2013-05-22T17:18:26-04:00 D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=dk-latta Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for D.K. Latta Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3314656 2013-05-21T16:46:17-04:00 2013-05-21T17:23:35-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/ When Canadians are Ashamed to be Canadian -- resulted in comments. Some pro, some con, some didn't necessarily "get" where I was coming from. Perhaps because they were unaware discussions about Canadian identity and mass entertainment have been going on for decades.

But comments are good. I'm only part of the conversation, after all.

In my post I cited a U.S. talk show host comically rolling his eyes at a Canadian guest as an example of American media belittling Canada. But the point wasn't him, merely using him as an example.

Some said no slight was intended.

Some said it was intended and was entirely justified...and proceeded to denigrate Canada (or specific provinces) further.

Some felt I was making a mountain out of a mole hill. Fair enough. Some women are flattered to be slapped on the bottom and called "girlie," too.

Still, I thought I'd take a moment to articulate where I'm coming from.

Firstly: I'm a "pop culture blogger" (sez so under my by-line). I ruminate on mass entertainment that, after all, consumes a lot of people's free time. (If you thought I was crazy referencing a talk show, I suspect you'd demand my institutionalization over my piece about Captain Kirk!) Pop Culture is culture. Or as I like to say when it comes to entertainment: "If it's worth making...it's worth discussing."

Secondly: I like to question status quo thinking. To ask "why?" and "must it be so?"

Thirdly: I'm intrigued by how "cultural identity" is -- or isn't -- reflected in popular entertainment when, all too often, Canadian storytellers hide their Canadian roots.

So in its broadest definition, what is "culture"?

If you drive to work, bike, or take a subway -- that's culture.

If you get melancholy seeing the first V formation of geese heading south in the fall -- that's culture.

Culture, simply, is your life.

So what's "national" culture? A nation with a military history will say culture is war heroes -- and insist a peaceful land has no culture. A nation boasting famous composers will argue culture is music.

But you could say national culture is anything someone from away might find confusing.

If your family discusses Justin Trudeau -- that's culture. If you have snow tires -- that's culture. If a friend brags he has tickets to see Stuart McLean live -- that's culture. If names like Louis Riel and Terry Fox have some resonance for you -- that's culture. If you don't think it strange when a male politician makes a televised speech and a woman's voice comes from his lips -- that's culture.

A multi-party political landscape rather than a bipartisan one? That's culture, too. Culture is all around you. From bilingual cereal boxes to "Canadian Tire" money.

In this review of the Canadian TV series Motive, an American reviewer comments a Canadian give away is when characters talk about going to university, rather than college! (I don't understand the significance, but I guess he did).

It's also appreciating culture exists beyond your own neighbourhood.

A weakness in Canada is regional rivalries. The Calgarian who sneers Torontonians are just wannabe New Yorkers. The Torontonian who views Calgarians as just pseudo-Texans. Canada has no culture save Quebec, insist some -- but Quebec is part of Canada.

Part of this is rooted in a need to build yourself up, by putting someone else down (the basis of all bigotry). "I have a culture -- you don't!" is the sneer that the American says to the Canadian, the west coaster says to the east coaster, the white man says to the aboriginal person -- and vice versa.

And every single one of them is wrong.

But I love 'em all. Even those who take pride in hating the rest -- like the sullen teenager who refuses to sit with the family at the beach. 'Cause that's culture, too! The Francophone separatiste who looks down upon all Anglophones? Love ya, guy. The western reactionary who still sports a tattered old "let the eastern bastards freeze" bumper sticker? Give us a hug, boyo.

When it comes to Canadian culture, think of me as Pepe Le Pew out of the old cartoons, and the various regions as the black cat with the streak down her back. You can squirm and wiggle out of my grasp, ma cherie, but my adoration won't be dampened.

Because, equally, Canada's vibrancy -- its soul -- is rooted in multiculturalism. From sea to sea to sea, the different people and cultures, the immigrant and the native born. Indeed, no country is truly monolithic.

The contrary arguments can be paradoxical. When Canada evokes America or Europe, then -- ah hah! -- that proves Canada has no culture! Yet when Canada is atypical, then -- ah hah! -- that proves Canada has a stupid culture and should mimic a "real" country (Canadians whine a lot about liquor stores!)

All culture is borrowed and refashioned. European pyjamas were adapted from Indian day wear. Scottish bagpipes originated in the Middle East.

English-Canada celebrates Victoria Day -- even though the British don't! I've seen women dressed in a kind of Scottish uniform complete with kilt (I assume associated with the military or local university) -- yet I'm pretty sure in Scotland a kilt isn't unisex. And that's because, whatever the origins, these things are now...Canadian.

Cultural pride is like fire. You need it to warm your home, and to light the darkness...but unchecked it can burn down your house and threaten your neighbours. Heck, if Canada dominated the global pop culture the way America does, I'd be the first to exhort other countries to shake off the blanket of Canadian omnipresence.

I love American pop culture, but I champion the idea of Canadians recognizing they have a place at the table, too. As do other cultures. So go read a Japanese novel (I recently enjoyed Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino) or watch some Swedish TV (the Wallander programs starring Krister Henriksson are top notch).

I argue we are all diminished when storytellers obscure their Canadian origins. When one culture (such as America) dominates -- you are only getting one perspective. Embracing other cultures, including your own, just makes things richer, more exciting -- more tolerant.

And it makes better, deeper stories.

Imagine if when American writer Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird she had excised all references to the Southern U.S. and any reference to segregation. Would it still be considered a great work of literature?

She embraced her own culture, and maybe so should we all.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3292506 2013-05-17T12:48:34-04:00 2013-05-17T17:18:35-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/
But what about the broader culture? Is there a hatred of Canada, and if so, why? A hatred from outside...and a self-hatred from inside?

Consider this clip I found on youtube. It's of Canadian actress Meaghan Rath and a Scottish-American talk show host named Craig Ferguson. About three minutes into the clip Rath mentions she's Canadian...and the host rolls his eyes! When she says she's from Montreal, he gushes about Montreal (parroting the usual narrative that Canada sucks but Montreal is hip)...until he starts denigrating the Quebecois accent! So, um...he likes Montreal, he just can't stand the people who live there?

He's a comedian, but I'm not sure of the "joke" -- he's not lampooning Canadian foibles or satirizing Canadian iniquities. He's just rolling his eyes and retching.

Rath, being Canadian, remains unfailingly polite. Maybe she shouldn't have. One wonders how he would have reacted if Rath had quipped: "I never thought I'd hear a Scotsman make fun of someone's accent!" Though that would just be insulting the Scots who are guilty of no greater sin in the matter than squirting this yahoo out of their tartan enwraped loins.

Maybe she should've just punched him in the face.

Now, obviously, my umbrage is slightly inflated. Some of the interview was funny -- the Liam Neeson gags were cute.

What's bizarre about it is even as he ridicules Canada as though not worth a thought...he can cite various things about Canada just off the top of his head. Go figure.

But substitute another group in that scenario:

"I'm Jewish" (host rolls his eyes), "I'm Mexican" (host rolls his eyes), "I'm gay" (host rolls his eyes) -- stop me at the point where that wouldn't be objectionable.

Americans can find themselves lampooned internationally. And I'll admit that humour sometimes crosses a line from satire to just rude. But at least it arises out of legitimate targets -- U.S. attitudes and government policies -- even if it unfairly lumps all Americans in with the extremists. But that's a bit different than mocking a people simply for existing.

Now I started out talking about "hate" and I suspect a lot of people would say "hate" is an inflammatory word. Hate implies lynch mobs, threats of violence. Not teasing. Except when the teasing seems to be part of a pervasive and consistent pattern...possibly indicative of an agenda (conscious or subconscious). There are so many Canadians living in Los Angeles that Hollywood is cheekily referred to as the fourth largest Canadian city. Yet Canadians are almost never depicted in American movies and TV shows.

Except when they are.

And then they are generally depicted as dull, naive, often bumpkins and, on occasion, obstructive. They are rarely depicted as heroic or hip, sexy or intellectual.

Is that hate? Maybe not. But look under the surface. Why does this seem to be so common (if, admittedly, not absolute)? Why does a talk show host feel obligated to roll his eyes when confronting a Canadian guest?

If it's not hate -- it's certainly passive-aggressive (or "weak but vicious" as that phrase was defined in the 1990s Canadian sitcom, The Newsroom). It's: "I'm kidding (but not really)!"

Why?

I have one theory. There are plenty of others.

Canada's existence undermines the belief in American uniqueness. The "beacon on a hill" as an earlier American propagandist defined the country. While Americans fought bloody revolutions and civil wars, Canada is stereotyped (somewhat falsely) as the "peaceable kingdom". Yet today Canadians enjoy pretty much all the same rights and privileges Americans have. "What was the point of all that struggle if we're no further ahead than those ice fishermen north of the border?" lament (some) Americans.

The solution? Roll your eyes. Retch when you hear a Canadian accent. Canada doesn't count as a real culture, so America's specialness can stand uncontested.

When Canadian comedians lampoon America it might have its roots in cultural insecurity -- the mouse taking a poke at the elephant. But, if so, what does that say about Americans ridiculing Canada?

And this message then gets picked up and regurgitated elsewhere.

Now I can imagine Americans reading this post and saying: "Hey, c'mon now -- I don't hate Canada." Fair enough. In fact, American Marvel Comics has an entire Canadian super hero team -- Alpha Flight -- that periodically star in their own comic. But, funnily, that kind of makes my point: if some Americans have no issue with maple leaf wearing super heroes...why is so much of the depiction of Canada and Canadians in American media deliberately belittling?

This wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't that it influences Canadians perceptions of themselves. Tell someone they're worthless often enough and even they start to believe it.

It gives life to the self-loathing Canadian who will happily watch hundreds of hours of American TV, with characters making references to American places and events...yet will declare it "embarrassing" to see a single Canadian flag waving in the background of a Canadian TV show. They aren't embarrassed by Canadian-made productions, they insist, they are embarrassed when Canadian productions admit they are Canadian.

The new American SF series, Defiance, occurs in a world unrecognizable as our own...yet still explicitly sets the story in the American city of St. Louis. While the Canadian-made Orphan Black hesitates to clearly show Canadian currency on camera!

Canada: the country that dares not speak its name, to appropriate an earlier phrase. It's like that "Don't ask, don't tell" American military policy towards homosexuals. "It's okay to be Canadian," say self-loathing Canadians and those like-minded in the American media, "just so long as you don't draw attention to it and we can pretend you're not."

Personally, I'm embarrassed by Canadians who are embarrassed by Canadian references. Or at least, I kind of feel sorry for them.

I wonder if those who make Canadian-but-not-really TV series like Seed, and Lost Girl, and Motive tell strangers at parties that they are American?

Maybe while asking how to improve Canadian TV ratings, we have to begin by convincing Canadians it's okay to be Canadian. And maybe that starts with Canadian starlets like Meaghan Rath punching out a few eye rolling TV talk show hosts.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3265376 2013-05-13T11:00:45-04:00 2013-05-13T12:29:26-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/ People, FHM, Maxim, Hello Canada, etc. An excuse to plaster a pretty face on a magazine cover and to get readers debating the selections. Websites and personal bloggers sometimes offer up their own lists, too.

It's entirely frivolous and subjective (no two lists are identical). Beauty, as we're told from a young age, is in the eye of the beholder.

It's actually vague as to what definition these lists use. Does beauty mean "hot"...or simply well-coiffed? Men probably focus on "natural" beauty -- i.e.: someone is attractive even in sweat pants with bed hair. While women often focus on bearing and fashion sense -- i.e.: they look great dolled up on the red carpet.

As modern lists are often co-ed, are the same editors choosing both the women and the men? And if so, doesn't that suggest different criteria? A straight guy probably wouldn't have too much of an opinion on who's a good looking guy...and would quickly be slapped down by the women in the room if he voiced one. Although, funnily, a straight guy equally might be told he's "wrong" when naming a beautiful woman...by straight women. Go figure.

Is beauty cheekbones? Sensuality? Decorum? Does fame count more than bone structure? (The more famous the face on the cover, the more copies you'll sell.)

When these lists can range from 20-something super models to middle aged politician's wives, one assumes different standards are being applied.

Some readers criticize these list for being of celebrities (as if the editors should've surveyed headshots of the entire population!) while others will sneer if they don't recognize all those chosen (yet surely that's part of the point: to mix people you know with people the editors think you should know).

American lists usually immodestly declare their choice the most beautiful "in the World!" But no one's under any illusion that the lion's share of the selections will conveniently be Americans (or non-Americans who appear in Hollywood movies or Sports Illustrated swimsuit spreads).

So sometimes Canadians like to focus on Canadian celebrities. A few years ago, City TV did a TV special or two along those lines. Just recently Hello Canada unveiled its top 50...leading to Huffington Post Canada offering up a rebuttal of an alternate list.

Because I write, ruminate, and provoke about Canadian pop culture, I see a certain value in a Most Beautiful Canadian list. (Hence why I'm linking to those other lists, encouraging you to check them out -- see how clever I am?) Populist culture can't thrive on GG Awards alone!

A few months ago on my own blog I offered up my own selection of the (cheekily named) 33 Hottest Canadian Babes!

There was a logic in my lasciviousness.

You see: I watch a lot of Canadian movies and TV shows. I also watch plenty of things from Hollywood and other countries. As such, moreso than most people, I don't make as much distinction between Canadian pop culture and American, or global, culture.

I've watched with chagrin as the Canadian press will identify a Canadian actor solely with some minor role in an obscure U.S. series...when s/he has dozens of (Canadian) roles on his/her CV! Sometimes Canadian actors will head south -- and drop off my radar (Heck, I've sometimes found myself wondering "Whatever happened to Grace Park?", remembering her from Edgemont, The Border, and the Canadian-filmed Battlestar Galactica -- only to then remember, "Oh, right -- she's on some American series. Maui 911? Something like that.")

Over the years I often found "Most Beautiful Canadian" lists tended to skew towards Canadians who had an international profile. Whether this was because those making the choices only paid attention to American media, or they subscribed to the notion that Hollywood legitimized someone, I don't know. And those lists that did toss in a few domestic faces often seemed a bit as if the selectors were kind of scrambling at the last minute to fill a token "domestic" quota with the first unscarred face they saw.

Looking at Huffington Post and Hello's selections there seems to be the "usual suspects." International stars, a few super models, and padded out with a few sports stars and TV hosts.

Mind you, I'm getting old. You know you're out of touch with what the young'uns are up to when the TV character you identify with most is Danny from The Mindy Project. There were more than a few celebs on these lists who I had no idea who they were (or that there even was a remake of Beverly Hills 90210!)

And these lists are drawn from across the cultural spectrum -- entertainers, athletes, models, etc.

When I did my 33 list, it specifically focused on actresses. And so a factor in any "beauty" consideration was whether they held your attention on screen, not just on a red carpet.

But the real impetus was to throw together a list that treated Canadians in Canadian productions and Canadians in American productions on a level playing field. And the result -- surprisingly -- mixed Hollywood stars...and actresses rarely seen outside of Canadian productions. It was also instinctive. These were performers who had caught my eye long before I thought of making a list, so I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it (except when I got toward the end...and then it was just struggling with who to cut).

Something else crops up when looking at these lists over the years -- and I hesitate to address it, because it kind of sprays some red paint on the just-for-fun fur coat of these beauty lists. But I wouldn't be much of a pop cultural provocateur if I steered away from the difficult questions, would I?

When I had finished my list, I'll admit: most of the women were white.

Except, here's the thing: by that I mean, of any specific ethnicity, white women were by far the majority. But in a final tally of simply white to a general non-white, the list actually ended up being closer to 50/50.

But looking over similar Canadian lists from the last few years (in magazines, blogs, or simply IMDB lists) that's not a ratio that seems to occur very often.

I'll leave the wherefores and whatnots of that for others to ponder.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3229020 2013-05-07T12:02:44-04:00 2013-05-07T12:23:58-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/ Defiance, Hemlock Grove and others can lead you down a warren hole of musings, about American pop culture in relation both to Canada, and to the whole "Global Village" (as Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan defined it).

First a quick digression ('cause I'm unhealthily prone to using odd analogies). In 1938 the American actor and director, Orson Welles, caused a stir with a now legendary radio dramatization of War of the Worlds. Years later, Welles was asked why he made little effort to correct people who mistakenly assumed he wrote the script when it was actually by Howard Koch (from H.G. Well's novel). Welles' response (if memory serves) was people preferred believing a single vision was behind a production.

Tuck that away. We'll be coming back to it.

I've written before about how often Canadian movies and TV shows will pretend they are set in America, or simply avoid any obvious Canadian references. The claim (true or false) is it's easier to sell a production if people think it's American.

Likewise, most international co-productions between Canadian and American (and other) co-producers tend to settle on American settings, like Copper, Rogue, Being Human, XIII, etc.

Yet even when American producers go it alone, productions are sometimes filmed in foreign countries for budget or location considerations. And they rely, to varying degrees, on the local talent pool. TV dramas like Defiance and Hemlock Grove are, I believe, technically American productions (though I haven't scrutinized the fine print) yet are filmed in Canada, with casts including Canadians and other nationalities. In fact, only one actor in Defiance is actually American! Yet Defiance is set in Missouri and all the (human) characters are American.

It's an American series, so why shouldn't it be set in America about American heroes?

But that's where tumbling down that warren hole of philosophical thought comes in.

It's not as a favour to the world that Defiance -- and similar productions past, present and future -- are filmed in Canada (or New Zealand, or wherever). American producers sometimes freely admit that their series wouldn't have been made if they hadn't been able to shoot it abroad.

So if you're an American fan of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica from a few years ago, then on behalf of Canada, I say: "You're welcome."

And even American movies and TV series shot in the U.S. employ foreigners. It seems like you can't channel cruise without landing upon a Hollywood series (or a movie) that features at least one non-American in the cast -- usually playing an American. Now that's something Americans can brag about: Hollywood has become so dominant there's an unprecedented influx of acting refugees.

But the flip side is: America is relying increasingly upon the global talent pool.

American movies and TV present a vision of American dominance and insularity. America stands alone! America is complete unto itself! America is the world's sole super power! And this refrain is parroted by Canadians (and others) by setting their own movies and TV shows in America -- even those without any direct American involvement.

Yet in order to perpetuate this image -- this propaganda, if you will -- America is leaning heavily upon the international community, like an old man supporting himself with a cane. Like Uncle Dudley Marvel in the old Shazam! comics being propped up by the Marvel Family members with true super powers (or am I getting too obscure in my analogies?)

They hire foreign actors, but get them to adopt American accents. They film abroad, but pretend it's America.

Like Orson Welles willing to let audiences forget about Howard Koch, the attitude is: it's better to present an uncomplicated American face even if the reality is more pluralistic.

But is that healthy?

