certainly does exist and if one can pay to have someone murdered surely one can pay a bit extra to have the execution filmed. In the “8mm” film, the snuff movie is made to order at the behest of an extremely wealthy magnate. If they do exist, then perhaps that’s how it works.

I am no nearer to an answer but I am not sure I want to be. I never want to see a snuff movie and I’d like to think they they are, indeed, nothing more than exotic urban fairytales. But sometimes, the world can be a very ugly place.