Without Public Arts Funding, We Wouldn't Have Les Misérables

The Nation ^ | 01/07/2013 | Michelle Dean

[cripplecreek]

Never seen it and don’t care.

Happily my congressmen is enemy number 1 of the endowment for the arts because he managed to cut $20 million from their budget. (He sought a $50 mil cut)

[kosciusko51]

They present this fact like it is a good thing. The world is no better off with this musical than without it.

Don't get me wrong; I'm no Philistine. I just think that arts should be supported by those who care about the arts, and not the nation as a whole.

[Gaffer]

Gee.....and here dumb ass old me thought Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables in 1862. Who’d a thunk they actually had public funding then?

[circlecity]

Note: They are talking about the play not the book. To which I say, So? If entertainment can’t pay for itself then it’s not needed.

[Parmenio]

There are so many logical fallacies in the author's article it's hard to know where to begin. Public funding is not necessary for great art, period. The Zurich Opera stages 10-12 new productions every year, and more than 95% of its budget comes from ticket sales, subscriptions and private donations.

[ScottinVA]

Without Public Arts Funding, We Wouldn't Have Les Misérables

BFD.

[N. Theknow]

Wow!

Never realized that Great Britain had Arts Endowments that allowed Dickens to write the story in the first place.

They must have had it for a very long time as Willie Shakespeare surely would not have been as successful in his writing and theatre (a little British lingo there) productions.

[ScottinVA]

Without Public Arts Funding, We Wouldn't Have Les Misérables

Nor would we have "Piss Christ" or "Whale Dung Mary."

[SnakeDoctor]

Well that’d be a real tragedy. I guess the good ‘ol Sheriff of Nottingham was right. Who knew?

SnakeDoc

[dainbramaged]

We had to read it in 9th grade English, around 1966 and I hated it - Louis L’Amour was more to my liking at the time.

[latina4dubya]

Gee.....and here dumb ass old me thought Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables in 1862.

exactly! we may not have had the musical, but we would still have the book... and even access to several audio books... while i like the musical, our family first read the book... and my kids have listened to different audio versions of the book because they like the story that much... by the time they saw the movie last week, they knew the story inside out...

[Sirius Lee]

It's an okay show, based on a good story, with a handful of funny tunes and sweet tunes. It's not Jake Heggie's "Moby Dick" by any means.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTMkOYAMFPM

[Sirius Lee]

It's an okay show, based on a good story, with a handful of funny tunes and sweet tunes - a show for teenaged girls. It's not Jake Heggie's "Moby Dick" by any means.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTMkOYAMFPM

[N. Theknow]

Slight error....meant to say French instead of Great Britain and Victor Hugo instead of Dickens.

Apologies for the slight error.

[JeffChrz]

Without Public Arts Funding, We Wouldn't Have Les Misérables

Nor would we have "Piss Christ" or "Whale Dung Mary."

Or any of those other one-person-rants-on-stage "plays" where someone seems to think that her personal issues (it's almost always a chick) are bigger than ours and that somehow, giving her a check from the government and a stage from which to spew filth in front of a dozen or so people (who for some reason are into that kind of thing) is more worthwhile than for her to suck it up like the rest of it and get a productive job.

Actually, if she could be force to make her rant in front of an audience of psychiatrists, they could get into a bidding war to take her as a patient.

[CatherineofAragon]

Somehow I think I could live without it.

[TheThirdRuffian]

Les Mis is a profitable movie.

They need to pay back the taxpayers.

[Dr. Sivana]

You could also argue that we wouldn’t have the Aeneid, as Virgil was paid in advance on a public commission. Maybe we should go back to having Caesars, or is it too late?

[stop_fascism]

That fact, alone is enough reason to get rid of public funding.