In an interconnected world of multilateral alliances and market forces -- the Global Village -- one gets the impression a lot of Americans think of America as separate from other nations. They get resentful when international treaties are proposed, and see the U.N. as some sinister busy body. The world needs America, they insist, but America doesn't need the world.

No nation is truly alone or self-sufficient any more, yet Americans (and the rest of us) turn on the TV to be soothingly reassured that the world outside America is irrelevant. All great heroes are American. All great stories take place in America.

Even if they need foreign actors and foreign countries to help tell those stories.

I suspect there'd be a bit of culture shock if every non-American actor suddenly reverted to their native accent -- if Rick on The Walking Dead revealed he wasn't a southern sherrif but from Scotland Yard. I can imagine a few panic attacks if every American series filmed in Canada suddenly unfurled Canadian flags in the backgrounds. FOX News would no doubt go into overdrive raging against how Hollywood is undermining American confidence.

And as a guy who has long advocated for more Canadian presence in Canadian movies and TV, I'm literally the last person to suggest a country should exclude itself from its stories. But there's a danger in being too insular.

So, no, not every production. But maybe a few should reflect on screen the multinationalism occurring behind-the-scenes.

Just to gently remind Americans that they aren't alone.

The irony is the core theme in the SF series Defiance is about different cultures trying to get along. Yet apparently the thinking is the audience is more comfortable accepting imaginary space aliens than acknowledging actual Canadians, Australians, Britons and Scots!

Nor is America alone in these attitudes.

Although Canadian productions over-emphasize America...they can be reluctant about recognizing the multiculturalism within Canada's borders.

When South African-Canadian actress, Jodi Balfour, landed a lead in TV's Bomb Girls, she understandably adopted a Canadian accent to play a born and bred Canadian gal. Yet when she appeared in a couple of episodes of the series Primeval: The New World...why couldn't she have used her native accent? If she's a South African-accented person living in Canada...then couldn't she play a South African-accented person living in Canada?

To paraphrase Pogo: "We have met the world, and he is us."

And we're all in this together.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3208184 2013-05-03T16:20:52-04:00 2013-05-03T16:21:00-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/
From the recent CBC biopic, Mr. Hockey, all the way back to 1972's Face Off (and probably earlier). Hockey movies have profiled Gordie Howe (the aforementioned "Mr. Hockey"), Maurice Richard, Don Cherry and Sheldon Kennedy and union agitation (Net Worth) and international grudge matches (Canada-Russia '72). Hockey has inspired blistering drama (The Rhino Brothers) and musical-comedy (Score), sitcoms (Rent-a-Goalie) and soap operas (He Shoots, He Scores).

Curling got Men with Brooms, basketball got The Phantoms, figure skating got Skate!, baseball got The Blue City Slammers, football got The Man Who Lost Himself, but in Canada hockey definitely is in a league of its own.

So given the sheer quantity, is there something telling about the fact that Mr. Hockey star, Michael Shanks, cited two American films as his favourite hockey movies?

Too many Canadian hockey movies are made by hockey fans for hockey fans. On the surface, that should be good (I've long regarded with scepticism any science fiction movie/TV series made by filmmakers who insist they don't like science fiction). But a lot of these are hockey movies...as opposed to movies involving hockey. If you see the distinction.

A good movie should take the parochial and turn it into a story with universal resonance.

I've seen sports movies about everything from baseball to horse racing, and many have been entertaining even if you had little -- or no -- prior interest in the sport in question. The Hollywood baseball flick, The Rookie (starring Dennis Quaid), was similar to Mr. Hockey, being about a player who makes a comeback in middle age. But The Rookie approached it as an introspective character drama.

I had only occasionally heard Johnny Cash on the radio -- yet Walk the Line was a compelling motion picture.

A Beautiful Mind didn't bank on its target audience being restricted to mathematicians. Salesman didn't give Glengarry Glen Ross the Pultizer. And I don't think ballet fans alone accounted for the critical acclaim of Black Swan.

Yet hockey movies often seem to expect -- nay, demand -- the audience share the filmmakers' fanboy idolatry. The characters aren't particularly richly drawn and the narratives tend to string together incidents and anecdotes simply revelling in the milieu of locker room hazing and practice sessions, rather than because they develop a plot. Bigger themes often seem absent. And romances are often secondary and poorly developed, even in movies like Goon and Breakaway.

And though there will be criticisms of the owners, there's little liable to challenge the fans themselves. I'm not sure I've ever seen a hockey movie that criticized fighting (the closest was the comedy, Score: A Hockey Musical, in which the message was more "let's agree to disagree"). But doesn't good drama carry with it at least the potential for challenging the status quo? Paeans to the "greatest game" may make hockey fans all tingly...but it doesn't always make for powerful drama.

Has there been a hockey equivalent of, say, The Harder They Fall?

Hockey may also just not translate well to the screen.

Baseball is played outdoors, making it aesthetically appealing. And it's a team sport that breaks down into personal moments (the pitcher, the batter, the guy racing around the bases). It's also played at a much slower pace, so it's easier to dramatize the action.

While football movies are often about the surrounding community -- the real drama taking place off the field.

I also suspect hockey scenes are among the most difficult of any sport to stage for film.

Because hockey movies seem aimed at hockey die hards, there's often little effort to make them about something bigger than the game (exceptions being The Sheldon Kennedy Story and one or two others). In Goon, a dramedy about a dimwitted enforcer, the movie climaxes with a brawl between characters who had no beef with each other, fighting simply for the sake of fighting. Imagine a western where the high noon showdown is between two guys who aren't enemies, and it won't affect anything. I suspect most people would say that was a pretty lame shoot-out.

Even when hockey movies do try to graft on bigger ideas, such as the comedy Breakaway, about an upstart Indo-Canadian team, it can suffer from the other flaws I mentioned (a disjointed narrative, confusing game scenes, undeveloped romantic sub-plots, etc.). And that's even ignoring whether Indo-Canadians would really have to "prove" something in multicultural Toronto. While Chicks With Sticks, about a misfit all-female team taking on a sexist guy team, had the right idea and good performances from Jessalyn Gilsig and others...but the laughs still weren't that big and the drama tended toward luke warm.

I've long maintained that one of the best hockey movies I've seen was the 1987 CBC TV movie, The Last Season. And that's because, though rooted in its milieu, it was a human drama first and foremost...not simply a hockey drama. Likewise, Waking Up Wally, about hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky's dad recovering from a brain injury, was a moving drama regardless of how much -- or how little -- you cared about the game itself.

Success-wise, some hockey movies do okay, some don't. Even then, I'm not sure but the desire to believe in their success causes people to exaggerate the numbers. I'm pretty sure the most successful (English-)Canadian sports movie remains the curling comedy, Men With Brooms. On TV the first Don Cherry bio-pic was a ratings smash...yet I think its sequel was rather less so.

And I suspect these movies have hit a glass ceiling by aiming mainly for hockey fans. Writers and producers need to start asking not whether they have a great hockey story...but whether they have a great story. Period. They need to separate their fanboy enthusiasm from their creative instincts and make hockey movies that appeal to hockey fans and non-hockey fans both.

Hockey may like to think of itself as Canada's national sport...but hockey movies and TV shows still have a way to go.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3186482 2013-04-30T17:00:00-04:00 2013-04-30T17:32:01-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/
You want to know how to improve Canadian TV?

Make more #@$%&#! Canadian programs!!!!

Period.

Global, one of Canada's "Big Three" networks, currently has, I believe, two scripted "in production" Canadian series on its schedule -- Bomb Girls and Rookie Blue. Given they have short episode runs, only Bomb Girls is currently airing. So out of about 1,000 primetime hours in a year, Global has allotted about 24 hours to original Canadian scripted programming. They also rerun a few cancelled series such as King (sigh! don't get me started on how much I loved that crime-drama).

And they just cancelled Bomb Girls! (They've announced a follow up 2014 TV movie, presumably -- if you're a cynic -- to prevent the CBC from picking it up the way the CBC picked up The Murdoch Mysteries).

A cynic might say: Global never wanted to be saddled with Bomb Girls. That when it aired (as a "six-part mini-series") it was intended as a bone tossed to the Can-Con crowd, yet then proved to be a ratings success. Given Global had cancelled Combat Hospital, perhaps they figured it would be bad PR to cancel yet another hit Canadian series. So they renewed it, but bumped it from its successful slot to where the ratings dipped (not a lot, but a bit), allowing them to justify pulling the plug.

But that's only if you're cynical. And, to be fair, Global did put effort into promoting the series.

While CTV's schedule isn't much better. They have Motive, Saving Hope, and The Listener...again, due to short seasons, only Motive is currently airing.

Americans flood the schedule with series after series, in the hope some will do OK and a privileged few will be hits. Why do Canadian private network programmers offer only a couple of series and then wonder why they aren't getting more breakout hits? (I say "private" network because the public broadcaster, the CBC, offers somewhat more).

Part of the problem is an absurd sense of entitlement and hubris associated with those in the Canadian entertainment biz. Their mentality seems to be: "Well, we made one show...why isn't it as big as CSI?" It's as if they assume programming decisions should be the equivalent of King Midas, and everything they touch should turn to instant gold.

If one wanted to be snarky -- and I wouldn't, but I'm just saying if someone wanted to -- one could argue Canadian network programmers aren't real programmers. Unlike American programmers, whose job is to green-light series proposals, program them in appropriate slots, and market the hell out of them in the hope they will catch on, most of what constitutes the job of a Canadian programmer is to fly down to Los Angeles once a year, buy up a batch of pre-made American series, air them in whatever time-slot the American network is airing them in, ride the wave of the American marketing, and sit back and wait smugly for the ad revenues to roll in.

