Mondo Canuck: a Canadian pop culture odyssey.

Mondo Canuck, by film and popular cultural critic Geoff Pere and television producer Greig Dymond, is subtitled A Canadian Pop Culture Odyssey. It might also be subtitled The Revenge of Canadian Pop Culture or Death to Morningside. Since Pere was noisily let go in 1993 as the host of CBC Radio's first attempt at a show on popular culture, Prime Time, and it was replaced by reruns of Morningside, he has plotted this book. Co-written with his Prime Time producer Dymond (who is now the entertainment producer at CTV's Canada AM), Mondo Canuck proudly waves the flag of Canadian pop culture--indeed, the first image of the book is Johnny Wayne saluting with his trademark childish grin while Frank Shuster holds a small Canadian flag atop a globe--while systematically dismantling the officially sanctioned Canadian culture represented by the CBC, Peter Gzowski, Pierre Berton, Front Page Challenge and Norman Jewison.

Pere and Dymond outline their case in the introduction: "Here's our suggestion. What if, for a moment, we were to drop that conventional Canadian middle-brow disin-clination toward popular culture--a disinclination that is still very much alive and well--to suggest Canada is every bit as distinct in its approach to schlock as it is to art, and than the former may indeed reveal vastly more of a national distinction that the latter. That it's possible to see as much of ourselves (if not more) in Mike Myers as it is in Margaret Atwood. Moreover, what if, contrary to the established Canadian tradition of disowning anyone who dares to seek and find success elsewhere, we were to expand and ventilate our notion of what's Canadian to include what Canadians are doing on the globe pop-culture stage?"

Pere and Dymond then proceed to expand on this "what if" to include 53 eclectic chapters on Canada's contribution to global pop culture, on topics ranging from hockey to hunks, hosers to Hollywood. For instance, the chapter on hockey ("Obsession: Hockey Days and Nights in Canada") includes bios on three of the top broadcasters of all time (Foster Hewitt, Danny Gallivan and Don Cherry), (Rocket) Richard's Grecian formula commercial, a brief discussion of Face Off, described as the "most exquisitely awful" Canadian film ever made, books about hockey, songs about hockey, a brief history of hockey cards, and a play by play account of Paul Henderson's immortal goal against the Russians in 1972. Each chapter is relatively short and packed with information, not unlike a very well constructed web site. The book is specifically designed to encourage browsing, with lots of striking imagery and short bytes of information. There is a chapter on animation ("King of Cartoons: Canada's Animated Empire") with 22 reasons why Canadians have come to dominate this rapidly changing art form; a chapter on Canadian Babes ("Schwing Time: The Great Canadian Babewatch") and why Playboy's Hugh Heffner has a taste for Canadian women; a chapter on Anne Murray ("A Great Broad"); Gordon Lightfoot ("Blood on the Tracks"); the sound explosion of the nineties (Alanis Morisette, k.d lang, The Tragically Hip, Shania Twain); the rock endurables (Robbie Robertson, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Neil Young); and chapters on SCTV, game show hosts (Canada seems to have produced more than its fair share), children's TV (which Canadians excel at), Pierre Trudeau, Stompin' Tom and Moses Znaimer.

Nearly half the chapters are devoted to Canadian film and television, acknowledging the enormous influence Canadians have had on the dumbing down of North American humour. Tracing a line through the old Harvard Lampoon, Animal House, Saturday Night Live, meatballs, SCTV, Ghostbusters, Wayne's World and The Kids in the Hall, the careers of Ivan Reitman, Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, Mike Myers intersect, all of them nurtured in the rec rooms of southern Ontario, watching American TV. Indeed, to make the connection even more complete, Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels was married briefly to Rosie Shuster, the daughter of Frank, therefore tracing Canadian domination of North American comedy to its roots in the Wayne and Shuster comedy sketches for The Ed Sullivan Show.

Pere and Dymond compile lists of the coolest English Canadian movies in a chapter on Goin' Down the Road ("Life is a Highway to Hell") and the same for French Canadians films in a chapter on Mon oncle Antoine ("Fade to Black"). My only quarrel here would be that Arcand's Le declin de l'empire americain is not included. The most successful French-language film ever made in this country, it achieved the ultimate stamp of pop cultural success: Hollywood wanted to do an English-language remake. The list of the Canadians who have made it in Hollywood ("The `Eh' List: Canada's Hollywood") pretty much correspond's to Take One's Distinctly Canadian list which was published in our Summer 1996 issue. I would quarrel only with the inclusion of Alan Thicke on this list. Granted Thicke has become a major Hollywood player, but his impact on the movies is negligible. Curiously, Mondo Canuck's list does not include James Cameron, who, along with Jewison and Reitman, is surely on Hollywood's `A' list of directors.

The heart of Pevere's argument lies in the chapter on CBC's Morningside ("Canadian Shield: Who asked Peter Gzowski to save this country anyway?"). Here he outlines the myth of officially sanctioned Canadian culture, those writers, musicians, pundits, politicians, poets and farmers who make Morningside "the audio equivalent of Robert Bateman's wildlife paintings, W.O. Mitchell's prose or Kevin Sullivan's Road to Avonlea TV series: an appealing invocation of a mythical Canada (predominantly rural, simple, moral), whose absence in real life merely boosts its mythical currency. It is, in other words, a wilful act of denial--a comfort zone." Gzowski has become the official spokesperson for the enduring myth of Canada as an electronic village; however, his show is listened to by less than 15 per cent of the entire nation. Or, as Pere concludes: "Whether or not one believes that whither goes Gzowski, so goeth the nation, this much is certain: when he finally does make his exit, an idea of Canada, if not the real thing, will probably go with him. The fact is, if the elder leaves, only 15 per cent of the country might feel that their village is on the brink of oblivion. The other 85 per cent won't even notice, and for a perfectly understandable reason: because they've never been invited inside."

Pere and Dymond storm Canada's cultural ramparts with Mondo Canuck, arguing with confidence for a broader notion of Canada's contribution to North American, and therefore world, pop culture. Although they never ask the question, "Is Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters a Canadian film?" the answer is obvious. Ghostbusters is as much Canadian as it is American and speaks volumes for what we can achieve outside the narrow confines of officially sanctioned Canadian culture.