Luckily I jotted down a few notes on Monday’s class because I seem to have forgotten almost everything that was running through my head that day. I found this hard to believe since I’ve generated so many interesting ideas on my term paper, my group presentation and to blog about for the next few weeks.
The clip from Strange Days got me thinking about too many other filmic references so I decided to post about that tomorrow in my self reflexive post about everything I have realized and researched for my seminar presentation.
We discussed hegemony, which is something I am quite interested in, since I feel that we in Canada have a lack of hegemony, being that America’s hegemonies are forced more on us than anywhere else seeing as we are the loyal neighbours to the North. We as Canadians are a bit cheeky in our satirizing of American culture, specifically when considering Canadian television programmes such as the ‘Rick Mercer Report’.
What I was most interested in during this class was the concept of using media as a foundation to explore other avenues. The two examples I have in my notes for this are South Park as an example of racial discourse and The Simpson’s as parody.
Although I could write for hours on both these subjects being an avid fan of both series, I think a better example would be Trailer Park Boys as the embodiment of Canadian humour, culture and hegemony.
Trailer Park Boys is set in a Dartmouth, Nova Scotia trailer park and follows the daily lives of small time crooks Ricky, Julian, Bubbles and many others. There are many examples of how TPB is the embodiment of our nation’s humour, however I think the three most important examples for reflecting this are ‘Rickyisms’, the character J-Roc, and one of the boy’s notorious crimes.
‘Rickyism’s’ are a type of colloquialism used by one of the show’s main characters named Ricky (see youtube link below for some laughs). A Rickyism involves Ricky imitating informal speech, brutalizing figures of speech, etc. An example of a Rickyisms would be Ricky’s idea of robbing an ATM to pay for going on a cruise (‘getting two birds stoned with one joint’ – a misunderstanding for killing two birds with one stone). Perhaps even more memorable is Ricky asking for a bag of jalapeno chips, which Bubbles corrects him on ‘haaaaaalllapennnooo, the j is silent’ to which Ricky replies, ‘I know how to pronounce it, I order jalapeno, not halapeno’. Rickyisms are a prime example of Canadian humour because in order to understand a Rickyism, one must have excellent knowledge of our language’s sayings and proverbs and see the humour in Ricky misconstruing every one the show’s writers can think up.
J-Roc is definitely a breed apart from other television show characters, but not out of place on TPB. Religious viewers of the show can make the connection from a Christmas special in which ‘Jamie’, a white, well-meaning kid from the trailer park smokes marijuana for the first time with his African-Canadian counter part Tyrone and they then become the rap duo T and J-Roc. J-Roc functions in the show as a Canadian parody of white American youth embracing hip hop, such as Eminem. This allows for Canadians to see the laughability of a white male in a trailer park pretending to be a gangster from the slums of Los Angeles or New York, and in turn have a laugh at the expense of America’s newest craze.
Finally, the wild and laughable schemes Ricky, Julian and Bubbles think up could earn them a spot on America’s Most Wanted blooper reel. I’ve included a link to the TPB movie trailer, in which the boy’s botch an ATM robbery and then commit ‘The Big Dirty’. The Big Dirty is the crime to end all crimes, a crime that can allow a criminal to retire and never have to return to jail. In the film, Julian speaks with another criminal who says he has the perfect crime, ‘change’. Julian replies, ‘Naw man, I can’t change, I’m a career criminal.’ But of course, only a Nova Scotian prison would possess a criminal with aspirations of stealing a giant gumball machine full of change (because, of course, unlike marked bills, change is untraceable). These ridiculous and hilarious crimes are another example of Canadian hegemonic humour – we are laid back and willing to let our minds roam free in order for a good laugh, we find hilarity in stupidity and absurdity and this is what sets us apart as a nation.
Works Cited
Rickyisms - http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=TR3QHoqfhX8
J-Roc - http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=6EqhNJXMRXU
TPB: The Movie Trailer - http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=WBkUHZ68wIE
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