So that when it comes time to actually make and market Canadian programs, the Canadian executives are a bit like a waiter who suddenly finds himself in charge of the kitchen!

That's only if one wanted to be snarky.

But who knows why programmers do what they do? Republic of Doyle enjoyed its best ratings ever last season on Wednesday, so for some reason the CBC moved it to Sunday where the numbers dropped off. They bumped it to make room for Arctic Air -- except not only is Arctic Air doing less well in the Wednesday slot than Doyle had been doing, but it's doing less well than it had in its own old slot. Anyone else see a problem in that game of musical time slots?

Yet the CBC's decision to acquire The Murdoch Mysteries (after it was dropped by City TV) has proven a genuine ratings success, both for the CBC, and for Murdoch.

Now the funny thing is -- I'm doing precisely what I said in my previous post people need to stop doing. Looking at the glass half empty. Because, for all my knocking lazy programmers and insincere network executives, the flip side is it's amazing how successful the few Canadian series are in terms of audience numbers.

The argument is networks simply can't afford to make more programs. But that depends on their profit margin to begin with, doesn't it? No one ever went broke running a Canadian TV network (well, except maybe Sun Media!) so I'm guessing they have pretty deep pockets. All businesses claim they "can't afford" certain obligations (health and safety standards, minimum wages) until they are forced to by regulators and then it turns out (surprise!) they could afford it after all! (Broadcasters are mandated to air a minimum amount of Canadian programming, but the definition of "Canadian program" is broadly interpreted, and I don't think anyone ever lost their license for failing to honour their Can-Can obligations).

Networks treat their Canadian programs as simply an affectation next to their "real" business...which is broadcasting American shows. Bomb Girls was bumped from its time slot and forced on a mid-season hiatus (factors some argue resulted in its drop in ratings) because Global needed its slot to accommodate its American programs!

But if we want to see Canadian ratings improve, and perhaps even more important, if we want to stop talking about what's "wrong" with Canadian TV, the simple solution is to stop treating Canadian TV as some rare and elusive beast, or as transitory as Cadbury Eggs sold for a few weeks around Easter.

The only way you're going to get Canadian series with hit ratings -- CSI, Big Bang Theory level ratings -- and can can shrug off the failures is by getting more shows on the air, more regularly, and then let the audiences decide what they like and dislike.

Rather than doing what the executives are doing, which is airing one or two for a few weeks during the entire 52 week season, and then, if the ratings aren't quite what they wanted, stomping their feet like toddlers throwing a tantrum and saying: "It's all the audiences' fault for not supporting us!"

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3146631 2013-04-24T17:41:42-04:00 2013-04-24T17:20:13-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/ it was announced there will be an industry seminar asking the all-important question: how to get people watching Canadian TV shows?

I was actually all set to launch into some wild screed on the subject, but then came upon this post by Diane Wild at TV, Eh? -- TV, Eh?, it's probably safe to say, having established itself as the "go-to" site for articles on Canadian TV. Wild basically says most of what needs to be said. Go ahead, pop over there. I'll wait.

Dum-de-dum-dah-de-dum.

OK -- you back?

Fine, so I'll just take time to emphasize a few points (and, as should be obvious, this is a look at English-Canadian TV, not French-Canadian TV, which is a whole other topic). And I'll be up front that I'm going by memory, and some ratings numbers may be a bit off.

The problem with discussing what's wrong with Canadian TV is first even defining the criteria. And perhaps looking at the issue as a glass half full vs. a glass half empty.

Detractors (and villifiers) of Canadian TV programs are often quick to point out that usually only one or two (scripted) Canadian TV series make it into the weekly top 20 or 30 (more if you count news, specials, and hockey). That's the glass half empty.

Glass half full? An astonishing number of Canadian series are doing OK. Recent Canadian scripted series that either bring in a million (more or less) viewers per episode, or have at least had periods, or individual episodes, that have peaked around there include Saving Hope, Flashpoint, Republic of Doyle, Arctic Air, Rookie Blue, Combat Hospital, Bomb Girls, The Listener, Motive, Heartland, and Continuum. Why do I describe that as "astonishing" when the common wisdom is that Canadian TV is a disaster? Because, proportionate to the number of Canadian series that are actually made, the number that are doing "OK" (if not always great) is quite amazing.

America produces a lot of hit series, no doubt about it. It also produces a lot of misfires and failures. U.S. networks regularly greenlight more series than they have room for on their schedule because they are assuming they will be cancelling some even before they air. Indeed, just as an aside, it's ironic that fans and TV producers will lambaste network programmers for cancelling their show...when the only reason their show got broadcast in the first place was because some other show got cancelled and opened up a time slot!

Even failures in Canadian TV can have some bragging rights.

The CBC comedy Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays was cancelled after one season due to low ratings. Yet it was receiving generally great reviews. Critics were calling it Canada's Arrested Development. Not in terms of style or tone (Michael more empathetic and humanist) but simply in being a "smart" comedy that was failing to woo a big audience. Many reviews were calling it the best comedy of the season -- not the best Canadian comedy, but the best even compared to the imported American shows.

So does Canadian TV have mountains to climb and hurdles to, um, hurdle? You betcha. But part of the obstacle is one of terms and mentality. Canadian TV should definitely strive to do better -- that's what we all do in every aspect of our lives -- but it's worth acknowledging where it's at. Given how few Canadian TV shows are made, if you have even one or two on your "weekly watch" list mixed in with your American picks (and maybe a few British choices) it's notable. And -- although this is purely anecdotal -- I get the impression an awful lot of people do. Even people who will swear up and down that they 100 per cent hate Canadian TV often admit to being regular viewers of Heartland, or Call Me Fitz, or The Lost Girl, or something.

Yet the pervasive mentality is always one of "exception." A good Canadian series is the exception to the rule of Canadian mediocrity, while a good American series is seen as representative of American quality...no matter how many mediocre American series you channel surfed by to get to it!

Consider your own personal viewing habits. How many TV series do you consider part of your weekly "must see" schedule? Now compare that to the number of series actually being broadcast in a week.

Most TV is crap most of the time. That's just life. It's also entirely subjective. What I like, you might hate, what you like, I might hate. The important thing is to separate personal biases ("I hate this show, therefore Canada makes terrible shows") from the objective ("I hate this show...but a million people a week seem to like it so, huh, go figure, eh?") Some of the Canadian shows whose solid ratings I applaud I, personally, might not think are very good.

All this is just to say that before we can seriously look at how to improve and strengthen homegrown Canadian TV, one first has to fairly acknowledge where it's actually at.

With that said, if network executives want to ask what's wrong with Canadian TV, maybe they need to first look in a mirror. More on that next time.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3085571 2013-04-15T17:00:00-04:00 2013-04-15T17:42:32-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/ Star Trek film, Into the Darkness, just weeks away, I wanted to dust off my old LEGO-constructed phaser, don my rubber Vulcan ears, and ask that all important question: would the original Kirk even like the modern Kirk?

Captain Kirk has become identified as the "cowboy" who'd never met a rule he wouldn't break or a woman he wouldn't bed. An image both celebrated and ridiculed...sometimes simultaneously. Yet equally (often in Star Trek novels) he is portrayed as an order barking martinet. Partly, that reflects the contradiction in what human culture (and especially American culture) tends to lionize: the soldier and the maverick. Two, arguably, incompatible ideals.

Yet Kirk was never quite the rule breaker he's been imagined to be. Rule bender -- sure. But many an old episode hinged on Kirk struggling with what he wanted to do...and what he was duty-bound to do. And he wasn't quite the chain-of-(his)-command stickler some imagine him as being, either. More than a few reviews of Star Trek over the years have actually criticized Kirk's liberality in allowing underlings to talk back, and for being chummy with his crew.

One could make the case the original Kirk (William Shatner) would regard the current Kirk (Chris Pine) with some skepticism. Now, due to the alternate reality paradox of the 2009 movie, arguably the current Kirk isn't the original. And he's a brash, youthful Kirk. Yet there were clues in the original series that Kirk had been a dour young man.

You could argue the character dynamic of the original series was never meant to be emotional Kirk in contrast to logical Spock. Rather, Kirk was the Mama bear bridging the extremes of Spock's logic and Dr. McCoy's passion. The lesson being moderation in all things.

Likewise, was his now notorious libido simply a reflection of the 1960s Mad Men/James Bond ideal of what a "man" should be?

'Star Trek Into Darkness' photos
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The focus on Kirk's liaisons may reflect a failure to grasp the niceties of storytelling, and how the Star Trek writers perhaps viewed the stories as short stand-alone movies, rather than episodes in a continuing narrative. Romances added a human dimension to abstract plots and allegories (Star Trek has been popularly credited with attracting female fans to what was previously viewed as mainly a "boys"' genre with little deep emotion). Excise the romance from many old episodes and you wouldn't just lose a few soft focus shots of pretty gals, but in many cases, the emotional engine that was driving the plot!

All this is to say: should Kirk be defined as he appears to us in hindsight? Or in relation to the mores of whichever era his adventures are being conceived? Should a modern Kirk be a womanizer or, if we assume the original was not intended to be atypical in the context of 1960s mores, should then a modern Kirk be less of a tomcat? For that matter, Kirk wasn't technically promiscuous. He seemed genuinely committed to any given relationship...it's just he'd have a new relationship a few episodes down the line!

(James Bond is another character who is both vicariously celebrated for his womanizing -- and ridiculed as a sexist dinosaur. The filmmakers justify his wantonness as them simply being true to the character, yet the Bond in the Ian Fleming novels didn't sleep around with quite the same superficial abandon as his movie counterpart!)

