The highly articulate pioneers and founders of the Film Society Movement of Australia, like Ken Coldicutt of Melbourne and Beatrice Tildsley of Sydney, were critical of Capitalism and its effects on cinema and the Arts.

Prodos pitches their arguments to Dr Stephen Hicks, a documentary filmmaker, Professor of Philosophy at Rockford College, USA, and the author of “Explaining PostModernism”.

Prodos: In 1935, as a student at the University of Melbourne Ken Coldicutt — who, later, in 1949, helped form the FVFS (Federation of Victorian Film Societies) and ACOFS — Australian Council of Film Societies — wrote a now famous essay in Proletariat called Cinema and Capitalism. In that essay he’s quite critical of Capitalism and commercial cinema, or, as he refers to it, “bourgeois values” and “bourgeois entertainment”. In your view, are Capitalism and Art — such as Cinema — are they compatible? Or does Capitalism run against the very nature of the Arts?

Stephen Hicks: I would say, if you want to have flourishing arts culture and maximise the number of individuals who are free to pursue their artistic vision, who have the freedom to live their own lifestyle, living in a society that can support them by generating lots of wealth, then Capitalism is going to be the way to go.

If you consider the major historical alternative systems: Socialism, Theocracy, or more primitively, Tribalism and various sorts of Feudal Empires, in none of those systems do you get either the lifestyle freedom or the amount of wealth that is going to sustain the great artists who are going to go on to make the great films.

Prodos: Are you arguing that the audience in a capitalistic, wealth-creating society, is better able to afford to pay for the Arts?

Stephen Hicks: Well, there’s two sides of the equation if you look at it — (firstly in terms of) the economics — there’s the supply side and there’s the demand side. So (if) you’re asking about the audience side, that’s the demand side.

Yes, if you have a wealthier society, then you’re going to have a whole lot more people with disposable income. And when people have a lot more disposable income, they spend a great deal of that — once the necessities of life are looked after — on luxuries … They take additional time off work, they read books, they go to movies, they travel, and visit museums … They have the time and they have the income to do those things. Also, if you have a wealthier society then you’re going to have people who are more educated. You’ll have a lot more young people (for instance) taking piano lessons when they’re kids … so by the time they become adults they may not become artists but they will be more likely to have an interest in the Arts.

Prodos: I see. So, greater wealth allows people to test their own artistic talents. And that’s part of the education process. Someone may not become a pianist but by learning piano and studying music, they now have a greater appreciation, respect, admiration for the truly great composers and pianists and orchestral players — and even of rock musicians. A lot of modern pop and rock and rap is very sophisticated.

Stephen Hicks: (We’ll) now slip over to the artist’s perspective — or the “supply side” (as it’s called) in economics, where a similar sort of dynamic happens.

If you’re going to have a culture with a lot of Art — and great Art really is a numbers game — for every thousand people who are pretty good at it, you’re going to have the one outstanding genius. So (in a wealthier system) we’re going to generate lots and lots of people who are trying their hand at doing great Art. Well, that’s a lot of people then who (among other things) need to have the necessary leisure time. And most great Art also requires people to have a fair amount of education — most of the great artists in history have been immersed in their culture and received good liberal Arts education in (some way,) shape or form …

Prodos: Right. They’ve got to be able to buy books to read books. They’ve got to be able to do some travelling. They’ve got to be able to stay warm and be fed. They’ve got to have enough money to eat healthily just to have the energy to do the Art.!

Stephen Hicks: Exactly. Another way to look at it is — consider life expectancy. Through most of human history, life expectancy has been in the thirties. It’s not really until the Twentieth Century that we have life expectancy (really) taking off greatly. The carnage of artists who died very young are things that would be very preventable now. It’s appalling, really.

Prodos: You could even argue, when there are more options and there’s more wealth, and there’s cheaper and better food, then artists who can be a fairly obsessive kind of creature, it’s a lot easier for them to look after their well-being and health on less money. In this day and age, we can just go down the road, 24 hours a day and maybe get a roast chicken from the supermarket and some salad.

Stephen Hicks: Then you’ve got all the (convenient) machines and technology for cooking, and to clean your clothes with, and so on.

Stephen Hicks: We’ve been emphasising the material side of the equation. But the other side is the closely related psychological side. Economic freedom is of course just one sub-species of freedom. Free market capitalism says “You can do whatever you want with your life”. And that is very psychologically liberating.

