Virus as Teacher

Yesterday there must have been some kind of planetary alignment:

--The Pope expressed solidarity with Aboriginal Canadians;
--Obama celebrated 100 days in office;
--Israel celebrated its independence;
--The pandemic alert went to Level 5.

So the Christians apologize to the Indians, the Jews are happy to have a homeland, a black man is thriving in the White House and a virus infects us all equally.

What’s the lesson? Difference is a problem for us. The virus? It could care less. If we can’t get it through our heads we are one people of many hues, maybe the indiscriminate cruelty of a virus will clarify the matter.

Blame Canada

Okay, am I paranoid…or is there a pattern emerging in the past few months?

--Janet Napolitano, head of U.S. homeland security, says that some of the 9/11 Hijackers came from Canada. Canada tries to straighten out the matter, then John McCain reinforces the myth.
--Natasha Richardson dies in a tragic skiing accident in Quebec and some U.S. pundits blame “socialized medicine.”
--Worst of all, a month ago Fox News featured a late night show—Red Eye— slagging the Canadian military. I didn’t think it worth commenting about at the time, as it seemed like a mindless, media wingnut spouting inanities at the wee hours of the evening…

But now it extends up to the Secretary of Homeland Security and she’s a member of the new President’s team and, and, well, he loves us…doesn’t he? So what gives?

Taken all together, I think the truth is clear. It’s been staring me in the face all these years and I haven’t noticed. As much as I hate to say this, Canada is a land of vile terrorists, gutless soldiers and incompetent doctors. There, I’ve said it. I’ve broken through my denial. Thank you America for showing me the light. I once was blind, but now I see. I’m moving back ASAP…

Iconography North and South

A painting by one of the Group of Seven is going up for sale later this month. If you don’t know who the Group of Seven are, you’re likely not Canadian.

The Group of Seven are the hero-painters of Canadian art. They paint, some would say, the Canadian soul, with an emphasis on "Canadian." One friend of mine even claims that only Canadians really “get” the Group of Seven. It’s an intriguing hypothesis. If others don’t “get” their art and Canadians do, how do we “get” it?

My friend who makes this claim has paddled rivers and lakes for many years, from the lakes of Algonquin Park to the rivers of the high arctic. He’s done a fair bit of mountain climbing too. Perhaps he is tailor-made to “get” the Group of Seven, painters who took their canvas and brushes into the Canadian wilderness and painted what they saw. But since few Canadians have my friend’s wilderness resume and yet also “get” the Group of Seven, it must be something else beside one’s backcountry bona fides. I submit that the "something else" is the myth Canadians have of Canada and themselves.

Look at this classic Group of Seven painting, September Gale by Arthur Lismer: a tree in the foreground, standing resolutely in the midst of wilderness, not a soul around, only the water, the wind, the emptiness. The colours are muted, the sky not particularly inviting. The wind has raised the water into whitecaps. It is not a day I would want to go skinny-dipping in the lake or even, for that matter, to try paddling across it. THIS is Canada, cries the myth. Believe it. Canada looks like this; the rest is just, shhhh, Pretend.

The truth of the matter is that Canadians live mainly in Pretend--the industrialised, urban centres along the 49th parallel. Canadians don’t pretend to NOT live in Pretend; they know its where their homes are but it’s not, to borrow from the national anthem, their native land; Canada’s native land is out THERE. Where? you ask. Why there, just look at the Group of Seven paintings. There! Ah yes, the Group of Seven paints what Canadians think of as their native land: those empty spaces/places that make Canada Canada. Canadians get the Group of Seven because they paint Canada (perhaps they even invented it), by golly…even if most Canadians haven’t seen it.

I began wondering what, in the visual arts, is the equivalent of the Group of Seven in the U.S. The artists in what’s called the Hudson River School did all sorts of lush, pastoral paintings where wilderness was depicted as gorgeous (rather than wild). In any case, I don’t believe their work has much resonance today. Could it be Pop Art? It has its share of iconic images, but it holds none of the nation’s mythologies. When I turn to individual artists, names like Norman Rockwell, Frederic Remington and photographer Ansel Adams come to mind. One could argue that each claims a certain piece of American mythology.

