Year of the Letdown

Canada, the country that brought you Nickelback and The Mike Bullard Show once again proved in 2008 why America remains our superior in pop culture. 

Disappointment hardly encapsulates a grim year when dross thrived and the axe fell on the righteous and wicked alike. Puerile Yankee knock-offs such as Project Runway Canada and So You Think You Can Dance Canada drew huge audiences despite cringe-inducing banter from Tré Armstrong and Leah Miller — whose saccharine anima won’t abandon my brain no matter how many times I envision a flaming school bus crashing into a room full of harp seal puppies.

That said, the dancing was as good as you’ll find down south.

Two sad endings to note: In its continuing march towards zero credibility, MuchMusic cancelled The New Music — a program that launched such names as John Roberts and Avi Lewis. Showcase also said so long to Sunnyvale as Trailer Park Boys wrapped up its final season (look for another TPB movie in October 2009).

Death, however, yields small mercies, like Canadian Idol taking a one-year “rest” — a pre-Christmas miracle! In April, the CBC announced that the Royal Canadian Air Farce will be taken behind the barn and shot at long last. For 27 years, the comedy show traded on dreadful jokes delivered in the guise of stoic, humourless Canadian public figures.

Yet the show, which one blogger on CBC.ca said, “defines us Canadians as who we truly are,” (Though I don’t tout flying rubber chickens and yokels from Canmore as linchpins of my national identity whenever I go abroad, do you?) received Juno and Gemini Awards, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award and a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame, some of the most esteemed prizes that can be bestowed on a Canadian artist. 

It’s endemic of a nation suffocating under its garrison mindset, a country so culturally insecure and protectionist that nationality regularly trumps merit. Anemic rubbish like Air Farce and Corner Gas  (also in its final season) has not only been allowed to limp on for years, but is celebrated by a cultural bureaucracy of groupthinkers that embraces work not for its quality but for its essential “Canadian-ness” — a term too often limited to “hockey, beer and arts” as Jian Ghomeshi might put it. Hedley, Comedy Inc., The Hills Aftershow; all are consistently abysmal, all lauded with award nominations in their respective fields this year.

Small wonder why we’re so frequently the butt of American jokes. In 2008, we earned it, eh?