Of course what some people will do is pursue wealth. But if you’re living in a system that makes freedom the fundamental (principle), then that frees up artists psychologically. They can live how they want to live, pursue whatever kinds of ideas they want. And that’s going to be more respected in that kind of society. So you’re going to have a whole lot more creative people. Of course a lot of them are going to be eccentric, but a lot of great stuff comes out of that.

Prodos: In the early days of the Film Society Movement, in the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s there was no recognition of a connection between Capitalism and freedom. The connection with wealth was understood, but not with freedom. For example, Ken Coldicutt was a Communist and a strong opponent of censorship, which he thought was part and parcel of a Capitalistic system. He felt Capitalism was an intellectually/artistically repressive system. And that censorship was a basic part of it.

Stephen Hicks: Okay. So, (is he arguing that) a Capitalist economic system, as he’s defining it, requires a certain kind of cultural ethos? And that has to be enforced by some state apparatus that might come out in the form of censorship?

Prodos: For instance, here, Ken Coldicutt quotes directly from the British Board of Film Censors,which states: The Board forbids “films dealing with strikes”. It forbids “stories and scenes which are calculated and possibly intended to foment social unrest and discontent.” It forbids “scenes depicting the forces of order firing on an unarmed populace”. It forbids “stories showing any antagonistic or strained relations between white men and the coloured population of the British Empire”.

Stephen Hicks: (both laughing) It seems quaintly archaic doesn’t it? (I think what we have here) is a package deal. You’ve got economic freedom, and you’ve got someone coming at Capitalism from a broadly Marxist perspective. But then you’ve also got actual historical examples of nineteenth and early twentieth century British attitudes which were still a mixture of Victorian ethical attitudes – a hangover of authoritarian political attitudes from its long legacy of Feudalism, mixed in with a certain amount of respect for economic liberalism. So you’ve got a culture in transition. I think it’s largely a historical accident that you’ve got those two elements conjoined with each other. Certainly, in the British context in the early twentieth century, (we find) a real intellectual maelstrom of different cultural, philosophical, political, economic, and so on trends.

Prodos: The Americans were also big on censorship too. At certain times the Americans have been shockingly censorious.

Stephen Hicks: Perhaps even more so than the Australians and British.

Prodos: One of the constant references that Ken Coldicutt and thinkers of his era made, they referred to film as an art form which was “enchained by profit-making, bourgeois ideology, and fascist repression”. In contrast, they said, let us now turn to the films of Soviet Russia which they felt were not “chained” in this way.

Stephen Hicks: In fact, many intellectuals around the world were leaning fairly hard left (around then), & saw the Soviet Union as a great beacon of hope for the future.

Prodos: In Britain the very first film society included as its members, the following: H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Anthony Asquith, John Maynard Keynes, (Stephen Hicks laughing in the background, exclaims “Oh, my goodness!”), Sidney Bernstein, Augustus John, and Ivor Montagu. All hard Left Commie types with a few Fabian Socialists thrown in. These were people who back in 1925 were the founding members of what was then known as the London Film Society. The first ever film society. That’s how we (The Movement) got started!

Stephen Hicks: There are a couple of issues you can raise here. One has to do with the place of money and profit-seeking in the context of artistic projects: What is proper artistic motivation? To what extent should monetary and economic issues be relevantly and appropriately involved? And that’s if you think about what’s going on inside the artist.

The other point that can be raised is the fact that the really big money in free market economies is (made) by serving the middle class. Those are the people who — because there’s millions and millions and millions of them — are the largest demographic. So if you want to make a lot of money, you tailor your product to the middle class. If you’re an artist then that would mean making things that are appropriate to the middle class. So what is middle class taste likely to be like in a free market economy?

Now, as an Artist, you can say, “I might be an artist and I’ve got a great vision … but … I don’t think it will sell and so I’m going to sell out.” And that can be a very real phenomenon. Now here I don’t think it’s a political issue per se, but rather it’s an issue of personal integrity. It’s a moral issue. If you’re an artist, nobody is making you sell out to other people, however many of them there are who are willing to reward you with a certain amount of money. No system is making you do that. Instead, all the free market is doing is giving you a choice. You can either try to sell to your small, niche market of people who understand your unique, artistic vision, or you can try to approach the broad market. And if the broad market is not your (proper) market and (yet) you go for it, well that’s your fault; it’s not the market’s fault.

Stephen Hicks: Given the way the free market works — with all kinds of splintered niche markets and the overall high level of wealth across the population, I think, most people, if you actually do have talent and you stick to your principles you can find your niche market and support yourself. If I just speak in the American context, millions of people are successfully making a living in the Arts, very broadly speaking. That has never happened before in all of World history. No other culture under any sort of political regime has been able to support more than a few thousand full time practising artists. Those historical numbers speak for themselves.

