I work on Mercer Report and I remember the debate footage.I'm glad you wrote in, someguy, because it gives me a chance to say the thing that I didn't say this time when I revisited this subject -- I happen to think that Mercer and 22 are both very funny shows, with lots of great material. But they're not satire. Yes, both shows have in the past traded in satirical humor --The Rant bit Mercer does is the most satirical part of the show, but that's not their full brief.
As I recall the debate was on, like, a Monday and our show was airing the Monday afterwards. So if we were going to use the tape it would have been a week old. So we didn't use it. Nobody cared that we "weren't allowed."
I think our shows has done its share of satire. We've put the Liberal leadership up for auction on ebay. In our first season we actually (probably) cost a Winnipeg MP his job when we aired him falling asleep in the House of Commons. And there's Rick's rants.
That said the show isn't intended to be 100% satirical. It's a travel around Canada show with some satirical elements. When we send Rick to visit polar bears or go window washing we're not intending to do political satire.
Mark Farrell on Inside the CBC said much the same thing about 22 as you do above. There, he wrote:
I think of 22 as a news parody show. One of the tools it uses is satire.So yep, let me say that I don't want to pillory either Mercer or 22 for not doing hard satire when it's not their intent to do hard satire.
I won’t speak for the other shows but when Mark Critch shows up at liberal debates and conventions the candidates tried to avoid us because they know or think we’re not going to be soft on them. For the most part those interviews are not set up before hand. But don’t take my word for it watch them on the website if you want and decide for yourself. As an example, according to our field producer, at the Giller awards Bob Rae was trying to get away, he was trying to avoid us, he took a wrong turn and ended up talking to Critch and Crawford.
Also, as an aside, the Prime Minister has so far refused to appear on 22 minutes (which is his right, he’s a pretty busy guy,); We (22) have not been invited into 24 Sussex.
Where the gap comes, and where I might diverge from Doyle a bit (or maybe this is what he's saying, too, I don't know, it's hard to tell) is that in the popular imagination, these shows are held up as "Canadian Satire" and are often (as in the case of the "Inside the CBC" reaction to Doyle's article) trotted out as an example of a more virtuous Canadian brand of humor that says something about our character.
In reality, it's anything but that. The combination of the "big 3" shows on CBC and the reverse onus libel laws in Canada make it very unlikely that any kind of true satire program could ever flourish in this country.
CBC can point to the "safe" poltical comedy we do and say, "see? we do that!" And they'll have plenty of people (like the apologist spinners on the CBC thread) who'll tart it up as virtue -- when really it's evidence of constriction, not expression.
Even on CTV/Comedy's doomed Popcultured, the brief was to do celebrity news "but with a smile," Ie: don't be mean. No wonder the show tanked. I mean, are we really saying that what our celebrity obsessed age needs is more softballs?
As Joanna Schneller put it in the Globe today (talking about the cessation of Premiere Magazine):
Premiere gave writers space in which to expand ideas about our cultural moment in a general-interest format. Without venues like it, entertainment writing falls into two slots: either highly specified, or distressingly shallow, a scrap heap of sound bites, tabloids, "charticles" and gossip. There may not be many of us actively mourning the loss of Premiere's type of intelligence, but we'll all feel itI think the same is true of the lack of true satire in Canada. I think it makes us poorer, and smugger, as a people. There's a study out just now that proves that viewers of The Daily Show are better informed about issues than the rest of the U.S. populace -- including people who watch the national nightly TV news. What the study seems to indicate is not that people get their news from the show, but that to find the show funny, you have to have a base level of understanding of the issues. To me, one of the great strengths of both Colbert and Stewart is that they are actually quite hard on Democrats, too. That's the nice thing about true satire -- it means challenging ALL the received wisdom.
I like to think that Canadians are generally better informed than Americans about what's going on in the world. But I've also found in my personal experience that the best informed Americans are a lot more willing to challenge the orthodoxies at play in their mediascape, than the best informed Canadians are willing to examine similar Canadian myths.
I think that's because no one here ever says truly impertinent things. And I think a large part of the reason for that is because, well...they're afraid.
The example used in The Walrus article of a joke that almost got Mary Walsh in deep dutch was the quip about then-Reform Party Leader Preston Manning's speech being better "in the original German." Had the Reformers pressed a suit there, there probably would have been trouble -- despite the fact that the joke is funny.
I happen to think that's probably not good for either humor, satire, or political debate in this country. It's not that we're kinder, gentler. It's that we pull our punches. And in this day and age, I'm not sure we can afford to do that.
Thanks for writing, and letting me clarify my position on those shows, someguy.
***
Reader Jesse emailed me a link to this very fine story in the Chicago Reader, about how this summer, the Washington Post will close its one-man Canadian bureau, leaving absolutely zero American newspaper bureaus based in Canada.
Writer Michael Miner sounds like he had an opposite experience to me: he's an American who spent several years in Canada as a boy. Well, that's not exactly opposite. I'm an American who only lived in the U.S. a short while before I...no...wait...I'm a Canadian who was born in the...well, that's not exactly...
Oh bother -- read the article. One of my favorite points, which comes courtesy of the writer's Vancouver-based sister:
Canada is enough like the U.S. that Americans can't afford to pay attention to it. If we saw things Canadians did better, we'd have no good excuse not to copy them.
Neat observation. Miner also has a lovely turn of phrase when he observes:
Despite what Canadians think we all think, I don't consider Canada a part of the U.S. that technically isn't. For me, Canada is some sort of benign antimatter whose reason for being is to not be us. The existence of Canada is the gentlest reproach on earth.
"The gentlest reproach on Earth." I like that. I like that a lot. Thanks for passing that article along, Jesse.
