Utopia

Good art is often confrontational. It puts the current deep dilemmas in a frame;  but it doesn't often do it nicely. When the powerful get fanatical they feel it face on, full on .

So why is there so little confrontational art around? ( working dog's UTOPIA , and MAD as HELL come later )
--The ABC would rather produce comedy and there is a case with their new domestic dramas that the --ABC have completely confused the road to fun serious domestic . Either way ABC Art is not cutting it
--The ABC do too much navel gazing in their own contexts ( mechanistic rather than artistic paradoxically) as GKC put it , the real anarchists are offsite .

 Art  does cut  more truthfully and directly  than this slow burn cynical nonsense  of rationally driven action; where  "my idea is always the best "
Art does this in a way that mere description ( the myth that sub scientists often adopt as gospel) cannot.

Powerful people (eg media and politics  ) can't usually hack this sort of art in their direction  because their world view is the present and the current action agenda is their own .
Art will tell our mothers fathers and leaders that their unrepentant blindness is driving us  who know things all to despair and suicide ,
Art,  at its best , puts the frightening human condition ( denial arrogance hypocrisy)of all .. to the test  Those who hide behind talk of being most rational are currently most exposed .

DYSTOPIA
Good art for example on climate concerns would remind us  that some thing is still missing from the self evidently super rational picture presented by the now fanatical powerful worry warriors.

Despite over ten years of fact,after fact , no amount of facts stacks up because the facts are self select . Only this week we have the ABC reporting the pre Archimedes nonsense that icebergs,  when the melt , will raise the sea level . In water they are already displacing the  water   



Good art on climate change will probably bring the  house down with just  one well put  laugh on the above programs . Poor art and politics is humorless .Its like living in 1984. no this , no that and only chocolate when you are good .



UTOPIA
While many of us who lost our  opportunity to effect sound public service because of the quick fix politics of the media and politicians love Utopia , WE find it hard to watch the isolated sense makers like Rob and Celia get screwed - week after week. ( as happened to us ) whats needed to break the spell may not be nice, but we know its coming .
Our children can't afford to have the country being run by technological fix agents ( Ellul) , posies corrupted by collective incompetence that results from not weeding out unsound logic . the logic that increases the number of complicit consultants and public servants and alienates those who know better , I have written to Ida to ask her to get Arhn do ( or others ) to paint the picture of some of our lost and now largely silent  prophets.
Real dilemmas in art are good,  but sometimes not as effective in making us see solutions an seeing people amid their mistakes .

I love it how they get Celia to ask -- " talk to the future"  (or are they just afraid to ?) some of us are always talking to a better future by simply  confronting the reality of the unweeded garden. 



SOME GOOD STUFF ON THE ABC   this will come as a surprise to some no doubt who know I don't bother ( mostly) watching their selection of news and excessive commentary on it (  I used to) . 

HARD QUIZ  This show is not perfect  but I do love the way Tom Gleeson demonstrates a fair way forward in this mad pedantic world of the internet where personal confrontations are now forbitten by many. 
The way forward for the West is the same way it has always been .
As long as the issue is about your ideas and the conversation is an open face to face one then I am all for risking it.  Anger,  hostility and deprecation are plainly dangerous but somehow that forum is OK for all is forgiven because it is finally out in the open ??  Its  a open court in the great Western tradition . 
  Despite all the indulgent swearing and the shallowness of the content , Hard Quiz is still one of the most entertaining  and useful models of sound and sustainable values going at the moment .Everyone gets to be heard and if the comments are careless,  there is a chance for them to be corrected.