What if I told you art would replace sports at the end of each news broadcast?
A letter to an editor, now memed for eternity on Facebook, reads:
Art As News
I wonder what kind of country it would be if we had a consistent five minutes at the end of every news half-hour dedicated to what occurred in the arts instead of what happened in sport — from the theatre through to our galleries, exploring the complexities of human existence, instead of from footy through to cricket, exploring not very much at all really.Monique Germon, South Hobart
Getting the disclaimers out of the way first, I write this as a fully paid-up football (the real one) nut — and having graced the general admission stands at the First Gabba Test many times, not to mention returning in the winter months to witness a Brisbane Lions outing.But a quick, and thoroughly unsatisfying, search on Google will return my name as author of a clutch of theatre reviews of dubious journalistic merit. I have, as it were, a foot firmly planted on both stages.
It would hard to hard to argue against the thrust Ms Germon's missive. And indeed it could be said that those who do argue, probably wouldn't had they been exposed to a little more arts in their formative years. Boom, tish.
That's not to say that sport, which is excercise, isn't critical to humanity's wellbeing and vitality — it is. And it's a hell of a lot more exciting than aerobics or running around a park. From a news perspective, 90,000 at the MCG certainly makes the grade.But before we, as intellectually superior arts people laugh up the famous Sportsing meme above as a winner (it is), let's acknowledge there's more than enough wank, hypocisy and god-awful arts getting around that is little more than experimental rot, often cribbed from the endeavours of another, to slow down any idea of absolute merit when discussing one over the other.
One commenter on the Drama Queensland Facebook Page said:
"When someone prefers one activity or idea over another, WHY must they always insist that everyone should prefer that activity? Why not say 'let's have the arts in the news as well as sport', indicating sport is inferior and should be replaced with the arts this author has alienated a lot of people who could have otherwise been an ally to her idea."
