Australia's cultural rent seekers

Same tired old, (and not a little pretentious and self-important), justifications below from a sector that imagines it deserves special treatment at tax-payer's expense.   Really, the insufferable arrogance of these people! Australians were just helpless acceptors of whatever British publishers decided they should read? What planet is this woman on?   We had no "authentic...cultural identity" prior to 1972?   In relation to the Australian film industry, you can see the studied and willful blindness that so characterises the cultural left. As Blair points out, there is no shortage of Australian films being made. That isn't the reason that so few people decide to spend their hard earned money on them when making a choice about what to see.   No, she'll ignore the very simple explanation - most Australian films are unwatchable self-indulgent rubbish that noone in their right mind would pay to see. Vide stage plays that are little more than leftist agitprop, such as the one that had the luvvies sponteineously orgasming over that had a character clearly supposed to be Peter Costello by any other name giving orders to the Navy not to rescue people on a sinking refugee vessel! I mean, really.   As Orwell so perceptively observed so many years ago - only an intellectual could believe that. No ordinary person would be so foolish.   And poor Ms Adler obviously doesn't understand the Market. Bit like K R Puff'n'Fluff in that regard. Even evil multinationals want to make money and know that they can only do that if they offer people what they want to buy. It really is that simple out in the real world. But not for for folks like her it seems. But then, she's got her own interests to look after   Tim Blair Monday, May 04, 2009 at 04:14am     Louise Adler, publisher of gibberish, defends the Australian book industry’s cultural protectionism: Until the 1970s, British publishers decided the reading habits of Australians … With the advent of the Whitlam and Fraser governments, an authentic Australian cultural identity was brought into being by fiat, with the establishment of such agencies as the Australia Council and the Film Commission. Overnight, Australian stories told by Australians in Australian accents were available to Australian consumers.   So much for pre-70s Australian writers Henry Lawson, Miles Franklin, Ray Lawler, Hal Porter, John O’Grady, Banjo Patterson … By the 1990s, the Australian publishing scene had matured sufficiently to view itself as local in origin and global in practice.   What did the “scene” think it was previously? Adler next contrasts the thriving “publishing scene” to the moribund film sce … industry, which only a few words earlier she’d associated with Whitlamite cultural triumph: We have witnessed the demise of the local film industry. In 2007, Australian films represented a paltry 4 per cent (of which 2 per cent was delivered by Happy Feet) of total box-office revenue. How can it be in the national interest for Australian consumers to be deprived of Australian content?   Revenue is a guide to how many people saw those films, not to the availability of Australian content. As it happens, there were many Australian releases in 2007. Almost all of them were rubbish, which is why local audiences avoided them. The consequences of an open market on the cultural landscape are obvious and verifiable. Exhibit A is surely the local music scene, which has been decimated by the abolition of territorial copyright.   The top 100 singles in 2008 contained 20 Australian songs. The top 100 album chart contains 24 local works. “Decimated”? A marketplace that abolishes the principle of territorial copyright will wind back the clock on a proud and profitable publishing culture, reduce the availability of Australian stories and hand back a monopoly to multinational publishers to make decisions about our market far removed from local realities.   Like the “reality” of a “decimated” local music “scene”? More on this fear of alien cultural influences from Bob Carr: Publishers say they need this protection to support local culture. This is garbage. The truth is Australians will always want to buy good Australian writing.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous