Every time PSA head Watson Duke verbally clubs the government’s $3 million purchase of the Cazabon paintings, vis a vis the arrears due to his membership, I wince. All kinds of unpleasant things are evoked: class warfare, contempt for the worker in spending the “national patrimony” on baubles which matter only to the decadent classes. An interesting counterpoint is that no one has anything to say about the $200 million that’s going to be burned on Carnival.
It’s a familiar culture-war tableau: high culture vs low; authentic “people’s” amusements vs pretentious posturing around artifacts of a soi disant elite. Naturally, the state must open up the trough for the people’s festival, especially in these times of hardship, as it provides relief. Or does it?
The primary role of culture in the state apparatus is to implant a set of values and principles in citizens. Carnival does this overtly; its values are resistance, rebellion, frenzy, antipathy to dissent. There’s also the intangible capital “pressure valve” theory—that it allows mass catharsis and is an outlet for native creativity—but that’s bunk. (See murder and literacy rates.)
This leads to the big question: how to determine the social and financial value of “culture”? What do you get for the money? In T&T’s value system, hundreds of millions on Carnival is good value for the reasons above, but $3 million on Cazabon’s paintings is scandalous. But can paintings do what Carnival does?
The answer starts with the fact that a painting isn’t a solitary object. Its value is derived from aesthetic standards determined by academe, press, artistic institutions. The painting is interlaced in a network of theatre, novels, television, film and so on. It’s unlikely that someone who enjoys paintings doesn’t also enjoy music, theatre or books. What’s common to all is that at some point, there is a viewer/consumer, an object (picture, spectacle, text), and a response, which is usually pleasurable.
The response is the thing. The state has its agenda but outside of that, the best art creates a response not just to itself, but the world at large. The response isn’t only a spontaneous reaction. Its effects reverberate, creating action in spheres outside the artistic. Pre-historic cave paintings of animals galvanised hunters, but also created memories and sentiment around hunting, a matter of life and death.
Over the Christmas holidays a documentary on the TV show, Saturday Night Live, aired on VH1. In the immediate aftermath of the WTC bombings of 2001, the cast was concerned whether comedy was appropriate for the moment. The Mayor of New York (Rudy Giuliani) appeared on SNL and urged them to carry on, as the best response to the invasion was the re-emphasising of cherished values via institutions, which the show was/is for New York and the US. The French responded similarly after their recent terrorist attacks.
Certainly, airing the show didn’t alter the vast majority of the terrible consequences of the attacks. But the cumulative effects of many institutions carrying on similarly re-shaped responses to the tragedy. They weren’t all positive, but they did include not demonising Islam, and seeing an opportunity to demonstrate the expansiveness of the American ideal.
Does this translate? The Cazabon paintings are national artifacts. Does anyone care? It might seem enraging to offer paintings to people in the vise of economic hardship. At best, only a few thousand will see them over years, and even fewer will appreciate them. (Similarly, not everyone will read The Mimic Men, or Beyond a Boundary, or The Spoiler’s Return. Not everyone will see Bim or God Loves the Fighter. And so on.)
However, the small number of people who consume these cultural products tend to be the ones who make key decisions for the society. So the works themselves may be absent from public consciousness, but their ideas can be dominant. Ayn Rand’s thousand-page plodder, Atlas Shrugged, won’t be read by the majority of Americans. But that Alan Greenspan and many Republican ideologues read it ensures its ideas live on in American culture.
This isn’t to praise elitism, or imply that the child from the poor village or urban slum could not see a single painting via newspapers or television and be entranced, and have his/her life changed. So could the clerk trudging to and from City Gate and the bus route. This is the reason the New York transit authority started putting poems on its buses and trains. I first met Richard Wilbur on a NY subway train: “A woman I have never seen before/Steps from the darkness of her townhouse door”…., and I’m grateful for it.
Similarly, a national response to tragedy or trauma (decline in oil price, an attempted coup, a terrorist attack) is dependent upon, and can be shaped by culture deployed in this way. This is especially relevant to the lean years looming ahead, and how country and individuals respond to them. There will be tragedy, loss and hardship, especially among the less fortunate. But there will also be opportunity for innovation, creativity and re-invention.
It’s not an alien proposition, as the belief that culture can change lives already exists. This (to repeat) is the justification for Carnival. But the initial knee-jerk responses to the economic crisis aren’t comforting. Neither is the memory of how we dealt with this situation before. Perhaps Carnival isn’t enough, and the Government should follow through on its Cazabon initiative and provide cultural alternatives in the new year. Nothing to lose (ten per cent of the Carnival budget), lots to gain.
