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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33442 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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The problem I think for Canada is that it's right next to the most productive soft power generator in history. It's just very difficult for it to carve out a separate identity and industry that can distinguish itself - in part because it's too late: lots of Canadians basically are Americans

I live in southern Ontario. My family lives in Maryland. When I was in college I would cross the border every semester and, honestly, the French on labels was the main tell.

Like...take some of Britain's most successful exports like Downton Abbey: it's popular precisely cause a lot of us don't have that sort of British fussiness about nobility. Same reason the royal family makes waves in the States.

To most of the world Canadians are Americans. And attempts to insist on a distinct Canadian identity (putting aside Quebec's...particularities) often end up looking boring and soulless like the CBC or what basically accounts to bland virtue signaling

It's much easier to basically be used as a stand-in by the US' much larger industry than to truly compete with it. Especially since there's no functional barrier to talented Canadians going down south and making a ton more money which is a constant drain on talent.

Acting is a global business, or at least an Anglosphere-wide business, and British, Canadian and American actors, directors and so on are repped by the same agencies that the CBC could contract.

Isn't that part of the problem? If you are in the industry and want to/can do well America is always calling with a potentially better deal.

Like...Denis Vileneuve might be my favorite Canadian director. He doesn't do Dune for a Canadian company. If he wants that, it's the US and Zendaya or nothing.

A lot of energy is also getting sucked up working on American productions within Canada. I remember Max Landis talking about how competitive Vancouver is for resources. A lot of people (especially below-the-line) are probably "wasting" their time working on shows that could be Canadian in that utterly unspecific way but are still wallpapered as American. Why not? Both markets will watch it.

Seems like things somewhere along the line got optimized for working for with the US industry rather than independence.

The only Canadian show I can name off the top of my head is the Trailer Park Boys and I’m not even sure if it’s a cbc production

Allow me to introduce you to Letterkenney.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9rSBmOgpcDE

I think that for the longest time, from a European vantage point, the Canadian brand was essentially being nice + some sort of chill lack of pretense in an outdoorsy lumberjack way (like Australia with moose). I realise that in the Americas the second half is laid claim to by several parts of the US too, but I don't think this makes it across the ocean (as "US + outdoorsy lumberjack" immediately mutates into "alcoholic with a pickup truck, multiple shotguns and married to his cousin").

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