If I cast them aside, however, it’s clear that what remains is not a school of art but a singular iconic image that stands above all the rest: American Gothic by Grant Wood. I can’t think of another painting that has been more spoofed, imitated, parodied than American Gothic. When I take it seriously rather than as satire, it reeks of good ole American self-reliance. Life isn’t easy, we work hard, we’re decent god-fearing folk. We don’t ask much and know that if we work hard, we'll meet our modest needs. America likes to think this is where it got its DNA. The myth America holds of itself lies in those somber, earnest faces.

Of course it’s a description that seems to bear little, if any, resemblance to America now. The family farm has disappeared, corporations work the land, needs haven’t been particularly modest. It would seem that the iconic imagery of both countries is but faintly connected to the daily lives of its citizens.

However, that might change for American Gothic. How we see any particular work of art changes as our context changes, and America has a new and painful context. American Gothic was painted at the start of the Great Depression, and given what American is now going through, the painting may resonate again in a way that it hasn’t for many years. Suddenly what was once spoofed may become all too familiar. The painting has people at the center, standing straight (I could say as opposed to gay, but that seems too easy, so I won’t), connected to the land as cultivators, but the house—domesticity—is clearly more central than the land. We know the land must be there, but this couple is about the house…as is America. One could say that a-house-for-every-family IS the essence of the American dream. It is also one of the key players in the current economic collapse. The dream of home ownership, implied in American Gothic and acted out in the past fifteen years, has made American Gothic relevant once again

Canada's iconic imagery, in stark contrast, is a world of wilderness, without a human footprint, uninviting. There is nothing domestic about it. The Group of Seven will continue to hold the legend of the Canadian land as a place apart, as the defining inheritance of its citizens. The land hasn’t left, and as long as it remains, those of us living in Pretend will find the Group of Seven as relevant as ever.

Protest in front of Parliament

I'm sitting in a local restaurant waiting for breakfast. An old gentleman, who looks like he must be a regular, comes up to me to say hello. He has mistaken me for someone else. We introduce ourselves anyway and start chatting. He's in his early 80's and, though his memory isn't--by his own admission--particularly great, it's obvious he's thoughtful and still sharp.

Somehow the conversation takes a turn to the protest in front of the Parliament. For over a week now Tamil-Canadians have lined up along Wellington Street to protest against the Canadian government's actions (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) in challenging the Sri Lankan government to stop its military offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeslam, a group Canada has labelled a terrorist organization. The protest includes hunger strikers, some of whom have been taken to hospital. While the protest has been peaceful, it has also created traffic problems for commuters.

The elderly gentleman is quite animated about the protest. "Can you imagine this happening in America?" he asks. "People parked in front of the U.S. Congress for a week or so, tying up traffic and being a nuisance--they wouldn't stand for it; some heads would knock, that's for sure. And Canada, what do we do? Nothing. Not a thing. How come nobody is willing to restore order?"

Somehow that sounds about right. Yeah, in the States I would guess something would happen..and it would reverberate with the potential for violence. Where I differ is in his assessment of Canada. The "nothing" it's doing is precisely the correct something. Ottawa police have been watching the protest regularly and have said it's legal; as long as people are peaceful, the protest can remain. The "something" Canada is doing is simply to allow it to happen--peaceful assembly, citizens engaged in an act of citizenship.

Canada is a nation of hyphenated Canadians (see the blogpost of Feb13th); our caring is dual. When that caring is expressed for our countries of origin, it is neither inappropriate nor unpatriotic towards Canada. Canada seems to understand this about has much as any nation. I would claim that Canada has gone further in accommodating difference than other countries simply because it has had to. Although Canadians often see the never-ending, complicated dance with Quebec as profoundly aggravating, the gift of its founding difference--French and English--is a unique capability as a nation to adapt and accommodate. That Tamil-Canadians have been protesting in front of Parliament for a week and tying up traffic is a sign, not of Canada's weakness, but its strength. It is a much more evolved kind of order than the order my new friend from this morning wanted restored, and Canada can be proud of that.

