Two good things I saw
I attended a taping of The Colbert Report today. What a great experience. The man is a comic genius and he runs a fantastic show. He’s a lot more unassuming in person, too.
As part of his “Better Know a Canadian Riding” series, Colbert did an interview with Ujjal Dosanjh, who is one of the members of parliament representing Vancouver in the House of Commons. Dosanjh is an interesting guy. He used to be the NDP premier of the province of British Columbia before switching parties and serving briefly as health minister under Prime Minister Martin.
Dosanjh was also born in India, and it was this that fact Colbert chose to make the biggest deal of, asking him what caste he was from and other politically incorrect things. It was really funny, in a shocking, sensibility-offending way, and it made me realize just how edgy and subversive American political satire is compared to Canadian. When Canadian comedy people interact with politicians they usually do so in a very bland, inoffensive way, never making anyone too uncomfortable and always giving off a strong this-is-all-in-good-fun vibe. The politicians, for their part, play along way too much, which implies they don’t feel particularly unsettled by the comedy in any serious way.
Compare the aggressive, confrontational style of a guy like Colbert with the folksy style of Rick Mercer, or the palsy walsy style of Mary Walsh. I guess part of it stems from the fact that the latter two are from the CBC, which is a government-funded television station. There’s obviously an incentive to treat politicians a lot more delicately when this is your economic reality. CBC actors are basically just federal employees, so there’s a limit of how much subversion you can expect from them.
The other good thing I watched today was a documentary called Art and Copy. It was a fantastically inspiring movie about the reform of the American advertising industry during the 70s, 80s and 90s, as told by the pioneering veterans themselves. In an era when the the very label of “documentary” has been systematically degraded by heavy-handed editorialists like Michael Moore and Morgan “Supersize Me” Spurlock, it was very refreshing to watch a movie that simply (gasp) documented something in a fairly neutral manner.
Advertising is a medium that is almost only talked about in highly scandalized, sensationalistic terms, and perhaps justifiably so, but it’s also a medium that has unleashed enormous amounts of artistic creativity from some truly impressive people. Art and Copy offers a good look at their stories.
