Page 3518 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 22 October 2014
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We have, of course, covered some of these topics in the Assembly previously, most notably during the no-confidence motion on 25 February this year, when we spent some time discussing the Nazi burlesque show at the fringe festival. I pointed out at the time, and reiterate now, that something as horrible as Nazism has been addressed through comedy and satire many times before, from Mel Brooks’s story The Producers through to Hogan’s Heroes and even Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi. People do often deal with complex and dark issues by making light of them.
More recently, we have seen the Canberra Liberals become upset about an artsACT grant for a play called Kill Climate Deniers. In a perfect example of life imitating art imitating life, the play opens with lines intended to be spoken by a generic reactionary politician who says:
I am appalled and disappointed that this organisation has chosen to fund a theatre project entitled “Kill Climate Deniers” using, let me remind you, taxpayer money.
I sped through that quote because we have already heard it today. At the time, the play’s director, Julian Hobba, said the artwork dealt with some dangerous ideas but quite explicitly did not condone violence. I remember commentary at the time from David Whitney, the director of artsACT, along the lines that anyone who thought this play was an endorsement of political violence would probably also think Shakespeare’s plays are an endorsement of regicide. That sums up quite neatly the level of understanding and analysis that we are seeing with some of these works. The play’s director, Mr Hobba, said:
Reactionary negative responses about a work of art based on partial impressions are a common part of our cultural life. It’s a good way of keeping artists in their place, but it most often misunderstands the full nature of the work.
In a conveniently timed column in this week’s CityNews—an interesting publication but one in which at least Michael Moore’s columns usually make some sense—Michael Moore turns his attention to this issue and declares:
The Liberal Party doesn’t have a consistent, well thought out, shared view on how freedom is achieved. Instead, political opportunism drives an inconsistent approach.
He goes on to point out that Mr Smyth complains about a lack of government intervention in the arts and that he would no doubt complain about freedoms if the government had intervened.
It is interesting to watch the balancing act the Canberra Liberals are trying to perform when on the one hand the federal Attorney-General is defending people’s right to be bigots and on the other hand the local shadow arts spokesperson is scoring political points by attacking a lack of government intervention in free speech.
The motion goes on to canvass the removal of ArtSound FM from key arts organisation status. I listened to this discussion with some interest today, because I
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