Jay Peterson
  • Home
  • Acting
    • Headshots
    • Resume
    • Press >
      • C3 Tweets
    • History
    • Reels
  • The Gruntverse
    • Three briefings before a crisis
    • The Preliminary Report of Marshal Bennett
    • So your kid turned out to be a mage
    • Ghost Light Sample Chapter
    • Gruntverse deleted scenes >
      • Gruntverse farewell jasmine
      • Gruntverse chittendens insight
  • Jay at Play
    • Nonfiction >
      • A Millenial's guide to inheriting guns
    • Other videos >
      • Just Blanks
      • Tommy That
      • Machine Gun Shakespeare
      • Igor
  • Blog

from elsewhere re: the NEA

1/23/2017

0 Comments

 
Let me start by saying that I'm both an artist and firmly capitalist. I'm in this to get paid, folks.
*************************
At best, I think the NEA fills gaps that just ain't there.
I've done some work for a theater company in the past (which shall remain nameless lest my screed embarrass 'em). They do incredible work. Incredible fucking work. They pay their performers and staff decently. And going to one of their shows is at dinner-and-a-movie prices.
The reason they can do this is because of multiple revenue streams. One is corporate and high-roller donors (who get season tickets and their names in the programs and whatnot). Two is the box office. Three is grants from the NEA and other organizations.
Because of those grants, college pukes can take their dates someplace classy. Old folks on fixed incomes can go somewhere nice on special occasions. And the company can go on the road to the far corners on the state, where high school kids who have never set foot in a theater can take a break from reading one act a day in a boring English lit class and see some Shakespeare as intended: live, in front of their eyes, done by shit-hot pros.
Now, if those grants went away, would that company go away? Maybe, maybe not, I don't read their books. But at a guess, I'd say they'd probably have to cancel their outreach programs, do fewer shows a year, and their ticket prices go from "dinner and a movie" towards the "rock concert" range. Probably wouldn't shut them down. But it would turn them into something cool you could only see if you were rich.
Does the NEA also fund stupid shit? Undoubtedly. In a world of "may the best grant writers win," that's probably inevitable. But say it is ten cents of my tax money a year. Last time I went to a movie that sucked, it cost me twenty bucks. That means the price of a shitty movie gets me 200 years of cool stuff like the company I just mentioned. And Sesame Street and Nova and probably a lot of other programs I haven't heard of that have done cool stuff. If it funds a lot of crap in the process, so be it. That's not a problem of funding, it's a problem of people being shitty artists but good grant writers, and NEA personnel not catching that.
We are nowhere close to the bullshit level of say, France, with warehouses full of publicly funded art nobody wants to buy and CD's full of publicly funded music nobody wants to listen to.
We're still getting some bang for our buck.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Jay Peterson

    Musings on violence, storytelling, and humanity in general.

    Archives

    January 2025
    August 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    April 2012
    February 2012
    February 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    August 2010
    June 2010
    August 2008

    Categories

    All
    2nd Amendment
    Archer
    Armor
    Barbarism
    Blades
    Blanks
    Boobplate
    Book Review
    Chainmail Bikini
    Fight Scene
    Film
    Firearms
    History
    Killology
    Military
    Reality
    Safety
    Set Life
    Shakespeare
    Teacupping
    Theater
    Tucker Thayer
    USMC
    Viking
    War Stories
    Weapon Of The Week
    Workshops
    Wounds

    RSS Feed

Certa Bonum Certamen

Picture