There's an old saying, "We speak the world into being." With language we shape our world, out of the primordial realm of vibration things become manifest.
Our national cinema plays an important part in what we consider to be language, but I would argue the role of a deeper Canadian cinema in our broader culture isn't nearly significant enough. These days it seems it's distinctly Canadian to feed at the trough of mass media slop. Our national cinema is too often sidelined to the fringes by Survivor XXXVI, reruns of Star Wars Episode II, or any other mass media machinery muck, be it American or Canadian, since it's all the same machine as far as I can tell. A machine chained by old men, old policy, and old status quo thinking. A machine geared towards what sells safely, rather than innovation, and change. And I would argue this safe and steady governMental approach is distinctly Canadian.
This is not to say that some brilliant works don't slip into the mix, in fact I think much of Canadian Cinema is just that, brilliant! It's the rest of the popular culture that needs an overhaul, and a redirect of the copious amounts of money going to television schlock to be shifted towards independent Canadian film. And hey, here's a novel idea, why not actually invest in marketing our content once it's created... last time I checked, the average Hollywood film put approx 50% of it's budget towards marketing.. compared to Canadian film at 3-5%... hmm.. shelf, dustbunnies, and invisibility.. here we come!
As a result of the current industry policy, it comes as no surprise that we live in an increasingly vapid Canadian cultural paradigm. We find ourselves more concerned with our materialistic technowidgets, passing trends regurgitated as uniquely Canadian, and a monoculture of worker drones all striving for the American Dream of wealth, power, beauty and fame.
Jaded..? actually, overall, I'm not.
In fact, in spending the last five years living in a van from the Arctic to Panama, the one thing I've noticed is not how distinctly different we are, but how similar we are with the rest of the world. And I don't mean in regards to mass media culture, but below the surface of the popular glaze/gaze. The other thing I've realized is that most of these 'important' questions, aren't really all that important. "This too shall pass."
Good ol' Darwin spoke to notions of competition in the natural world, however the other side of his writings, now mostly forgotten, emphasized the importance of cooperation and collaboration. It's time for us to reawaken the collaborative spirit and not waste our time focusing on how different we all are. After all, you're unique, just like everyone else, so let's get on with it!
So what is it that makes us distinctly Canadian? I'd say the conversation is kinda a load of shit to begin with. I feel it's a false dichotomy just like Liberal vs. Conservative, Republican vs. Democrat.. Canadian vs. American... Just more mental masturbation for the masses. Not to say that our national identity or cinema isn't important, but more to say for me it's not a question of what is Canadian, but instead a question of what is intrinsically human?
In this world of capitalist monoculture we should still explore being Canadian, but I think it's more urgent for us as Canadians to explore a return to earthly common sense. And this return comes from the ground up, not from government policy, not from distribution dollars, (although these could help) but from people fighting as they have throughout history to have their voices heard. And I think through this fight, we find that our voice as people is not reflected in the mass media/language that we find ourselves consuming on a daily basis. And I think while searching and fighting for this often marginalized common voice we move beyond the mass media, and in that maybe we come full circle back to what it is to be a Canadian media artist... at least I hope so.
In a conversation with a guru of sorts in Guatemala, I was given a piece of what I now consider to be golden advice,
"Strive to be ordinary."
I feel it's advice worth repeating.
I think this is what makes Canadians what we are, on the whole we're just ordinary regular people, just like everyone else. In fact, we're increasingly made up of everyone else, and now this is becoming increasingly Canadian. All this distinctly Canadian pursuit of an extraordinary national identity is just a national ego clusterfuck. That being said, I do want to make extraordinary cinema. Or maybe I want to make extraordinarily ordinary cinema.. and maybe in being ordinary, in a world of people striving, at all costs, to be extraordinary... we may just end up connecting to a common voice of the people, not just in Canada, but around the world...?
... I would argue that this is what has made Canadian cinema so great all along...
peace,d
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