Last Thought on the Genies: Restoring the Arts to their Rightful Place

While I cannot say that storytelling is our oldest art form, I would be hesitant to argue against it. From oral traditions that pass on a culture’s lore to the written word that holds our imaginings on parchment of one kind or another to the film screen that is now quickly becoming digital, we have never left behind our need to tell and listen to our stories. Though the medium may change, the expression of our narratives remains a constant. "There have been great societies that did not use the wheel but," said Ursala Le Guin, "there have been no societies that did not tell stories." To the extent that the dominant medium for storytelling has, for good or for ill, become increasingly more expensive, countries such as Canada have to consider how its stories will be told…and heard. Perhaps the digital age will be launching us into a world where the possibility of making films becomes more democratic and less expensive, but until that possibility is fully realized, the role of government in supporting the telling of its stories must be central.

Too often governments base their support for film (or literature or music) in terms of what is the expected Return on Investment. The arts “industries” then fall into the trap of trying to provide an answer. When the government wants to cut funding, the industries show how many people are employed in the sector, how much it contributes to GDP, etc. It is an attempt at self-justification the arts communities would be better off avoiding, if for no other reason than it buys into the assumption that the arts should be measured in the same way as any other industry. Suddenly poetry and film are the same as lumber, wheat and steel. That may serve the purposes of the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) but it doesn’t serve the purposes of countries that lack the heft of Hollywood and whose stories are obliterated in the face of its marketing machine.

Nothing good can come from Canada judging the arts’ worthiness for support as we judge the auto industry. We go to our factories—and our stores and our schools and our offices--to work; we go to the arts to make sense of work (and family and community, even nation). Livelihood without meaning is not sustainable; the same can be said for nationhood. The ever elusive meaning of Canada is held in trust by its storytellers. “Telling our stories is what saves us," said the novelist James Carrol. "The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of narrative is, by definition, holy.” The movie theatre has become the modern world’s church for narrative, film its sacred text, the audience its loyal parishioners. Somewhere in that triangle, the Canadian government has a role to play in what sacred texts are written, distributed, and read.

The Genies...the what?

Over the weekend, The Genie Awards came to Ottawa. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Genies, they are the Canadian equivalent of the Oscars. Saying that, I am struck by the likelihood that more Canadians know about the Oscars than the Genies. And that is precisely one of the reasons they were awarded in Ottawa for the first time—so just maybe the government will begin to notice an industry that is asking not for a bailout due to years of strategic errors but rather for an investment after years of success in the face of neglect. It is unlikely this government will pay much attention to its cinematic storytellers when they recently failed to gain a majority due to, among other reasons, underestimating the importance of culture in Quebec…and how, dear reader, can a federal party which seeks to run the country possibly underestimate THAT?

Canadian film, it would seem, is barely on the radar. Though the artists create successes like The Barbarian Invasions and Atanarjuat:The Fast Runner, Canada, the government, pays scant attention; Canadians, however, do, especially when given a chance. This weekend all the venues showing the Canadian films nominated for Genies had long line-ups. Surprise, surprise. You mean there might be an audience for these films?

So rarely do Canadian films make it into the large theatres that the producer of the film Passchendale, which won for best picture, actually thanked the Cineplex-Odeon theatre chain for giving it screen time. Hellooo? What’s wrong with this picture? A Canadian producer thanks a theatre chain in Canada for showing a Canadian film! Now you can see the difference: such a farce would simply never happen in the U.S; in Canada it happens, and nobody seems to think it terribly odd.

The winner walks up to the podium to accept their Genie: Thank you. I'd like to give special thanks to Cineplex-Odeon, without whose support…Art and audience need one another; how sad when they can't find each other. As Carl Bessai, the producer of Normal, put it: "Canadians don't hate our films, they're just not aware of them."