Is it our duty to enjoy doom and dysfunction?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/04/2009 (6037 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the funny bits during the recent Genie awards broadcast came when host Dave Foley went through the subject matter of the nominated films: a group of young people who have committed suicide, a man dying of tuberculosis, a deadly car accident that results in a revenge shooting, and so on. He said the Swedes were getting worried about Canada.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom — the film Amal, set in India, is a drama about a poor man who gives up love for money — but that’s always been part of the knock against Canadian cinema. We’re dark. We’re unhappy. If you judge us by our films, we’re a country filled with dysfunctional families, incest and tragedy.

That reputation may be part of the reason that Canadian movies are such a marginal product at the box office. Our films are about more than that, but it’s telling that even the big comedy of last year, Young People F -g, became the centre of a censorship controversy because of its title, without people noticing that there was a pretty creative sex comedy inside it. Filthy, but pretty creative.

Inside the industry, though, the poor showing of Canadian films at the box office is blamed more on a distribution system that favours American movies. It’s a typically Canadian division: cultural nationalists say the theatres should be forced to show more Canadian movies, while free-marketers — an endangered species in this era of government buyouts — say that if Canadian moviemakers made things that people wanted to see, they’d go to see them.

Before the Genie broadcast, Foley told me that he favours a quota system, just like the one that is credited with kick-starting the Canadian music industry. Theatres should be forced to devote a screen or two to Canadian movies, so that they’d be available for people to see.

This isn’t a new idea. Its most public champion is director Carl Bessai (whose Normal was up for four Genies and won one for Callum Keith Rennie’s supporting actor performance.) In an essay written last year for Arts National Canada, Bessai said 88 per cent of Canadian movie screens are devoted to American movies, nine per cent to “foreign” films and only four per cent to Canadian. He suggested either a law that would force theatres to show more Canadian movies, or an independent movie chain that would feature our cinema.

Like Foley, Bessai points to the music system, which began in the 1970s when radio stations were told they had to devote 30 per cent of airtime to Canadian music (that was later raised to 35 per cent.) There have been a few problems with the system — some stations devoted the time to established acts like Anne Murray rather than the up-and-coming music the rules were designed to help — but Canadian music is now healthy and has a worldwide reputation for quality.

A similar system regulates Canadian television, where 60 per cent of programming from 6 a.m. to midnight has to be Canadian. The regulations are somewhat loopy — Canadian Idol qualifies as documentary programming — and there is little support for Canadian drama on TV. Drama used to be a regular feature of television across North America, turning out original plays and providing a training ground for many actors and directors but it has been replaced by cheaper programming. It’s not just a Canadian problem.

In any event, Canadian TV has had its share of hits: Due South, Corner Gas and Street Legal. They were Canadian, but they were also entertaining and that’s all that counts.

A quota for movies is slightly different. It seems to be based on the idea that people want to see Canadian movies but they don’t have a chance because they can’t find them anywhere. I think this is half true. People want to see good movies, and some of them are especially delighted when that good movie is also Canadian.

It is true that these good Canadian movies are sometimes hard to find: they may be playing at just one theatre, typically the local art house, and for a limited run. Forcing exhibitors to show more Canadian movies, or for longer periods, may build an appetite for the movies, or showcase them to an audience that otherwise might not have seen them. But the problem is always going to start with the movies themselves. What is it that we are going to be encouraging people to see?

Movie-makers are confident in their product, and indeed, much of it is wonderful: last year, among the Genie-nominated movies, I loved My Winnipeg, Amal, Mommy Is at the Hairdresser’s (Maman est chez le coiffeur), Fugitive Pieces and more. But not all of it was good, and if I had gone to see some Canadian films, out of a sense of duty or curiosity, I would be reluctant to go the next week and see another one.

Canadian movies don’t automatically deserve a place on our screens; good Canadian movies do, though. It’s a shame that those films are often hard to find. What we need is a government regulation for good taste, and I’m 35 per cent convinced that it won’t happen.

— Canwest News Service