The original Kirk was a man of action, but also of intellect and study (supposedly nicknamed the walking encyclopedia in his youth) who knew his Milton, Masefield and Shakespeare. Does the modern Kirk seem like he'd know who Shakespeare was?

Kirk was an intriguing portrait of a hero, capable of trading blows with the best of them, and ready with seductive smile when a pretty woman hove in sight. Yet there was an undeniable vulnerability to him, both as written and as played by Shatner (watch how Shatner plays the death of Spock scene in Star Trek II or the death of David scene in Star Trek III -- not the way macho heroes usually play such scenes). Shatner was -- is -- a hammy actor, and so Kirk likewise could wear his emotions on his sleeve (even when he was being stoic, Shatner played emotions beneath the surface).

Above all, Kirk's defining characteristic could be summed up in one word: compassion. Even series creator Gene Roddenberry, in an early pitch to the network, specifically identified compassion as being at the heart of the captain role. Kirk on more than one occasion would implore his adversaries -- with Shatner-esque emoting -- to let him "help them!"

By the time of the 1980s movies, the character is being torn in different directions. He's still Kirk -- certainly in contrast to gun-toting action heroes of the big screen -- even as he's being nudged towards them. Kirk (or other crew members) given to occasional fist pumps when zapping enemy vessels (or wessels if you prefer). In Star Trek III he makes the effort to save the life of the Klingon who killed his son...but it's really just a set up for the cathartic thrill of watching him kick the guy off a cliff.

Fast-forward to the 2009 re-imagining -- Kirk's a likeable guy, to be sure, but all testosterone and barrelling ahead bravado. Grief is portrayed, not in uncomfortable scenes of grown men collapsing to the floor, but in the more socially acceptable form of anger and fighting. Real men don't get sad -- they get even. When in the climax of the movie Kirk offers to rescue the villain, he almost heaves a sigh of relief when his offer is rebuffed. Mercy is something to which you pay lip service, seems to be the message, it isn't something you act upon.

In commercials for the new Star Trek: Into the Darkness, a key line promises a "vendetta" on Kirk's part. This isn't about "boldly going", apparently, nor about a Shakespeare quoting hero imploring his enemies to let him "help" them. This is about a no nonsense action hero taking names and kicking ass.

And as much as I suspect I'll enjoy the new film, I suspect I'll miss the old Kirk, and what he said about our definition of "hero."]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3028069 2013-04-08T17:15:51-04:00 2013-04-08T17:29:49-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/
Canadians have long struggled with defining themselves...and suffering the definitions of others. Some have suggested, pejoratively, that Canadians are simply the "un-Americans", defined by an absence of identity.

Equally Canada has been defined as the bridge between Europe and the United States, with European aspects (from its parliamentary democracy to the BBC-like Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for which The U.S. has no real equivalent) even as it exists in a North American society. Canada has tougher gun laws than America...but looser than Europe. Canada is seen as more secular than America, but more religious than many Western Europe countries.

What one chooses to focus on depends on ones agenda. There is often a desire by some to promote the idea of dull, timid Canadians...and to embrace the mystique of the edgy and fearless American. Canadian would-be hipsters quick to sneer at Canadian TV as inherently tame compared to the shiny bauble that is American TV.

In this recent interview, Adam Korson, star of the new Canadian-made sitcom, Seed, takes special aim at Canadian repressed conservatism, as though that's the main obstacle in his series' quest for ratings -- a series about a sperm donor (with animated sperm dancing across the title) and featuring single moms and same sex parents. (The fact that I don't think the series has landed American distribution at all seems left out of the equation).

Canadian TV, like Canadian society, has long oscillated between American standards...and European mores.

A few years back you couldn't escape the American controversy that erupted during a football game when pop singer Janet Jackson accidentally-on-purpose popped out of her costume. Headlines were made. The American network's switchboard was afire with outraged viewers whose retina had been, apparently, irreparably damaged by the sight of a woman's breast. The FCC (the American CRTC) got in on the act, warning fines, even criminal charges, might be in the offing.

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In Canada, according to the Canadian network who had broadcast the exact same impropriety...they hadn't received a single complaint.

I was thinking about this recently, catching an episode of the highly popular The Murdoch Mysteries on the CBC. The Murdoch Mysteries is generally regarded as the epitome of a "safe" TV series. It's popularly assumed a large part of its audience is comprised of blue-haired grannies and kids not old enough to be sat down before the grisly doings of Criminal Minds.

In a recent episode, Murdoch investigated a murder near a nudist colony. And this genteel crime-drama...spent the next hour guilelessly parading around an assortment of bare bottoms. I'm pretty sure if an American network tried something similar, it would be all entertainment reporters would be writing about for the next month, and probably the subject of an FCC investigation or two.

This was hardly the first time Canadian network TV has seemed a little more, shall we say, European than American?

Indeed, over the years, sometimes American series made for "edgy" cable stations, like The Sopranos and Nip/Tuck, have aired on mainstream Canadian networks.

There often seems little consensus, and therefore little rhyme or reason, to how Canadian networks approach adult material. Presumably because half the people behind the scenes think Canada should follow American broadcast guidelines...and the other half say, um, why? I've seen programs where they seem to bleep out some swearing, and not others...all within the same show! When the CBC aired The Tudors, apparently some of the sex and nudity was cut...yet some was left in.

In the first season of CTV's The Eleventh Hour it was comparable to any similar American drama. Then, in the second season, it was sexed-up with some gratuitous nudity. As you might imagine, coming up with justifications for nudity in a workplace drama wasn't easy (I seem to recall a dream sequence or two). But with no appreciable (ahem) rise in ratings, the nudity was dropped for the third season.

This "are Canadian standards American...or aren't they?" dilemma dates back years. In the 1960s, the CBC drama Wojeck enjoyed big audience numbers, despite a gritty "cinema verite" directorial style unlike most American series, and some pretty edgy subject matter for its day.

The CBC's current Arctic Air is a mainstream, primetime drama-adventure series...but I don't suppose it could find a berth on an American network without bleeping out the occasional saltier phrase.

Significantly, it has often seemed as though nudity is more permissable than violence (in contrast to the American cliche). More than a few CBC movies over the years have included the occasional nude scene, while I've seen some theatrical movies on commercial TV edited for violence, but not always for skin.

Yet there seems to be this weird eagerness to promote the myth that Canadian TV (and by inference, Canada) is bland and conservative in comparison to American TV.

Some years ago I read a piece about the comedy troupe, The Kids in the Hall. The reporter made the dig that the CBC edited some of the Kids' more controversial bits, unlike the Americans (where their show aired on HBO)...instead of making the equally interesting point that the edgy Kids were airing on network primetime in Canada...but were only deemed acceptable for American sensitivities on cable.

I remember a few years ago having a conversation with someone where she blithely dismissed the conservativeness of Canadian TV compared to American programs...at a time when the CBC was airing J-Pod, a good-natured comedy so rife with cable-style vulgarity it would make the current cul-de-sac crew of Cougar Town blush with embarrassment.

Of course the line between what is acceptable and what isn't is blurring, as R-rated cable series like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones have become almost "family" viewing. And as people watch TV series on DVD, or internet streaming, the broadcast origin of a series can get lost on the casual viewer (cable v. network). But it's when you contrast the standards of "mainstream" American networks with Canadian ones over the years that a slight difference emerges...reflecting a slight difference in mores.

Now whether having bare skin and four letter words on commercial primetime is a good, or a bad, thing...well, that's a whole other discussion.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2988217 2013-04-01T17:00:00-04:00 2013-04-08T12:04:58-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/
I tend to revisit a theme about Canadian identity in pop culture, usually in the context of criticizing Canadian movies and TV shows for either blatantly pretending they aren't Canadian, or for admitting they are Canadian but in an indistinct, vague sort of way.

But there are those that buck the trend, unselfconsciously rooting their stories in the world their characters live. I'm not actually a big fan of the private eye dramedy, Republic of Doyle (CBC) -- but I'm the first to say that what gives it a flavour and tone all its own is its Newfoundland setting.

And a series can embrace its cultural idiosyncracy without losing universality. It's easy enough for those of us not on the east coast to infer that when the characters refer to the "RNC" they mean the police...even if it might take us a bit to realize it stands for "Royal Newfoundland Constabulary."

I was thinking about this catching a recent episode of Bomb Girls (Global) after it came back from a mini-hiatus.

Bomb Girls is the World War II drama-cum-soap opera focusing on the Canadian homefront and the gals (and guys) working at a munitions factory. And I'll stick my neck out and say Bomb Girls is probably the best Canadian series being made right now, at least when you consider its different elements.

It works as simple pulp entertainment -- it's got a diversity of almost archetypal characters you like and can get caught up in their dramas. But it's also a little bit offbeat from most of the stuff on the dial...even as it falls within a familiar period drama niche (shared by Mad Men and Downton Abbey). And despite being called Bomb "Girls" a guy can get just as involved in the drama (this ain't, say, Sex and the City which, so I understand, counted the majority of its fanbase as female).

And it pulls it all off with a certain deliberate style -- but not to the point of camp. So it conjures old movies in cinematography, colour schemes, fashions, colloquialisms, and scenes of guys wandering around kitchens in undershirts and suspenders -- while grafting on very contemporary, provocative themes of race, gender, and sex.

