Scottish independence and Norman McLaren

[imomus]

At last Thursday's elections the Scottish National Party became the most powerful force in the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh, opening the way to a referendum on complete independence for Scotland. What do I think of the prospect of independence for the land I was born in? Let me answer that obliquely: Norman McLaren.

Norman McLaren represents everything that I'd consider great about Scotland. For 50 years -- between 1933 and 1983 -- McLaren produced brilliant animations which are full of Scottish motifs, Scottish sensibility. Look at 1965's Mosaic, for instance, which basically riffs on tartan, or 1957's Fiddle De Dee, which uses Scottish fiddle music. And yet McLaren, a graduate of Glasgow College of Art, did all his significant work outside Scotland. Which makes him, sadly, a rather typical Scot.

[Error: unknown template video]

Influenced by the Russian formalists and by Eisenstein, Norman McLaren spent his entire working life at the National Film Board of Canada, basically promoting the nation of Canada. It's work full of visual verve and wit, the fruit of near-total creative freedom. It could never have been made in the private sector. But equally, it could never have been made in Scotland -- the Scotland we know now, anyway. Just as I had to leave Scotland because there weren't enough indie labels there to sustain a music career, McLaren left his homeland in order to do work at his own level. Would Scottish independence change that? Then I'm for it. But I'm not sure it would.

[Error: unknown template video]

McLaren went to Canada at the invitation of John Grierson, another brilliant Scot. Like McLaren, Grierson was highly receptive, culturally, to what was going on in the Soviet Union. For McLaren, Eisenstein and the Russian Formalists were determinant. (Would independence for Scotland bring about a cultural renaissance as amazing as the one that happened in the early days of the Soviet Union? Then I'm all for it.) For Grierson, it was the writings of Lenin on film as propaganda. Grierson -- descended from the same kind of radical post-Calvinist Scottish teacher and minister stock as my own family, a kind of left wing Lord Reith -- was very much focused on the problem that Bryan Caplan raises in his book about democracy; that poorly-educated and unmotivated populations make a mockery of democracy, and their bad choices will see it replaced, eventually, by something else. But whereas Caplan ends up suggesting that experts should run things and just cut the people out of the loop, Grierson took the Leninist route; the government should constantly educate, agitate, stimulate and motivate the people.

[Error: unknown template video]

To this end he invented the genre of documentary as we know it -- he was the first to use the term -- working first with the GPO Films Unit in London (making classics like Night Mail) then heading off to Canada, where, in 1938, he recommended that the government start a film unit. Grierson became the first Canadian Film Commisioner, and the body he headed became the National Film Board of Canada. Their website describes their mission:

"The NFB is a federal cultural agency within the portfolio of the Canadian Heritage Department. Initially known as the National Film Commission, it was created by an act of Parliament in 1939. Its mandate, as set forth in the National Film Act, 1950, is to produce and distribute and to promote the production and distribution of films designed to interpret Canada to Canadians and to other nations."

[Error: unknown template video]

One of Grierson's first actions in his new role as benign propagandist for Canada was to invite Norman McLaren to start an Animation Unit. So, from 1941 until his death in the late 1980s, Norman McLaren ran this animation unit, making film after brilliant film. Like Grierson, McLaren was contemptuous of the values of Hollywood producers. They were "dope pedlars". And, as you watch McLaren's animations (they've just come out on a 7 DVD box set which I very much want), it becomes clear that this work could only have been brought into the world with the support of a state agency.

[Error: unknown template video]

Despite the highly formalist (Cute Formalist, I'm inclined to call it) nature of the work, it contains humanistic values which would probably be replaced, in the commercial world, by aggression, ugliness, triviality or sentimentality. It's also highly unlikely that the commercial world would have sustained such a brilliant creator on his own terms through five decades of productive work. Only an indulgent and enlightened state -- like a kind parent indulging a gifted child -- would let someone like McLaren basically play at his own pace throughout his entire working life.

[Error: unknown template video]

In a sense, this is advertising, but it's rarefied advertising whose general purpose is to refine, define and shine up the image of a nation. In other words, it's (incredibly civilised) propaganda. And it's something Scots do well for other nations. Would we do it as well for our own? Neighbours is perhaps McLaren's most famous animation; its anti-aggression, anti-war theme led to work with another idealistic government organisation, UNESCO. (By the way, isn't the blippy electronic music fantastic?) He also spent a lot of time in India and China, raising awareness there of the potential of animation.

Scotland made characters like Grierson and McLaren, but so did the Soviet Revolution. In return, they helped Canada to define and promote itself, using it as a springboard to India, China and UNESCO. McLaren's work is Scottish, but also global. He's an artist -- admired by Picasso, amongst others -- but also an altruistic public servant, a propagandist, a formalist, a revolutionary, a man with world-scale vision.

Did what happened in Scotland on Thursday make more McLarens likely? If so, I welcome it. Did it make it easier for future graduates of Glasgow School of Art to leapfrog both England and America as places to make their mark and develop a truly global vision in a multipolar world? Again, I hope so. Would an independent Scotland bring a government-funded cultural renaissance? Would there be a National Film Board of Scotland as brilliant as the Canadian version? If so, hurrah.

Would creative Scots like Grierson and McLaren stay at home? I doubt it. The world is just too big and too interesting. But funding has to come from somewhere, preferably somewhere enlightened. An enlightened government determined to keep its people positive and active and involved. If a new Scottish Enlightenment -- or a new Soviet Revolution, for that matter -- edged closer to Edinburgh on Thursday, hurrah! If not, well, Scots will just have to keep advertising other people's enlightenment as and where they find it on their travels. They'll have to keep adding their creative value to other people's states. It's something we've learned to do rather well down the centuries.