***
Finally, an emailer, who I'll call, "Etobicoke," asks:
Are you going to write about the return of Billable Hours?
Well, Etobicoke, no. We don't talk about Billable Hours on this blog. We did once or twice -- tangentially -- when it first came out. Then, our delicate ears heard that someone connected with the show was going around saying that I slammed the show all the time on the blog. They were powerful upset bout it. They were upset enough to complain about me in Banff, and they were still complaining about me at industry events six months later. So, um...I punt.
However, if you'd like to read more about some of the changes made for Billable Hours' second season, Canadian Press has a great article on them, by Lee-Anne Goodman. Sounds like they really worked hard to retool to a more American-style writing room. You can see and judge the results for yourself when Showcase debuts the second season, this Sunday night, at 9:30 p.m.
They bad mouthed you, yet you plug the show? Why?
Because the Baby Jesus said, "turn the other cheek." And as I've said before, I'm a big fan of Baby Jesus, rather than scary punishy judgey Mel Gibson Jesus.
You're such a good boy.
Thanks, Mom. Er... I mean..."Etobicoke," thanks for writing.
5 comments:
trotted out as an example of a more virtuous Canadian brand of humor that says something about our character.
But both you and Doyle were asserting that it says something about our character, so you can’t turn around and fault people for using the same argument but having a different opinion. Some see clearly that satire is a good; some see clearly that satire is slander with a sense of humour. It’s not an American/Canadian divide, it’s an argument that’s gone on as long as there’s been satire. To hold up our taste in TV comedies and an anecdote about an Irish woman’s impression of our country as definitive of our culture is as ridiculous as saying a mentally ill man in Virginia is representative of the American culture.
Doyle’s next column was about how TV coverage of the Vimy anniversary didn’t question the received wisdom that this was a defining moment in Canada’s nationhood – that TV news because of its limitations does that kind of thing badly. But he pointed out that you’d find that kind of questioning in newspapers.
You wanted to credit him for making a larger point than he made in that earlier argument, that by pointing to our TV comedies, he was proving that Canadian media and the Canadian people are incapable of questioning the status quo. But that’s not what he proved, nor what he seems to believe on the whole. And if you’re the one trying to prove that, you’re reading the wrong newspapers. There is life outside TV.
Oh, but now for something less beligerant (on my part, anyway) - Doyle is not a fan of Billable Hours either. His review is up today.
The time when every new Canadian TV drama or comedy deserved a break is long gone. Billable Hours is horrendously banal and barely watchable. If somebody out there actually likes it, let me know, and explain why.
It's not a perfect impression, I'll grant you that. And you know what? I remember, now, that when that episode of the Daily Show aired (where they made fun of the Canadian leaders debate) it bothered me. It really did. I felt embarrassed that an American show did something that Canadian shows wouldn't do.
Now who was embarrassed there, the American in me, or the Canadian? I don't know.
Your frustration seems to be that I'm going off and critiquing Canada and holding it up to an unfair standard. But that's not what I think I'm doing at all.
The other half is missing here, to be sure -- I have many of the same kinds of complaints when Americans don't see their forest for the trees. In fact, the next article I reference, from Matthew Miner, sort of gets at that too.
Americans have a fatal flaw that they can't get past the baseless smug assertion that they're number one in everything....so Canadian attitudes on, for instance, Gun Control or Health Care Delivery are not seriously examined. I mean, have you EVER read an article in a U.S. publication about either of those two topics that discussed Canada's policy in any sort of accurate way?
I haven't. But I HAVE seen the subject explored in -- of all places -- TV satire on Colbert/Stewart, and in the case of Health Care, in a line on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER.
Perhaps Doyle and I are being unfairly contrarian. That could be. I think it's worth noting that we're both people who grew up in two countries. Does that make our perspective skewed and weird and off, or more objective? Does it say more about him and me? Maybe it does. I'm not sure.
In the end, Doyle's is an opinion column. And I like the fact that his opinions are strong. I really do think if there were more strong opinions expressed, maybe we'd all be further down the road of exploring this "what does it mean to be Canadian" thing. But maybe that isn't the Canadian way.
I don't know.
Those are definitely the two points of view: "Canadian humor" not going to savage satire says something good about us, or it says something bad about us.
or maybe, as the Walrus posits, it's largely circumstantial.
I dunno.
But I'll tell you one thing: you say something like "there is life outside tv" again, I'm coming for you with a bar of soap to wash your mouth out, Miss Kristine. We don't take to that kind of filthy talk around here! :)
Your frustration seems to be that I'm going off and critiquing Canada and holding it up to an unfair standard.
No, my frustration was that because you agree with Doyle’s opinion, both what he actually expressed and what you think he was trying to express, you don’t care that it was unsubstantiated opinion, or that he didn’t make a very solid critique of either Canadian culture or Canadian TV – he made an observation that was open to debate. And you mocked and dismissed people on the opposite side of the debate for using the same kind of reasoning you and he did. So there.
Should we get further down the road of what it means to be Canadian? How much navel gazing can we all take? What answer is going to encompass a country made up of such diverse groups and opinions? Hmm, John Doyle said it well in his Vimy piece:
This is a multicultural society, not one in which everybody can be assumed to share the same opinion on Canada, Canadian history and the meaning of being Canadian. To some, whose roots are in other societies and who have found refuge here, the acceptance of the idea of blood sacrifice is difficult. The public promulgation of the idea makes them uneasy, and with good reason. The debate about the meaning of Vimy and the questioning of its accepted meaning happened in newspapers, this one is particular. TV is hopeless on such issues.
TV is hopeless. Heh. Go find that bar of soap, now.
Thought of Dead Things on Sticks by the second paragraph of the Chicago Reader article.
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