The shame of it is that Canadian producers are quick to try and shop internationally series that are fairly generic -- such as CTV's cop drama Motive (which will apparently be airing on ABC in the States) and the sitcom Seed (City TV). Yet Bomb Girls is a series I could easily see developing a true cult following abroad, precisely because of the way it straddles being familiar and accessible (many nations shared similar homefront experiences) while being a little offbeat and atypical.

And part of the formula is how they work in period details with the soap opera drama.

In the recent episode, a sub-plot involves Lorna (Meg Tilly) trying to get a phone at a time when a home telephone was almost a luxury. Yet instead of seeming like a frivolous B-plot with gags about "party lines" (where different homes share a single line), they were smart enough to tie it into an actual human drama aspect of the story. Lorna secures a phone even as she worries about the fate of her sons overseas...the phone going from being a treasured prestige to a nightmarish shriek every time it rings, as Lorna fears it will be the call telling her her boys are dead.

Cleverly handled.

Likewise, the use of the Dieppe landing serves as an effective backdrop to the episode. Dieppe being a notoriously ill-fated assault (though some cited it as an important learning step to victory). Canadian troops did much of the fighting and suffered most of the losses (I'm guessing an American war time drama wouldn't use Dieppe as the backdrop for an episode).

But it's also cleverly handled because we see the story from the POV of the people at home, initially excited about this major invasion, then getting a bit more uncomfortable when reports seem to be sketchy, until finally, by episode's end, it is confirmed that the invasion failed.

There was another intriguing reference in the episode that probably a few viewers missed. At one point, Lorna chides the pessimism of her husband (Peter Outerbridge) by suggesting he is the "Voice of Doom." To a modern viewer the line makes enough sense: he says things that seem gloomy.

But to Canadians in the 1940s, the Voice of Doom had a specific meaning...and identity. Namely, broadcaster and actor, Lorne Greene.

The man who to later generations would be a cowboy in Bonanza, a space man in Battlestar Galactica, and our guide to the New Wilderness, started out as a news reader for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. And during the dark war years became known as the "Voice of Doom."

Knowing that, the line in Bomb Girls takes on an extra resonance as a historical "pop cultural" reference.

I suspect the makers of Bomb Girls had to be a bit coy using the reference. Canadian networks are somewhat notorious for their territorialism -- refusing to acknowledge each other's existence in their dramas. I'm cynical enough to think the makers of Bomb Girls were only able to slip in the "Voice of Doom" (and CBC) reference because they knew no one at Global TV would catch on to it.

Part of the strength of Bomb Girls is the fact that it seems un-selfconscious and unapologetic about its Canadian setting. It isn't like the writers are struggling to cram in some awkward Canadianism just to say they could...but because they're trying to be true to these characters and their world.

And that's what storytelling is all about.





]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2956848 2013-03-26T17:26:19-04:00 2013-03-26T17:28:21-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/ Ryan Gosling and Ellen Page are both moving behind the camera to direct first features. Impressive stuff, given Hollywood veteran Dustin Hoffman has only just released his first feature as full director!

And it got me thinking...so buckle up, it'll be a twisty ride (trust me, it'll make sense in the end).

In the American TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the town was situated over a portal of supernatural power dubbed The Hellmouth. In one episode, one of the heroes, frustrated with life's disappointments, announces it's time he got the Hellmouth working for him.

I always liked that as a kind of metaphor. Instead of fighting the system, figure out how you can work the system in your favour (not that, y'know, I'm advocating colluding with hell demons).

Canadian film and TV producers struggle to carve out a niche in the market place -- domestically and globally -- while competing with the well-oiled machine that is Hollywood, which regularly spends more on promotion than many Canadian movies spend on the entire film.

When debates about Canadian pop culture arise (and that portentous phrase, 'cultural sovereignty') often the counter argument is, "there's nothing wrong with the status quo". Canadians, usually to the right of the political spectrum, often argue that if Canadian stories are worth telling, Hollywood will tell them.

At the same time, Americans -- for mercenary more than ideological reasons -- equally insist they can look after us. I once saw an interview with an American TV executive who cited an episode of a Star Trek spin-off written by a Canadian as being an example of a 'Canadian' episode. His implication? Don't worry -- we're looking after you. And Hollywood is a pop cultural Mecca, a glam equivalent of Ellis Island.

LOOK: Hot Canadian Celebrities
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But despite the occasional episode of Star Trek written by a Canadian, in the five series totalling more than 600 hours I don't think there was ever a Canadian character or even a Canadian reference. Well, other than one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where a character thinks Comdr. Riker is Canadian...except it turned out he wasn't.

Where this becomes fascinating is, of course, that the paragon of space faring heroism, Captain Kirk, was played by Canadian William Shatner. Hardcore Trekkie's know that Genevieve Bujold was originally tagged to headline Star Trek: Voyager...but I suspect her Quebecois accent would've been explained away as being European.

(As a side note, is there something about Canadians that just screams "heroic space captain" to Americans? Think Leslie Nielsen in Forbidden Planet, Lorne Greene in Battlestar Galactica or Nathan Fillion in Firefly -- all Canadians).

When non-Americans agitate for their own film industries, Hollywood (worried about losing control of the marketplace) responds soothingly, "There's no need for that...we'll look after you", yet when non-Americans agitate about not being better-represented in American films and TV, Hollywood tartly responds, "That's not our problem, we're an American industry."

I think many in Hollywood are sincere when they see Hollywood as a 'global' entertainment village. But opening your doors to an influx of foreign talent doesn't help those countries from a "cultural" perspective if none of that ends up on-screen. You can point to many American series with Canadian actors in central roles including Castle, Revenge, Grey's Anatomy, Vegas, Touch, The Walking Dead, Last Resort, Deception, How I Met Your Mother, Suits and many others. Yet in only How I Met Your Mother is their character actually supposed to be Canadian.

Which brings us back to my analogy of Buffy's Hellmouth. If Canadians are having trouble making their own things and the Americans (for all their protestations) aren't interested in doing it themselves...what about getting Hollywood to help Canadians make Canadian programs? In short, getting the Hellmouth to work for us.

For a long time in Canada, co-productions involved Canadians basically making things set in the U.S. with American actors. But more recently there's a new muscle being flexed, as Canadians are getting American networks to help make essentially Canadian programs like Flashpoint and Rookie Blue. Unobtrusively Canadian, perhaps, but nominally Canadian nonetheless.

And that brings us to my opening point about Ryan Gosling and Ellen Page.

Hollywood's had a few Canadian movers and shakers over the year, yet you rarely saw much 'Canadianness' creeping into their films. Yet when non-American filmmakers come to Hollywood, they often draw upon their roots. Christopher Nolan crams his Hollywood movies with British actors. New Zealand director Martin Campbell hired little known New Zealand actor, Taika Waititi, for a pivotal role in Green Lantern.

Canadians tend not to follow that trend. Is it because they are embarrassed by their roots? Or does it cheapen their accomplishments if they can't crow about their superiority to other Canadians. "I'm with the cool kids, now," they gush, "and you're not -- nyah, nyah!"

There's no moral or philosophical obligation upon a Canadian artist to acknowledge their Canadian roots. Not at all. Everyone must follow their own muse. James Cameron's films are often more American than those made by actual Americans!

Where it becomes a question is when you have Canadian actors and filmmakers (both domestically and in Hollywood) who will publicly lament the lack of a Canadian presence on screens...yet come up with a million excuses why their movie has to be set in the U.S., why their character has to be American. But the buck has to stop with the individual. That doesn't mean a Canadian working in Hollywood should cultivate a rep as an 'obnoxious' Canadian.

But when talking about culture and cultural image, one wonders how the perception of Canada would change if Canadian filmmakers exploited the Hollywood machine for a little cultural aggrandizement. Imagine if James Cameron made one of his testosterone-driven block busters where a Canadian hero saved the day...or even if he just hired a few Canadian actors!

And now Gosling and Page are joining an exclusive club of 'Hollywood directors'. Doubtless, they'll be directing with training wheels and having executives vet their every colour scheme. Still, they will be in the director's chair and I wonder if there'll be anything Canadian about their films. Will a heroic character be Canadian? Will there be a juicy, career defining role for a fellow Canuck in need of a break?

They're working the Hellmouth...but for whose benefit?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2895555 2013-03-17T09:45:35-04:00 2013-05-17T05:12:02-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/ this reminds me of?"

Critics are quick to identify American trends, both mini (the modern Gothic of Revenge, Ringer, Deception, and a few others wherein a pretty gal enters the mysterious world of the rich like a 19th Century governess discovering strange doings on the moors) and long-term (sitcoms that define the style of comedy for the next decade). But Canadians recycling Canadian series?

The absurdity! they'd say.

I was thinking about this watching the new crime drama Motive. It approaches the hoary police procedural from an off-beat angle. It tells you right in the opening scene who the killer is. And while part of the episode follows the detectives investigating, we are also treated to flashbacks, filling in the back story. Some reviews made a comparison to the classic American TV detective Columbo, in which we see the killer in the first act, although Motive is less about the cat and mouse battle of wits so much at the heart of Columbo.

But one can also see Canadian influences in Motive.

Flashpoint, for instance, would begin with a crisis... and then rewind to show what led up to it. And casting back further there was the 1960s coroner drama Wojeck. Some episodes used a jumbled chronology format that was pretty "artsy" for an audience more accustomed to Bonanza. Wojeck was often about social dramas where the "criminal" was society itself, but Motive utilizes a bit of the cinema verite style that evokes Wojeck (stylistically, the opening scene at the football game in Motive's pilot put me in mind of a specific Wojeck episode about football).

None of this is meant to take away from the creative efforts of the Motive people. Far from it. It's just about digging for roots.

