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Americans just haven't heard of our culture. I don't really think we'd even call it "pop culture". Some Canadian shows? "Seeing things", "Black fly" Lots of good Canadian music and culture you've never heard of - Joe Hall, Leslie Spit Treeo, Holly Cole, Stan Rogers, ....Ever heard of the Group of Seven?
People have given lots of examples of Canadian cultural products here and one cannot dispute that they are out there. But I guess my point (and Evanusc’s if I may say so) is what impact do most them (outside of the very successful homegrown rock music sector) have in Canadian society? How many people stand around the water cooler the day after a Da Vinci’s Inquest episode and talk about last night’s show? A look at the TV ratings and movie box office numbers will give you the answer, though perhaps not the one many people would want.
Yes, there have been in recent years a handful of encouraging Canadian success stories on the audio-visual front (Men With Brooms in cinemas, Corner Gas and Flashpoint on TV, etc.), something which hasn’t seen all that often in Canadian history. Have we turned a corner? I am not really sure. I honestly hope so, but for the moment it appears that most Canadian stuff is still where it has traditionally been: in a small niche market on the margins of the mainstream which is heavily Hollywood-dominated.
People have given lots of examples of Canadian cultural products here and one cannot dispute that they are out there. But I guess my point (and Evanusc’s if I may say so) is what impact do most them (outside of the very successful homegrown rock music sector) have in Canadian society? How many people stand around the water cooler the day after a Da Vinci’s Inquest episode and talk about last night’s show? A look at the TV ratings and movie box office numbers will give you the answer, though perhaps not the one many people would want.
Yes, there have been in recent years a handful of encouraging Canadian success stories on the audio-visual front (Men With Brooms in cinemas, Corner Gas and Flashpoint on TV, etc.), something which hasn’t seen all that often in Canadian history. Have we turned a corner? I am not really sure. I honestly hope so, but for the moment it appears that most Canadian stuff is still where it has traditionally been: in a small niche market on the margins of the mainstream which is heavily Hollywood-dominated.
Being Erica, Flashpoint and Rick Mercer are constantly discussed within my group of friends. Same goes for music... my group of friends thoroughly love their local and CDN bands. The most talked about films in the past few weeks included two CDN films "RIP Manifesto" and "One Week". "One Week" in particular has created HUGE buzz within Canada.
If you even look to video games, Ubisoft (Montreal) is a giant and has created some of the most memorable video games.
I personally feel like we've made huge headway on culture and am very excited to be Canadian right now when it comes to media.
No offense but I feel like you and any other Canadian who feel the same way are a tad blind if you don't think we have a strong pop culture.
I feel that generally, Canada doesn't overly celebrate our talent as much as other countries do. I think we're a country that chooses to stay out of the limelight and feel quite content with that.
Being Erica, Flashpoint and Rick Mercer are constantly discussed within my group of friends. Same goes for music... my group of friends thoroughly love their local and CDN bands. The most talked about films in the past few weeks included two CDN films "RIP Manifesto" and "One Week". "One Week" in particular has created HUGE buzz within Canada.
If you even look to video games, Ubisoft (Montreal) is a giant and has created some of the most memorable video games.
I personally feel like we've made huge headway on culture and am very excited to be Canadian right now when it comes to media.
No offense but I feel like you and any other Canadian who feel the same way are a tad blind if you don't think we have a strong pop culture.
You need not worry, no offence taken. But I think that if more Canadians had a look at national pop cultures around the world they would hard pressed to find one so "cut-and-pasted" on its neighbours’. This is true even of places like the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand which don’t have language barrier with the U.S. either (granted, they aren’t *right* next door like Canada).
I’ve travelled all over the world and though I haven’t been to every country of course, I’ve never seen such acculturation as we see in Canada.
Yes, I will agree with you that there are some encouraging signs and even breakthroughs, but if one does an international comparison, (English-speaking) Canada is still a long way away from having a national popular culture like almost all other nations have. (Even those that share a language with larger neighbours.)
Regarding your friends and their topics of discussion, I think people should be careful not to make characterizations based on themselves and their entourage. Even the people taking part in this forum should not be considered as "average" for society, just a small (minority) sub-group of it. If you want to look at where "average mainstream society" is at, check out TV ratings, box office numbers, music sales, book best-seller lists, etc.