Prodos: So, these days an artist can make a living?

Stephen Hicks: It’s much easier for an artist to do so. But Capitalism is not a … cure-all that’s going to make sure every single artist who has a good vision is going to “make it”. It’s a selection mechanism and information is not always perfect. There are (among other things) marketing issues (and) a lot of different (competing) signals out there. So, it’s not the case that artists are (automatically) going to succeed. The point has to be a comparative one. If (we’re) genuinely interested in artists who have a vision and who have the integrity, if we want to have them have the best shot of actually making it, then a culture that’s free and wealthy is the best shot.

Prodos: Do more capitalistic countries have higher artistic standards or lower? Does the profit motive cause a decline in quality and an increase in crassness?

Stephen Hicks: Let’s try an analogy. Let’s take something that’s not as complicated as Art is, but is still pretty complicated. Think of computers. Do we want to say that because of the mass market and the average person’s understanding of technology, that what’s going to happen in the computer industry is a “race to the bottom”? A drop to the “lowest common denominator”? So that computers are going to get worse as the decades go on? No! There’s a back-and-forth (between producers and consumers) that goes on.

You have (producers) who have a vision about what computers can do. They get out there — they put their products out there. A lot of them fail. But people (as potential customers) are pretty smart — and they have disposable income. They figure out “this can do something for me”. They become a little bit more and more educated about what computers can do. Rather than a race to the bottom, what you get, in a free market — like the computer industry has been for the last generation — you pretty much have a race to the top. And (as customers) we’re all a lot more computer savvy.

Now let’s apply that analogy to the Arts. I would be very confident in making the (claim) that the average consumer of Art in America or Australia or Germany or Japan right now, living — in historical terms — relatively freer economies, is a whole lot better educated, a whole lot more knowledgeable about the Arts. And so they’re actually a harder audience to satisfy. And they’re going to make greater demands on artists as time goes by.

Prodos: Another thing is that we’re not just individuals — it’s great to be an individual – but we’re also Dads or Mums, Uncles or Aunts, Grandpas and Grandmas. Because of that, the values we hold are not the most lewd, crass, range-of-the-moment attitudes. Each of us has an interest — because of who we are and because we love people around us – -we want a society that is actually improving. We believe in values.

You mentioned computers — well, what about automobiles? Over the years I’ve seen them evolve and become safer, more comfortable, more spacious, easier to handle, more girl-friendly — easier for women to drive and handle. All that has happened, why? Because of the market. The profit motive. A profit motive driven by appealing to people’s values. So, by opposing profit, it’s as if the Communists and Socialists have a very low view of people’s pursuit of values.

Stephen Hicks: Yes, they do. They tend to see people as more passive, more easily regulated by external forces. So if you then characterise Capitalism the way they do — as a zero-sum, dog-eat-dog, somehow vicious, crass, money-grubbing system with no interest in higher artistic pursuit, that’s going to lead to believing in a “downward spiral”. But that’s just a faulty view of human nature & a faulty view of how market processes work.

Prodos: Ken Coldicutt and some of the early Communist founders — whom I have great respect for, I have to admit, used their Marxist philosophy to try to understand film art itself. For example, in Ken Coldicutt’s famous essay, Capitalism and Cinema, he writes: “Cinema is essentially dynamic … It deals with images in a state of constant change and continual flow.” And then he quotes Heraclitus: “Everything is and is not. For everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away.” See, these guys took their philosophy seriously! And they turned that philosophical perspective towards understanding the pioneering developments in film art. That’s quite impressive to me.

Stephen Hicks: Well, fair enough.

Prodos: (Laughing) You’re not impressed, obviously. But I am! (Both laugh)

Stephen Hicks: Well, I think Marxism is a clunkier and more archaic philosophy. It’s not the worst one that’s out there. Some argument can be made for it. But I think they’re putting more burden on Heraclitus than he can bear in the film industry in this case. (All laugh)

Prodos: … One of the things, I think, that attracted a lot of Marxists to the early film society movement was that the Soviet thinkers really did develop an explicit and interesting film philosophy, whereas those on the capitalistic side did not. Young idealists will latch on to a clear theory or ideal when it’s there. If the “other side” doesn’t have a theory, there’s nothing to latch on to.

