14 - Sunday, January 17, 198% - North Shore News

EVERY SUNDAY in the North Shore News, Les Bewley, a longtime
magistrate and judge, now retired, will be revealing the inside workings
of Canadian judicial and political issues in his column Life Sentences. A
former Vancouver Sun columnist and lawyer, Les Bewley was appointed
assistant city prosecutor and then magistrate and judge, which he served

as for 21 years.

I HAVE forgotten the name of the gentleman (no, it was
not Herman Goering) who uttered the classic line:
“Everytime I hear the world ‘culture’ I reach for my

revolver.”’

Anyone as straight-thinking and
straight-shooting as that deserves
to have his name remembered.
More, he deserves a 40-foot bronze
statue of himself in a quick-draw
stance erected in front of every
university and college campus and
every museum and art gallery in
the nation — two in front of
UBC's Museum of Anthropology.

Tee mth & Serre

persons’ sense of orientation.
Depend upon it: anytime you
hear someone prating, prattling
and going on about our ‘‘culture’’,
the chances are you are listening to
someone who is so desperate to
rub elbows wih the Finer Things
and become one of the elite, that
he will happily accept the second
or third rate, and the fake in place

“Culture has everything to do with the refinement of mind, morals
and taste, in either the personal or socretal sense.

This comes to mind from
reading about the screams, moans
and whimpers that free trade will
brutalize our precious Canadian
culture and the seizure of one of
our local artist's masterpieces by
Scotland Yard.

Vancouver artist Rick Gibson
decided to enrich poor, barren
London's culture by displaying a
“sculpture” consisting of two real
dehydrated human fetuses dangl-
ing as carrings from a mannequin's

ears,

This is no one-shot work of
genius by local artist Gibson. He
has exhibited such works of real |
quality as areal human uterus and
another titled Kitten a la Carte, a
dinner setting featuring a pregnant
cat with its stomach cut open and
its fetuses exposed.

Before we institutionalized and
made a big business out of culture,
normal, civilized citizens regarded
sliced-open cats, painted uteruses
and dried fetuses as being in the
province of the hopelessly deprav-
ed, rather than that of fine arts.

One explanation reasonably
suggests itself. Sculptor Gibson is a
graduate in psychology from one
of our universities. Four or five
years of listening to keel and com-
pass-lacking academics has per-
manently damaged many young

Buddies meet

BOSOM BUDDIES, a support
group for women who have expe-
rienced breast cancer or other
breast problems that has been
operating on the North Shore for
the past two years, welcomes new
members,

The organization offers a sup-

port system for women to meet
and talk to others who share the
same anxieties and fears.

The first meeting of 1988 is a
dinner social being held -Wednes-
day, Jan. 20 at 6:30 p.m. Those
wishing to attend should call 922-
6404 or 921-8368 for
details.

 Peopue dnreresren
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further |

of the real thing, just so he
belongs.

Culture has everything to do
with the refinement of mind,
morals and taste, in cither the per-
sonal or societal sense. By that
definition, most of what is
described as our precious, threat-
ened Canadian culiure is a
miserable failure.

Even if you exclude the dried
fetus earrings and such, much of
the highly-touted, raved-over Ca-
nadian culture is (with a few ex-
ceptions) third or fourth-rate.
Maybe even second, if you are in a
“jes love everthin"’ mood, with
five cognacs in your tummy.

A harsh assessment, to be sure.

But how else to assess, say, our
own province which at the in-
sistence of our intelligentsia, aca-
demics and media is rapidly
regressing into a primitive totemic
culture, wherein our citizens are
expected to stand in open-mouthed
awe and admiration, bathed in eau
de fish oil, at the sight of a dug-
Out canoe, an animal-skin tent,

“and the ubiquitous totem pole?

This absurdity didn’t exist 35
years ago. { recall attending a con-
cert by Montavani and his or-
chestra at the conclusion of which
the local M.C. presented the
maestro with a three-foot totem

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pole. Bewildered, Montavani said:
“What am I supposed to do with
this?’? The audience shouted out
the only appropriate advice. Ter-
rified that the maestro might carry ‘
out their advice, the M.C. hurried- 9 | Oil
jy backed away off stage. 8 | Cha nge

Things have mightily s ial
deteriorated since then. That pecia
M.C.'s tasteless gaffe has now
become the accepted custom.
Totem poles — let’s be honest,
now — are about the adult
equivalent of children’s finger
painting; they bear about as much
relationship to real sculpture as a
flattened beer can or an auto
junkyard to Michelangelo's La
Picta or Daniel Chester French's
glorious Lincoln Memorial.

Still, our unstrung culture-
mongers try to con us into believ-
ing that primitive is just as good,
or better, or more authentic. No
celebration of our civic advance-
ment is now complete without the
erection of another totem pole and
— oh, joy! — another alleged Bear
Dance, a leaden-footed, crouching,
ridiculous shuffle punctuated by
unintelligible grunts and accom-
panied by a monotonous thumping
of drums. .

We imitate and exalt the stews
of darkest 19th century Africa
(Oh, Cedric, will those drums
never cease?*’) in our laughable,
unfocused, indiscriminate love of
“oulture’’.

Speaking of bears, one of the

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books most highly praised by the
intellectual panjandrums who tell
us members of the lumpen-
proletariat about high-class Cana-

dian literature is Marian Engel’s

Bear in which the perplexed
heroine indulges in sexual inter-
course with one. It is kind of hard
to figure how wicked American
cultural imperialissn could under-
mine this level of taste and refine-

ment,

The same culture-vultures have

taken poor, drab, Emily Carr, a

ham-handed, third-rate amateur
painter of muddy-colored, un-
disciplined, primitive canvases and
hyped her into one of Canada’s
greatest painters. °

Next time you hear this blather-
ing about ‘‘culture’’ you can legit-
imately reach for your revolver, or
Jet go with the horse-laugh it richly
deserves. @ :

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