History class, that is.

Today we talked about the formulation and construction of the Canadian identity as shaped by the post-WWII governments of Canada.

So if you have ever wondered when the quest for Canadian identity started, it was 1945. That led to the Massey Commission in 1949, and their highly protectionist report released in 1951. It was this report that gave the official stamp to Canadian’s justifiable (but not always justified) paranoia of being culturally dominated by the Americans.

It was the Massey report that (eventually) led to things like the Canadian Council for the Arts and the National Research Council, both institutions that have had a huge (yooge) impact on Canadian life despite how little Canadians know or care about them.

Like I have said before, Canadians don’t fear their government. They have too little respect for the government to fear them.

And it’s the Massey report we have to thank for all forms of Canadian Content rules, which I support. I am all for keeping the door open for Canadian talent. My problem tends to me that the system, without anyone planning it that way, seems to reward mediocrity.

I honestly believe that the various funding gatekeeping agencies subconsciously think of mediocrity as part of what makes something “Canadian”, and that if presented with something truly excellent, they would fear it and declare it to be un-Canadian.

After all, it doesn’t look cheap or depressing and it actually stirs people’s interest! Nope, nope. We can’t fund that. Something like that can’t possibly be Canadian.

When we were talking about TV (my favorite subject after music), Mister Dressup and the Friendly Giant came up. I was one of the only students who had heard of either of them, and the only one who had actually watched them both as a child.

I watched the Friendly Giant, but was never super into it. I hated Rusty, chiefly (I can see now) because his cheapass falsetto voice bothered me, but also because he was so whiny and wimpy and lame. Jerome was great, Friendly himself was okay, and of course, I loved Friendly’s animal band.

But today, I realized, my favorite part was the opening.

I really responded to whole “invitation to sit by the fire and relax and listen to stories” aspect. That’s the exact “warm and cozy” vibe I have loved and looked for my whole life. It was an invitation to feel happy and homey and included. Someone actually wanted my company!

It’s sad how early that was a big deal for me.

Mister Dressup, on the other hand, was da bomb as far as I was concerned. Like several generations of Canadian children, I loved Mister Dressup with the pure, irrational, total devotion of a child. This puts him on my list of people about whom I will not hear a single word against.

And a hell of a lot of Canadians agree with me, of course. If PBS can always defend their funding with Big Bird, the CBC could always defend theirs with Mister Dressup when he was on the air. All it would take is the slightest hint that funding cuts would hurt Mister Dressup and there would be a legion of grown-up Mister Dressup kids demanding the freshly decapitated head of whoever suggested the cuts.

We are legion, we are passionate, and we are not inclined to listen to reason.

And I realized today that the solution to the mystery of why I was so devoted to the show when I can’t say I actually enjoyed the content is dead simple : I loved spending time with Mister Dressup. He was such a nice guy that it was a joy just to be there with him. It didn’t matter what actually happened on the show. It was Mister Dressup that made me feel good.

And that’s why I say that Mister Dressup with never die. Ernie Coombs died, and that made me very sad. But Mister Dressup won’t die until the last of his TV children is lowered into their grave.

Because the subject was our struggle against American cultural imperialism, we had to cover Mister Rogers too. He never stood a chance with me. Mister Dressup was a wonderful uncle. Mister Rogers was the epitome of the exact kind of adult I didn’t like when I was a precocious kid. All touchy-feely and slow-talking and creepy, maintaining eye contact for way too long, radiating a very fake sort of warmth, and making me feel like he was talking to me like I was a very fragile kind of idiot.

Of course, that’s not remotely true, either about Mister Rogers or any other adult of the era. They were just treating me like a kid. I am sure their approach worked wonderfully for most kids. It was just weird little intellectual firecrackers like me that had a problem with it.

What else? Oh right, I have one story from today that I absolutely must share.

In the mid-Fifties, the Canadian government was talking about making Canadian Content rules for the movie theaters. Hollywood didn’t like this idea any more than the Canadian movie theater owners, who didn’t like the idea of their precious screens losing money while showing Canadian crap.

So Hollywood solved their problem in a very Hollywood way : they invited all the decision-makers involved in deciding if these CanCon rules would be implemented down to Hollywood and treated them like movie stars (including hobnobbing with actual movie stars) for two whole weeks.

And THEN they sat down and negotiated with the Canadian government. Having been quite thoroughly compromised by the glamorous life, they immediately gave up on the whole “content rules” idea and settled instead for some bullshit Council of Canadian Cooperation that led to the creation of a bunch of shitty Mountie movies and that’s it.

Now I think of myself as a pretty ferociously independent person not easily swayed from what he knows is right. But I am pretty sure that would have worked on me, too.

That’s how it works. It doesn’t take long for the gratitude you feel towards the person who has been so kind to you to overwhelm your higher judgment, and not much longer than that before the rich and powerful have you feeling like one of them, not one of those pathetic low-status yokels back home.

That’s how it works in the capital city, and that’s how it works in Hollywood too.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.