Wojeck may well have shaped the tone of Canadian TV drama for the next couple of decades, as many English-Canada TV dramas affected a social earnestness. But that may equally have sprung out of the documentary tradition of the National Film Board (see what I mean about a tangled skein of influences?) .

One could even speculate about whether Wojeck influenced the U.S. series House -- injected a streak of moral indignation into Dr. House's in-your-face misanthropy... and he could be the brother of the equally contumacious Dr. Wojeck? What makes such speculation intriguing is that House was created by David Shore... a Canadian!

The Murdoch Mysteries chronicles the exploits of a Victorian detective with a (female) coroner confidante. It immediately put me in mind of The Great Detective from some thirty years ago, also of a 19th Century detective, with a (male) coroner confidante. Where this becomes intriguing is that The Great Detective, though fiction, was inspired by the real life John Wilson-Murray. And Murdoch creator, Maureen Jennings, cited Wilson-Murray as an inspiration for Murdoch.

Getting back to Motive, the lead character is a woman. That's nothing too unusual. But given the relative paucity of Canadian productions over the years, the ratio of female led Canadian cop dramas is interesting -- before Motive we had King, Blue Murder, Cold Squad, and North of 60 (at least after the first season or two). And that's not even touching on the controversy as to whether the American series Cold Case was ripping off Cold Squad.

I don't remember too many critics remarking on the similarities between the CBC's hit 1980s drama Street Legal and the CTV drama that followed on its heels, E.N.G. Both professional work place ensembles with a woman in the centre seat (with sub-plots where she was dating a guy several years her junior)... while American ensembles at the time tended to give a man top billing.

Were the makers of the ranch-for-delinquents drama Higher Ground inspired by Neon Rider? Cracked and Shattered -- coming from the same head space? Quebec's Trauma and English-Canada's Saving Hope -- reading from the same medical chart? And what was going on with that brief trend of "least likely to be elected mayor" comedies Dan for Mayor, She's the Mayor, and Majority Rules?

Sometimes Canadian critics are too quick to snidely claim Canadian series are ripping off American ones.

When the seminal 1980s Canadian cop drama Night Heat premiered, some reviewers dismissed it as a Miami Vice wannabe. But other than the dance beat theme song (sing it with me now: "I feel the niiiiight heat, I hear your heeaaart beat!") I'm hard pressed to see how a series about detectives in off the rack suits on the graveyard shift prowling a drab northern metropolis echoed the mega-trendy music video-like U.S. series about vice cops in designer duds in Florida. Well, other than Clark Johnson (equally well known today as a director) as an occasionally recurring narc who did, indeed, dress like Miami Vice's Crockett and Tubbs. But that seemed more like Night Heat was ribbing Miami Vice... not emulating it.

A more convincing comparison might have been to the earlier Canadian cop drama Side Street, also focusing on an older veteran and a younger partner. And Night Heat tended to tackle social issues, bringing us full circle to Wojeck!

So what's the point of this whimsical romp down memory lane?

There can be a feeling there's a kind of deliberate amnesia, or a scorched earth policy toward Canadian TV... every creative generation wants to pretend they sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus.

(Although Corner Gas did a funny episode spoofing The Littlest Hobo.)

American film and TV makers admit to being inspired by past efforts -- they even brag about it, of how that fuelled their professional career.

Maybe part of the key to having a pop culture is admitting there was a culture before you took the stage. Otherwise, the makers of Bomb Girls and The Murdoch Mysteries and, yeah, Motive might find that the next generation of Canadian TV makers and critics will pretend they never existed, either.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2812119 2013-03-05T12:26:29-05:00 2013-05-05T05:12:01-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/
MacFarlane is an entertainer who specializes in off-colour "shock" humour who hosted the Oscars and peppered the evening with a lot of off-colour "shock" humour. Some was deemed in bad taste (a joke about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln) some was deemed outright offensive and bigoted.

Some people said MacFarlane was great. Others that he was terrible. Others said those who said he was terrible didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

I tend to take the attitude that if something's worth doing in the arts...it's worth discussing after the fact. I once spent three hours discussing the movie Arachnophobia with someone -- which is about twice as long as the movie itself. And neither if us even liked Arachnophobia!

Anyway, I'm just fascinated by the whole notion of what constitutes "provocative," and "edgy," and "challenging" -- the sort of terms fans of MacFarlane tend to use.

We all have a tendency to define "edgy" and "provocative" by a rather selective criteria. Edgy is whatever others didn't like...but we did. Yet if we don't like something that others do...we simply dismiss it as stupid.

I was thinking about this with all the commentaries defending MacFarlane. These pieces usually start out saying: "MacFarlane is edgy and you're a baby for not appreciating him." Then they follow up by saying: "Besides, he was a hilarious!"

So, um...were they really finding him "edgy"? Others went even farther, saying MacFarlane was making the sort of jokes they and their friends make all the time. So...clearly he wasn't really "challenging" anything for them.

What they do find "provocative" is people criticizing MacFarlane. Then they get angry.

Apparently MacFarlane making the jokes he wants to make is a cherished example of freedom of expression. But people taking issue with MacFarlane's humour is then likened to censorship and fascist dictatorships. Not sure how a heterosexual WASP American male, backed up by arguably the most powerful propaganda instrument civilization has ever known (i.e.: Hollywood) and given a forum before roughly a billion people...can be viewed as the oppressed underdog. Or how a handful of bloggers and editorialists expressing a contrary opinion represents the vanguard of fascism.

In a piece by Donnie Demers he writes effusively about the cherished values of freedom and artistic expression...and then says those who don't like MacFarlane should "Shut the fuck up." OK, maybe Demers is trying to be slightly ironic. But views like that are stated -- without noticeable irony -- in more than a few comments sections responding to MacFarlane's critics.

But, um, how does that allow for provocative and challenging ideas?

The problem sometimes with "shock" comedy is: what is its greater purpose? For all that MacFarlane was supposedly being edgy and provocative did he make jokes about gun control and the NRA? Drone strikes? The American fiscal crisis? I didn't see the whole show so, y'know, I don't know -- but I suspect such humour would be frowned upon as too partisan, too...provocative (ironically, Martin Short's hosting of the Canadian Screen Awards arguably was more political, with jokes about Mike Duffy and Argo). Sometimes there's a feeling the defense of shock humour is a kind of hermetically sealed loop: shock humour exists...simply to allow for shock humour.

And then it becomes its own beast with an insatiable appetite -- comics more concerned with how many gasps they get than laughs. Immediately after MacFarlane's Oscars, Joan Rivers was in her own hot water for making a Holocaust joke involving model Heidi Klum. But the outrage, I think, had less to do with the quip...than that it wasn't funny, or remotely appropriate to the circumstances. Rivers didn't just go where the humour led...she clearly decided "humour" was simply in being shocking. Now, interestingly, Rivers defended her joke on the basis that she's trying to keep knowledge of the Holocaust alive in people's minds -- which maybe is a legitimate intent. But then that raises a flip side since the joke was in the context of Klum being German. If it was just a joke...it trivializes a human horror. If it was "political" was it racist, basically suggesting almost 70 years later: a German is still a Nazi?

Now, obviously, the rationale is that breaking down taboos is good -- and shock humour is the thin edge of the wedge. It causes society to loosen up a bit, so that we really can talk about things that matter. The 1970s sitcom, All in the Family, goes the argument, used humour to put important social and political topics on the front burner of social discourse.

But when MacFarlane does an entire skit about how Jews control Hollywood, is he spoofing anti-Semitism? Or is a section of his fan base nodding sagely -- the fans who brag he's telling the same jokes on stage that they tell behind closed doors? I suspect a lot of entertainers bank on that kind of ambiguity. They don't want to alienate any source of their revenue, so if their fans include a mixture of those who see them as "ironic" and those who assume they are "telling it like it is" they'll smile mutely and sign whichever bit of merchandise is thrust in front of them.

No one size fits all. I'll admit, I've come upon MacFarlane's Family Guy while channel surfing...and so far haven't found much to hold me for more than a minute or two (a cute gag...followed by a lot of tedium -- and that's not even considering the "shock" factor). I like outrageous, bad taste humour...and sometimes I just find it in bad taste. But it's the entertainer's job to walk that fence, and if they fall off -- isn't that their fault? If a comic tells an unfunny "safe" joke, we call him a poor comedian. But if a comic tells an unfunny "shocking" joke...he's supposed to be immune from criticism?

Ultimately, edgy, provocative, challenging...all these concepts rather depend on what you consider the status quo. If everyone's doing sex and fart jokes...is the edgy guy the one not doing sex and fart jokes?

Was MacFarlane "edgy" because he offended a lot of people...or, given the Oscars enjoyed a ratings boost, was he just delivering the safe jokes his audience wanted to hear?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2781074 2013-02-28T09:16:03-05:00 2013-04-30T05:12:01-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/
Hip, hip...huh.

Canada desperately wants its equivalent of the Oscars/Emmies even as -- particularly with films -- in most cases the audience hasn't even heard of the films nominated. But awards shows are part of how you publicize productions. That's why the Oscars often seem more concerned about the ratings than the actual awards.

This year TV and film are being combined into one ceremony: The Canadian Screen Awards on March 3. Yet what tends to be missing is controversy. I don't mean "wardrobe malfunctions" or debates about misogynist hosts. I mean Canadian entertainment reporters rarely seem to have any opinion.

For the Oscars, critics grumble about something being nominated for Best Picture...but not Best Director. Yet is there similar muttering about Still Mine, which is nominated for Best Picture, Screenplay, Actor, Actress...but not director?

