FILMMAKERS CRY CENSORSHIP! NICOL CRIES HYPOCRISY!
This is exactly the kind of baby step I have wanted to see from a conservative government for a long time.
And it is a baby step.Of course, other papers like the Globe and Mail are trying to fear monger about this being an Evaneglical movement.
In one article, David Cronenberg alludes that this is something found in a communist country.
The irony of course is lost on him that a majority of filmmakers in Canada
have a Marxist worldview and that the government funding of art itself is a communist proposal.I am a screenwriter who writes here under a pseudonym. Nicol Dumoulin is a derivation of, but not my real name. I can tell you that there is certainly censorship in the Toronto/Vancouver English Canadian film industry by persons at funding agencies.
Nine times out of ten if the script you are peddling is a genre (action, comedy, drama etc.) you get shut out. Nine times out of ten if your script does not explicitly deal with the world from a left wing, secular, urban white perspective, you do not get funding. If your script does feature "alternative sex" you will most likely go to the front of the list.
The late film critic John Harkness of EYE magazine knew this too well. After he died,
this essay of his made the rounds. He was perceptive:
"...you have to satisfy a group of well-meaning, highly educated cultural bureaucrats. This means three or four things. It means that a filmmaker would be far likelier to get approval for a move that espouses whatever liberal cause is fashionable at the moment than for anything truly audacious, unsettling or interesting. I suspect that the entire career of the terminally tedious Anne Wheeler is based on the fact that she’s a “two-fer” – a woman director and a regional director in one package, fulfilling a big chunk of whatever unconscious quota system exists in the minds of the culture-crats. (and that system exists. A few years ago, I was talking to one of the principals in Deepa Mehta’s Sam and Me, who told they had a devil of a time getting funding because, someone at Telefilm Canada told them, Telefilm already had an Indian film that year.)When something daring comes through the English-Canadian offices of Telefilm, like John Greyson’s Zero Patience or Srivinas Krishna’s Masala, one can bet that it is being funded not because it is daring, but because it fulfills some minority quotas."What these filmmakers crying censorship do not - cannot - make the case for is
why in 2008, should the government be funding and films at all?I am a free speech libertarian.
I am also a screenwriter in Toronto and I can tell you that the type of censorship that occurs is within the agencies themselves in the type of films and scripts that are chosen. Many people will admit to this in private but do not in public for
fear of being blacklisted. Yes, it is that bad and I know I have hurt my chances of success by voicing my views on several occasions.
It is worse than Hollywood because that is private capital.Even more noxious because these films do not even find an audience at home. This battle is only the first step,
but like Harkness,
I call for an eradication of all funds from the Canadian Film Industry. It is time for the baby bird to be thrown out of the nest and the maturation process to begin.
MATERNAL DEMOCRACY
So, as I have announced here previously,
my wife and I are having our first wonderful child, due in May. We cannot wait to meet her.
Now, my wife is taking maternity classes just up the road from us and while she has
nothing but great things to say about the establishment where they take place, the other day she had an interesting story.
She said that many women
were requesting that their husbands be allowed to take the class with them. The instructor then said they would put it to a vote.
The result:
Every woman wanted their husband present except for one single mother who said it would make her feel awkward.Guess what that meant?
No men allowed.I respect that the single mother is going through the process she is
and think she should be given much love and respect. But the fact that the vote meant
the one outweighed the majority says much about the nature or child rearing in progressive Canada and
especially in a liberal city like Toronto.The feelings of the single mother or the "other" were what was ultimately deemed important. Not the desires of the majority of mothers. Not the welfare of the babies. Not the presence of the fathers or some 'traditional' notion of family.
On the bright side, I do
take some solace in the fact that the majority of women did want fathers present.
Culturally, that does mean something. And as I have said all along in my writing here,
culture is what matters most.
FIRST STEP TOWARDS ELIMINATING SEPARATE SCHOOL SYSTEM?
Joanne awares us to the fact that McGuinty is eliminating
the Lord's Prayer at Queen's Park.Whether one agrees with this or not, what is interesting is that both the
NDP and the Progressive Conservatives finds this curious. The NDP actually made a great statement about the hypocrisy of it .
Especially since there was no controversy or external demand for it.I suspect
this is his first step in eradicating funding for the Separate School system, which I have said all along will be in his plans. This is the sort of simple gesture that in the mind of a politician will prepare people.
Again, even if you agree with this move, the way in which it will most likely happen
will be extremely deceitful to the many people who voted for McGuinty on good ...faith.Especially odious since
we have segregated schools for blacks, gays and aboriginals.Again, I cannot prove it, but I suspect long after McGuinty is gone he will be seen in the same vein as Mike Harris. It might take a decade to get to that point, but he truly is a facile, simplistic individual.
WHAT DID THEY PAINT?
This is the kind of story I find interesting for what it does not tell you?
Namely, what did the suspects do with the paint? If this were a mosque, it would probably be national news. If it were a synagogue, it would certainly get more play?
Perhaps this is nothing, but it is the kind of small story that makes me wonder, what was the paint used for?
DID YOU HEAR THE ONE ABOUT THE MONTREAL PROFESSOR AND THE NUTCRACKER
This is a very funny story.Poor Montreal
Professor Robert Benjamin.
"His life was saved last Friday by a dominatrix at the Nutcracker Suite on East 33rd Street, who was assigned to check on him after her colleague left him with a dog collar around his neck and a leather mask over his face, suspended a few inches off the floor.
She realized his foot was turning blue because one of his high heels had slipped off. "
I normally wouldn't post something like this, but the fact that it was a Canadian university professor made it too hard to resist. I mean, this is the
'intellectual class'.I am no saint...but man...these are the people that parents
sink thousands upon thousands of dollars into to teach their kids.I wonder what subject he taught?
Would gender studies be too obvious.
KATHLEEN WYNNE IS A LIAR; DALTON MCGUINTY IS A HYPOCRITE
"Education Minister Kathleen Wynne added that the proposal to create Afrocentric schools is not at all comparable to faith-based schools because the goal is to improve the grades of black students.
“The issue of faith-based education has nothing to do with student achievement,” Ms. Wynne told reporters."This argument could be made
if the curriculum at the Afro-centric schools were the exact same as that in the public school system but only the context of how it was taught is different.
But it is not.The curriculum will be Afro-centric. Period.
They will not be learning about the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. They will not be learning about Louis Riel.
That means one system of education,
one value system is taken in better faith than another.
That's a faith based system.Kathleen Wynne knows this.
The system is clearly about segregation. That makes Wynne a liar.But Wynne does not really care because then she would have to answer as to why there is a segregated gay school in Toronto.
And the oh so enlightened Education Minister does not want to deal with that hypocrisy.Dalton McGuinty can stop it, he is just terrified of being called a racist.
That makes McGuinty a hypocrite. But I suspect he will fund it in the end. He is just waiting for the furor to die down. He will give them funds and it will just not get reported in the MSM. And the majority of people will forget about it for a decade until it is a huge failure and they want to blame some conservative politician running for office.
The Ontario Public School System is in a dire mess and the Toronto Public School system is even worse.But parents vote for it. So the parents get what they deserve
. My heart bleeds for the children who don't.
