Eleanor Catton and the politicians

Eleanor Catton, New Zealand writer, winner of the Booker Mann prize for her novel, Luminaries, said that she is uncomfortable being seen as ambassador for New Zealand, which she says is dominated by neo-liberal, profit obsessed, shallow and money hungry politicians who do not care about culture. She was taken to task for her comments, but nobody said that the price you pay for democracy is that 'culture' in the sense of elitist high 'culture' is not considered to be high priority for people who elect politicians to office. We are very fortunate that we have a number of politicians who indeed do care greatly about the kind of culture she is referring to. Chris Finlayson, the Attorney General and one of the most senior members of the cabinet is a very cultured man, and many of the Parliamentarians are cultured in the sense Catton understands the term, but as a democracy reflects the interests of its citizens, it is inevitable that many are no more cultured than the people who elected them. Totalitarian regimes impose culture. Stalinist Russia produced wonderful cinema, ballets, even some literature, but the price for that was that everything disapproved of by the regime was brutally oppressed, and artists, composers, writers were silenced, some exiled, a number murdered. I don't know in what sense Catton saw herself as an ambassador for New Zealand. She is a successful writer, a New Zealander, and her subjects are New Zealand subjects. I don't think that politics feature in her writing. You don't have to agree with neo-liberal, profit obsessed political goals, but the majority of the people thought that these objectives are preferable to the alternatives. As a writer and a New Zealand citizen, Catton is welcome to advocate policies that foster the arts, and I may think that a greater investment in arts may be justifies by its contribution to the improvement of the quality of the lives of people, but I don't want to have 'culture' imposed on me at any cost because it is good for me. Fiona Kidman, who has been around much longer that Catton, and has dealt with politicians of many stripes over many years, thought that Catton, instead of grizzling generally, should use her influence make a difference on issues that can be tackled by immediate political lobbying, such as payments to authors for their public lending rights, or funding endowments such as the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, which is under threat for inadequate funding.