David Morse received a Best Actor nomination for the movie Collaborator -- a movie otherwise not much in evidence in other categories. But is that because it just narrowly missed other nominations (it boasts a 75% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes) or did Morse get nominated because the academy felt they needed more American actors on the bill?

It's easier to weigh in on the TV categories (since more people have seen the programs nominated). So I'll just randomly skim through a few...

The Best Drama Series category has Arctic Air, Bomb Girls, Continuum, Flashpoint, and King. It's an encouraging sign that they could've added a few other worthy efforts and still not be padding. The bland sci-fi drama Continuum leaves me underwhelmed, but I suspect its inclusion was so the academy could seem "hip". The award will probably go to either Bomb Girls or Flashpoint. Of the two I'd give the nod to Bomb Girls (as much as I like Flashpoint). But I'd love to see the cancelled King walk away with it. I just felt King was an exceptionally well done crime-drama and were it to win, it might suggest voters were actually voting for merit, not for hype.

There are only four nominees in the Best TV Movie/Mini-Series category, including a JK Rowling bio-pic -- yet the best isn't even nominated! I'm talking about the gripping political drama, John A.: Birth of a Country. I'd call it Canada's answer to Lincoln, except apparently people dozed during Lincoln, and I doubt anyone dozed during John A. My guess is the award will go to either Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, or Wrath of Grapes -- though Cyberbully might be politic just because it's set in the States starring an American actress and many people in the industry make their living doing those sorts of films.

I question combing acting in sketch comedies and comic series into one category -- it's a completely different shtick. Bob Martin should win for his funny and nuanced performance in Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays -- but he probably won't.

I was pleasantly surprised to see American actor Andra Fuller receive a Best Actor in a Drama nomination for L.A. Complex. I don't really have any strong issues with the other nominees...even as a lot of notables were left off. British nominee Luke Mably was fine in Combat Hospital...but I would've liked to see his co-star Terry Chen there instead. And what? No Yannick Bisson? I don't know if Bisson is a "great" actor...but he's arguably a big component of the glue that has made The Murdoch Mysteries the Little-Show-That-Could. What about Kristen Holden-Ried as the taciturn wolfman in The Lost Girl, or either of Being Human's American actors (I'd probably give the slot to Sam Witwer)? Who will win? Probably Flashpoint's Enrico Colantoni or Combat Hospital's Elias Koteas. Who should win? I'll give the nod to Fuller.

It's odd Arctic Air received no acting kudos. Star Adam Beach strikes a sympathetic balance between compassionate hero...and vulnerable everyman.

Best Actress? I just don't see Haven's American star, Emily Rose, in this category -- personable but not "great" (though nominations are for specific episodes). If we're just going for "nominate just to say we did" I'd suggest The Lost Girl's Anna Silk could've been on the list instead -- given she is the star of a cult series that has proven itself. I have no problem with Bomb Girls' Meg Tilly getting a nod, but I'd suggest her co-star, Jodi Balfour, equally deserved a place on the ballot. Others missing from the nominations: what about Carmen Moore in Blackstone, or Meaghan Rath in Being Human? Who will win? Probably Tilly or Being Erica's Erin Karpluk. Who should win? Like I'm going to say anyone other than King's riveting Amy Price-Francis.

Further random-osities?

Ksenia Solo is nominated for Supporting Actress for The Lost Girl...and she's a scene stealer. American actress Joanna Cassidy was hilarious guest starring in Call Me Fitz and I'd have no problem with her ascending the stage.

Shawn Doyle should receive Best Actor for John A -- but I suspect it'll go to Jared Keeso or Donal Logue. Tim Rozon received a nomination for the relatively obscure TV movie Befriend & Betray -- but I'd argue Bryon Mann was the scene stealer in that. Only three actresses in their category -- and two were non-Canadians! Jill Hennessy deserves it for Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.

I'm also not sure I like that male and female "guest stars" are lumped into a single category of five measly nominations. Flashpoint could probably have filled up this category just on its own! I would've liked to see Byron Mann (him again!) nominated for an Arctic Air episode, and maybe Peter Keleghan and Michelle Nolden for Saving Hope (though maybe she would be in a recurring actress category).

And given my unhealthy obsession with King, I'd suggest it could've warranted more nods in terms of writing, directing, and acting -- including co-stars Alan Van Sprang and Rossif Sutherland.

So there ya go: a little controversy. Maybe if Canadian entertainment reporters wrote up bitchy pieces like this about the Canadian awards it might actually make people a little more interested in the outcome.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2753066 2013-02-25T08:55:20-05:00 2013-04-27T05:12:01-04:00

D.K. Latta http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-latta/ Argo -- depicting when Canadians in Iran provided a haven for American diplomats -- has subtly started to diverge in the American and the Canadian press. In the U.S., it's been about how many Oscars it's likely to win.

In Canada, the movie was initially embraced with blushing enthusiasm just for Hollywood acknowledging Canada existed -- like the geeky chick pleased the jock even knows her name. But subsequently there has been grumbling the movie doesn't acknowledge Canada's true contribution to the crisis.

Which serves as an appropriate segue into today's post:

You know what Canada needs? A really good time travel TV series.

Betcha didn't see that one coming, eh?

This thought recurred to me while listening to a Doctor Who science fiction audio adventure over at BBC Radio 4. An episode called "The Book of Kells" involves The Doctor in the 11th Century and a biblical manuscript which I only gradually realized was real -- indeed, is an Irish national treasure. And, sure, my life would be no poorer if I had gone to my grave never having heard of the book of Kells. Still -- I know of it now.

Pop culture IS culture. Sitcoms, action movies and paperback novels aren't the dregs that settle at the bottom of a nourishing glass of Booker Prize lit and Oscar-winning cinema -- rather, they form the beverage most of us imbibe most of the time.

That's why I take some exception to filmmakers who market movies as "based on a true story" and then, when it is pointed out they disregarded historical fact, defensively sneer: "Hey, it's only a movie." There's always room for artistic licence, of course -- nitpickers can get too obsessed with factual minutia. But storytellers have some responsibility because a lot of their audience is going to learn from their story. And this applies equally to things that are entirely fictional.

People cynically dismiss the impact pop culture has on our perception of the world -- which indicates just how powerfully subliminal that influence really is.

Consider: if you survey random Canadians about America, most'll give you reasonably good answers. From the battle of the Alamo to who was Elliot Ness, Canadians have a patchwork understanding of American history and culture.

But why? It's not taught in Canadian schools. We are not assigned to write 200 words about Herbert Hoover (who was either a president or a vacuum salesman -- hey, I said it was a patchwork understanding).

The answer? Entertainment. Storytellers regularly mine American history and serve it up as entertainment, from major plot lines to off-the-cuff quips. And I don't just mean serious dramatizations like Argo.

I know Benjamin Franklin ran a newspaper -- because I once read a Superman comic where Supes worked as a reporter for him. I also know portly Franklin had a reputation as a lady's man...'cause he tried to beat Doctor Strange's time with Doc's gal, Clea, in another comic (the blackguard!)

Silly? -- yeah. But it's also history (well, except the part about Clea, presumably) and I know it because it was incorporated into my entertainment.

A pet peeve of mine is the way Canadian entertainers either set their stories in the United States, or present a Canada where nothing too culturally specific appears that might frighten viewers into remembering Canada isn't a 51st State in the union. (Which I wrote about here and here -- making this post kind of the third of a trilogy).

Canadian filmmakers insist they have no greater responsibility to, or influence upon, the broader social culture. But I don't believe that's true. And if you are Canadian and can name the first president of the United States then you've just proved you don't believe that, either.

Pop culture does influence how we perceive the world.

And that's why Canada could use a good time travel TV series about a plucky hero who can bump into Jacques Cartier or Frederick Banting. Okay -- straight time travel series have often had a poor track record. But time travel is often incorporated into general fantasy and SF series. How many times did characters in various Star Trek series end up in earth's past (or a reasonable facsimile)?

Canadian TV has been involved in a number of SF and fantasy series, but many deliberately pretended they were American, while those that admit they are Canadian do so in a vague, squirming-in-their-seats sort of way. But if Star Trek's Captain Kirk could once take part in a re-enactment of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral couldn't the heroes of Primeval: The New World fall through a time warp and chase a dinosaur during the Winnipeg General Strike?

The TV series, The Murdoch Mysteries, goes some way toward that, chronicling the adventures of a Victorian-era Toronto detective. Although even then, Murdoch often meets internationally famous historical figures more than Canadian ones. Still, dollops of Canadiana get mixed into the brew from time to time.

It's a Catch 22. "People aren't interested in these things," argue the filmmakers, "so we can't write about them"...but surely people aren't interested because filmmakers don't bother to write about them. The historical significance of the O.K. Corral is just about nil -- yet it's known globally because years after the fact someone popularized it in a book!

If Canadians seem to know little about Canada and seem surprisingly well informed about America, who's responsible? Not the education system, which I don't recall spending an inordinate amount of time on Americana (whatever impression the sitcom Mr. D gives). No, the responsibility lies with Canadian storytellers, who often seem intent on teaching Canadians that the proper pronunciation of the letter zed is "zee" (according to Saving Hope), that Canada will have merged with the United States by 2077 CE (as it has in Continuum) and nothing of interest every occurred in Canadian history.

So until The Lost Girl's Bo meets Louis Riel, I guess I'll go back to time travelling with Doctor Who -- I think he's off to Colditz castle, or maybe it's the lost colony of Roanoke. I'll send ya a postcard]]>