Big Hype on the Prairie
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve accidentally been exposed to the CBC’s new TV comedy, Little Mosque on the Prairie. First, I read about it somewhere on the Web, then some time later on the New York Times and then I stumbled across Paula Zahn’s discussion of it on CNN. Finally, with Jeanne out of town on Tuesday night, I sat down to eat dinner in front of the TV and, low and behold, the Little Mosque premiere is on. I figured it must be a sign…
So I watched the premiere and was, as you might imagine, underwhelmed. But don’t get me wrong. I’m in agreement with guys like Dennis McGrath who believe Canadian television producers should be making shows aimed at capturing as many Canadian eyeballs as possible (if you haven’t already, check out McGrath’s great Corner Gas post). But until the majority of Canadians become cynical urban comedy writers, I won’t be the intended audience for these shows. And I got no problem with that.
What I do have a problem with is how people at the CBC get their panties in a twist whenever America’s Eye of Sauron turns in our direction. When this happens, CBC TV brass think its big news. It’s embarrassing watching the CBC splash up a “news flash” banner on the official Little Mosque on the Prairie site (see above) and promoting the show on TV with taglines like, “Catch the show that the New York Times, CNN and Canadians have been talking about.”
Something is wrong when the CBC is tacking on ‘Canadians’ as an afterthought.
The thing that the CBC and similar northern media outlets miss in their rush to point out that we must be big news because the Americans say so, is why the Americans are paying attention to us in the first place. Let’s face it, getting on Paula Zahn’s show doesn’t mean you’re big news. Zahn runs the kind of show that features such “big news” items as a dude who claims to be able to “beat the gay out of you“.
The real news story here is why the hell Americans feel that a comedy about Muslims is so incredibly shocking. To me, it highlights just how far our two countries have split since 9/11.
Canada’s English entertainment industry is so focused on on measuring itself against Americans that it often produces television and film that occupy the queasy “CanAm limbo”: not uniquely Canadian enough to be endearing to local audiences and not big-budget enough to go toe-to-toe with big-budget American productions. (This isn’t a problem in French Canada and is probably a major reason why French Canadian films continue to dominate at our award shows.)
The only one who seems to get it right is the Globe’s TV critic John Doyle. From his latest LMOTP article:
The topics and the substance of these shows stand as rejections of the U.S. network style and preoccupations. Little Mosque on the Prairie is nobly in that Canadian tradition. The U.S. media can huff and puff in wonder, but this is who we are, and we’re fine with it, thanks.
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