Saint John — The Port City is facing a financial crisis, and the arts community hopes residents will see that cutting funding to the arts is not the solution to their problems.
On Monday the Community Arts Board made the case to a group of stony-faced Saint Johners for keeping the arts a priority in the city.
“How can you people who consume creative, artistic content for most of your waking hours want to see artists wither and die?” asked Fiona Marpel, a local filmmaker. “Are you going to make your own movies and TV shows to get you through the long, cold Maritime winter? Are you going to write your own books to read? Are you going to create your own music to listen to? I don’t think so…”
Local idiot Kirk Lorimer stood up to interrupt, saying that he mostly watches Netflix, so the arts aren’t relevant to his everyday life.
“Netflix has movies and shows, not art. Art is like…paintings of bowls of fruit, poems about flowers…you know — boring, useless crap like that. There are much more important things that our tax dollars should be spent on.”
Lorimer didn’t list any examples of what his taxes should go toward. Instead, he sat down and opened YouTube on his phone to watch a video of a local standup comedian’s performance.
Reps from the Community Arts Board tried to explain that investing in art and culture actually injects much-needed money into cities, and it would be irresponsible to ignore that fact. Fredericton and Moncton are actively trying to capitalize on the growth that a robust arts scene brings into communities, Marpel added, before she was again interrupted.
“Oh yes, cut emergency services but keep this…makes a lot of sense to me,” blurted some sarcastic imbecile. “That’s how it works, right? If you keep art, you don’t get to have the necessities? At least that’s the conclusion I just came to based on no facts whatsoever — so now no one can tell me otherwise!”
“Think how much money we could save if we stopped giving our hard-earned cash to these greedy artists all the time!” agreed local art-hater Myra Cummings. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get home to watch my stories. My programs are on every Monday night and I don’t plan to waste my precious time talking about art.”
Cummings then made her way out, putting in her headphones to listen to her favourite band’s latest album on her walk.
As the meeting was evidently a total waste of time, reporters from The Manatee visited the home of Hank Wetmore, who didn’t want to leave the house but emailed us this morning to say he wanted his opinions known.
“These hippie artsy-fartsy types — writers, actors, painters, singers, dancers, filmmakers — they’re all always lookin’ for a handout, but I say they should get real jobs,” grumbled Wetmore, while flipping through TV channels. “And for god’s sake, why is there never anything good on?!”