436 - Fairer Images

Fairer Images
By Michel Despland

THE fine article in this issue by R. E. Rambush, "Mirror of Our Culture," should occasion reflection on the situation in our society of the self-conscious bearers of culture and of the producers of mass culture. My intention is to prolong the remarks made by Mr. Rambush on that particular subject.

Two points seem worth making at the outset. First, there is an "images industry" that brings together a vast range of professions (architects, designers, painters, script-writers, film-producers, historians, sociologists, psychologists, etc.). In that industry the lines that used to be drawn between the production of advertisement, the sale of entertainment, and the assessment of "our accomplishments and our aspirations" seem increasingly hard to draw. Second, there is need for clarification of the context in which decisions are made in that industry and of the values at stake. The fair seems to have prompted an awareness of the ambiguities of this industry. But the debate about the fair so far has hardly opened up the question of the role of the life of the imagination in our society. Most of the debate has pitted images against images, or indulged in intellectual irony about the crudeness of the business world.

The general tenor of the fair, the various complaints of those who lost out in the competition for contracts, and the comments of the cultured critics, all seem to suggest that Georg Lukac was right in his severe judgments on the Western intellectual. His Existentialisme ou Marxisme? argues that most intellectuals in the West are far removed from the real processes which determine the structure and evolution of society and are incapable of bringing to light the relationships that prevail in the society. What they do is to provide images which are eagerly consumed by a public that needs to keep its imagination sweetly occupied and that wants to have its "permanent interior carnival" constantly kept in a motion with just enough drama-but no more-to keep it interesting. If such a show is all the intellectuals are capable of producing, then it is no wonder that the crowds are amused by the fair but fail to find it momentous.

This evaluation is corroborated by Mr. Rambush's statement on

437 - Fairer Images

the escapist and diverting character of most of the fair's exhibits. The question now is, what alternative is there, if any, to this kind of images industry? Canada and Montreal right now are going through the tensions involved in the preparation of Expo 67, a major world exhibition approved by the Bureau International des Expositions and meant to coincide with the centennial of Canada's confederation. Participation in some of the work in preparation of it has shown more clearly the idolatrous character of our need for images. We expect images to do what idols, in Augustine's sense, are intended to do, i.e., reflect to us a deceptive but flattering image of ourselves.

The debates about the "Youth Pavilion" are particularly indicative of the difficulties encountered by the critics of the prevailing images and of their role in the imagination. A consulting committee representing the major Canadian youth organizations, from Boy Scouts to separatist-inclined student unions, recommended a program of rencontres internationales and a teaching exhibition on the contents and the place of the youth sub-culture. To their disappointment, the company prepared to foot the bill turned out to be a soft-drink company, internationally known and frequently used to symbolize one of the kinds of relationships that exist between the U.S. and the rest of the world. The company is so wedded to a certain image of youth, uses so well the charm of youthful bodies to promote its harmless product, and has so many views on what a youth pavilion should be, that the committee despairs of ever seeing an honest youth pavilion, namely a pavilion helping the perception of facts and actual relationships rather than one reviving the carnival.

Are there any industries that do not have an idolatrous relationship to youth? Can artists work in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom, free from any pressure to promote anything in particular (even as subtle a thing as unquestioning confidence in the future of the economy), and free to enter into a genuine dialogue between youth and non-youth on the phenomenon of youth?

In spite of the omnipresence of idolatries, there are some hopes left for Expo 67. Seven churches, from Roman Catholic to Baptists, have joined to build one Christian Pavilion and have rejected the idea of booths. Great expectations are also placed on the contribution of the National Film Board. The pavilions from the Prov-

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inces show no signs of a too strong Chamber of Commerce ring to them. The face of Expo 67 is far from being determined yet, but the very lively competition between the public sector and the private one seems to indicate a tone rather different from the New York Fair.

It seems that the role of public institutions, and especially of governments, in so far as they favor a kind of non-political "intelligentsia establishment" (the kind of intelligentsia that works for the National Film Board and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), might be a crucial factor in the ethos of fairs and other periodic festivals of images. An oscillation between publicly-sponsored and privately-sponsored distribution of information might make more room for searching intellectual honesty, might inject a note of realism in the market of images, and might make it an occasion for genuine knowledge and awareness.