Sucking Canada Dry

Are Canadians really good at sucking ---? The tv show "Who's line is it?", as seen on aussie tv, indicates that they are.

Recently, I had the bizarre experience of sitting in my living room in Brisbane trying to understand the humour of my own native land, Canada, a place I have not lived in or visited for fifteen years.

On the aussie tube last month I stumbled across a Canadian comedy program entitled "Who's line is it?" In a nutshell, the program seemed to be a third or fifth generation offspring of theatre sports. That is, before a live audience performers contort themselves on demand to an unexpected and diverse set of meaningless scenarios, each of which is multilayered and sylistically contradictory.

The scenarios are given out by a fat but slickly sadistic host wearing a suit and seated at a podium. Mr. Slick Fat Host awards points for each performance on an arbitrary basis as absurd as any of the scenarios he assigns. The live audience laughs at the antics of the performers as they meticulously carry out the nonsensical scenarios, thus demonstrating an amazing, almost perfect versatility.

Obviously, the show is some kind of a hit, as it has found its way to Australia. Out of touch with the humour of my own country, I found the show eerie. One bit made me laugh, the rest left me uncomfortable and pondering. How and why do (a lot of) Canadians find this show funny? Essentially, the performers, for all their stunning virtuosity in doing any and every ridiculous thing they are told to do, are pathetic. Good clowns, of course, play with pathos. But these post-post theatresports stars didn't know they were pathetic, though they looked like they were feeling humiliated at times, especially when Slick Fat did his thing between their bits.

Canada, a nation of people used to being told what to do, a nation of people who follow absurd and pointless demands to the nth degree without complaint, a nation of people without a sense of internal direction? Canada, a nation of people who gain comic relief of the displacing, scapegoating kind from watching sad comedian-soldiers contort themselves like india rubber men to follow to the letter the comedic orders of a sadistic seargeant-major?

Of course, that can't be the whole story of Canada. But I reckon it's an uncomfortable amount of it. One thing is for sure, comedy requires from comedians a considerable measure of anarchic internal spontanity and creativity. When a country finds funny a kind of "comedy" whose distinguishing characteristic is precisely a lack of internal spontanaity and self-directedness on the part of the performers, when all creativity goes into following orders to the letter, something odd is going on.

Living under even more mucho American ownership and cultural bombardment post NAFTA than ever must lead to some wierd contortions on the part of the Canadian people, especially the ninety percent huddled along the US border.

Canadians are so "nice". But underneath a lot of them must be sick of sucking...Too bad, so sad that like coliseum romans they have to take it out on their poor comedians...