I feel that generally, Canada doesn't overly celebrate our talent as much as other countries do. I think we're a country that chooses to stay out of the limelight and feel quite content with that.
Sounds like you are talking about Canadian culture’s impact outside Canada’s borders (I guess this is relation to the Hollywood flood that smothers the entire planet.) Others have made similar points here, but I am not talking about exporting a culture to other countries, I am talking about the minimal, very low-key impact of Canada’s pop culture *in Canada*.
Well, you can take it a step further and give credit where credit is due. The U.S. created rock and roll, the blues, bluegrass, R+B, jazz, soul, funk so ofcourse its cultural exports will be dominant in those areas. When asked about their influences, even the Beatles and Stones gave props to early American music. As someone else posted, Hollywood is in the U.S. and therefore a part of American culture, even if some of the talent comes from Canada, it is still an American industry. Now, this doesn't mean there are not Canadian bands that are good or Canadian films for that matter, but the nexus of both the music and film industries in North America are in the U.S.
Yes, it was. It was produced in Ottawa by CJOH-TV, the local CTV affiliate. One of the actors who played in it was a teenager by the name of Alanis Morissette.
Thank you. I just needed to know. I didn't know Alanis Morrisette was on it. It has been almost 16 years since I last saw that show.
Yes, Canada has a tiny niche pop culture market - it always has, and likely always will. The only time this will ever change is if somehow Canada's population or economy trumps that of the USA. Until then, yes, Canada has its own pop culture apart from the USA, and no, Canada's pop culture isn't commercially dominant in Canada. Global westernized pop culture is what's dominant in Canada - whether the USA or the UK or Ireland or wherever. And yes, sometimes there are even *gasp* Canadians!
What I don't understand is that when Canadian singers, songwriters, bands, films, TV shows, etc, become commercially successful outside of Canada, they're somehow no longer considered Canadian. That's baloney, in my lovely humble opinion. It's just our attitudes - we somehow feel that as long as they remain in some sort of bubble world within Canada and are unknown to the rest of the world, that makes them Canadian. Or that singing exclusively about maple syrup, hockey, winters in Sarnia, etc... that is somehow legitimizes their Canadianness.... and yet, if they're not singing about Canadian landscapes and Canadian winters, all of a sudden people scream out and claim these people aren't truly representative of Canadian pop culture... except they are! I'm thinking of Cirque de Soleil, or Joni Mitchell, or kd lang, or Leonard Cohen - they're all Canadian. They're all icons of Canadian pop culture, and yet, because they're not noodling around, limiting themselves to some niche market, they're somehow not seen as being "authentically" Canadian - which is a load of poop.
So if the original question isn't "Does Canada have its own pop culture" but "Does Canada have its own dominant pop culture that exists only in a bubble in Canada" - the answer is no. That doesn't mean that Canadian pop culture and Canadian artists aren't important to Canadians - quite the opposite - it just means that collectively, Canadian pop culture is just one piece of the pop culture pie that Canadians enjoy.
Last edited by Robynator; 03-16-2009 at 07:08 PM..
So if the original question isn't "Does Canada have its own pop culture" but "Does Canada have its own dominant pop culture that exists only in a bubble in Canada" - the answer is no.
Actually, most places in the world have a pretty much all-encompassing national pop culture that, to use your term (which I like BTW), exists in a bubble. In the sense that it's totally foreign to uninitiated people from outside the country, even in many cases to those from other nations who actually speak the same language.
Now, just because the bubble exists, doesn't mean that people in these places don't also partake in the larger western/global "pie" (once again, thanks for the term), but the bubble at least holds its own against the global (Hollywood-dominated, to be frank) juggernaut.
My point is not to say that all these places with an all-encompassing national pop culture are impermeable to global influences (read = Hollywood), but rather that people there have more cultural choices and are also much more likely to act upon those choices.
Man, if you're living in Timmins, Ontario or Brandon, Manitoba, or anywhere outside the handful of major cities which have art house theatres, the waiting period between Canadian movies that you can actually go see at your local cinema is probably counted in years, rather than weeks or months!
Here is a question i've always wondered about. In Canadian video stores, are American movies in the foreign section? and if not, Why? In American video stores, movies made in Canada by Canadian filmmakers are considered foreign films and are located with other international films.
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