Stephen Hicks: It is interesting, historically, that the Communists and the Fascists and the National Socialists were much quicker to the mark in seeing the importance of film as a new medium for communication. And for all that the Communists, for example, talk about deterministic, material forces working their way out, they did nonetheless have a keen insight into the importance of intellectual activity, artistic activity, ideological activity in transforming cultures.

Another element of it though is that for all that the Marxists have typically talked about “the common man” and the importance of the common man, in practice they’ve almost always been elitist, thinking of themselves — whether in the intelligentsia or as Party activists — as having some special insight that’s not shared by the vast majority of the population who (they claim) are in “bondage” to various primitive systems of religion or Capitalism or slaves to their economic and religious circumstances. And so, that they’re the only ones … with their ideas, who are in a position to enact a transformation in society.

Prodos: Well, what were they competing against? At the time, were there any better ideas out there?

Stephen Hicks: (Indeed), I don’t (think) there’s a whole lot to look at if you go to the early part of the twentieth century. I think the main reason for that is that Art is a largely psychological enterprise. It can have physical components – (for instance) music makes us want to dance, and we have all kinds of somatic reactions to lots of things. But primarily what goes on in most of the artistic media is that it pushes our psychological buttons, our emotions, our intellect, it acts on us sensorially … and we have not really had a robust or well worked out theory of psychology. Even now in the early part of the (twenty-first) century, psychology is still largely in its infancy. But if you go back to the first part of the twentieth century, there were no good psychological theories out there that could serve as part of the scaffolding for a good theory of Art. So, yes, the Communists and the Fascists and so on, who had some sort of a theory out there that was tied to a broader philosophical outlook – if they’re first off the mark then they’re going to be in a good position to be leaders.

Hollywood in 1935 — the year Ken Coldicutt’s essay, Cinema & Capitalism was published in Proletariat– produced over 60 full length feature movies.

USA film production far outstripped all other countries. Barboo’s Illustrations (above) show scenes from A Night at the Opera (Marx Brothers), Top Hat (Fred Astaire) The Informer (Victor McLaglen), & Anna Karenina (starring Greta Garbo, based on a Russian novel, & winning the “Mussolini Cup” – named after Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito — in Venice ).

India now surpasses the USA in feature film production by a long shot.

Prodos: One of the other early pioneers of the Film Society Movement in Australia was Beatrice Tildsley (1886–1977). In fact, she and her sister (Evelyn) formed the very first film society in Australia (around 1931). Very interesting ladies! I’ve got some excerpts here from a biography by Dr Jill Julius Matthews from ANU. She writes about them: “Certainly for this progressive intelligentsia, the romance of Hollywood was tawdry. Its glamour, cheap and sentimental. Its citizenship demotic and vulgar, but it didn’t have to be. The inferiority of moving pictures (wrote Beatrice Tildsley) ‘Was not an essential characteristic. It was due to the standards and methods of production at Hollywood.’”

And (here’s) what Beatrice Tildsley promoted at the time: “These intellectuals like her, craved a romance that was truly heroic. And the ideal they conjured was the Good Life of the Classic Greeks: ‘Freedom, reason, beauty, excellence, the pursuit of truth’ “ I couldn’t find what Beatrice Tildsley’s political inclinations were. But here (we see that) she was classically trained. One of the very first women that actually went to University and got a degree! Quite a mover and shaker in the feminist movement, and in many other areas. What she’s promoting is definitely not Communism. But she’s still critical of Hollywood & commercialisation or capitalism.

Stephen Hicks: There’s no question that, when you have a commercialised (and free) society … among those who go into the Arts (we’re going to find) widely different intellectual agendas, personality types, and so forth. And if there’s lots of wealth available for people to do their own sorts of things then, yes, you’re going to have a lot of stuff that’s produced. And the Law of Numbers says that a large proportion of it is going to be, technically, crap. We talk about how wonderful automobiles are or how wonderful computers are, but at the same time we mustn’t forget the tens of millions of lousy computers and lousy cars that are now justifiably (in) the dustbin …

Prodos: So, in a free capitalistic system you do get a lot of junk. But if you look at the total picture, you find you also get a lot more of the good stuff. Yes?

Stephen Hicks: I do think it’s a numbers game. So, for every 10,000 mediocre films you’re going to get the one that is genius. Now the question is going to be: How do we set it up so we get tens of thousands of films produced? And so we also have a good critical apparatus for sorting out the good from the bad? And a good educational process for helping audiences to learn what is the good and the bad? So, I think it’s going to be a slow, upwards spiral. And I think (thanks to Capitalism) that’s what we’ve had over most of the Twentieth Century.