I listen to the news on CBC Radio 2 in the mornings while I’m getting ready for work. They start with the weather, then the Saskatchewan news, then the sports, followed by something called “The Arts Calendar.” I want to preface this by saying that I have nothing against the performing arts, and people who enjoy going to plays or live concerts or whatever should be free to do so… Anyway, this “Arts Calendar” bit is the worst piece of trash I’ve ever heard on CBC. Every morning, I get to hear a commercial for some group’s lottery, or begging for donations, or asking me to enroll in some arts school. You know what? That has no place on the public broadcaster’s airwaves. Profile artists (be they actors, singers, painters, sculptors, whatever) or tell me about upcoming shows or galleries - I don’t care. When the copy sounds like it was written by the principals, I’ve got a problem. Now you’re not reporting on the “Arts Scene” in Saskatchewan, you’re repeating press releases. It really galls me because often the same “ad” will run for several weeks - once every three or four days over that span.

It does bring me back to a certain snobbish attitude that people have about what is “art” though. You’d never hear a movie review in that segment or whatever. For some reason, certain people have decided that in the early 1900’s, “art” stopped exploring new media. Stage, canvas, sculpture, opera and classical music - that’s all that the “arts” consist of. I know that not everyone thinks this way, but there are enough people who do (and turn up their noses at television or video games) to grind my gears. Once an outlet for creativity, “the arts” have become a clique, a stagnant morass of snobbishness where people drink tea from china teacups with their pinkies in the air and wear pince-nez’s on the end of their noses. Again, it’s not everyone in the “arts scene” that’s like this - there are lots of new-media artists out there, and people who like their work. To ignore the fact that our society’s most creative minds are drawn more and more to video games, movies and television is to deny that those media exist.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I can’t let that happen! I won’t let that happen! And I can’t let that happen!” - Homer