Canadians get strange about their inferiority complex compared to the US. The y insist so strongly that they are better in every way - because they feel like the younger brother who never got to go on the cool camping trips with older brother and his friends. It's ridiculous, of course, as we all are. They have this great country that actually is better than ours in some ways, we just don't notice them as much as we should. Barenaked Ladies recorded an album "Gordon," slyly making fun of the Canadian tendency to name too many boys Gordon and the ridiculous preponderance of famous Canadians with that name. Compared with anyone except perhaps Scots, that is.
Nah. Even more than the Scots.
But when they've got one, they love him, and they support him through thick and thin. Females, too, such as Celine Dion, who remains a big deal largely because of fanatic Canadian loyalty. Good on them. I can't tell you how much I admire this even while I make fun of it. It's the way a country is supposed to be.
Yet apparently it got so out of hand with Lightfoot - who I loved - that SCTV had to do a sendup of his Canadian popularity.
I once mentioned to someone who grew up near the Canadian border in the 70s that Terry Jack's "Seasons in the Sun" was voted the worst song of the 70s. This set him off. He explained to me that when the batch of Canadian singer/songwriters were hitting it big through the 70s, that they'd get played to death on Canadian radio - because they were Canadian. He and his friends listened to Canadian radio to hear different things than American top 40. Then the Canadian songs that hit in America would get played to death on American radio, so he got to go through "Seasons in the Sun" twice.
ReplyDeleteI saw something very similar when I was in Australia. Australians are great, friendly people, and the best way I had to describe them was "completely unpretentious". However, there is a strong inferiority complex for the whole country. ANZAC Day is huge there, because it's when they feel they achieved notice on the world stage. Reading the newspapers, any Australian who was active outside Australia got gushing writeups, pointing out what great things they were doing for the rest of the world. Savage Garden was hitting it big at that time, and I swear that as we were driving into the outback, every third song on the radio was one of theirs - Australian boys who made it big out in the world.
I'll bet it's even worse in New Zealand, Australia's little brother.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, New Zealanders could be somewhat justified in feeling slighted:
ReplyDelete"New Zealand has been excluded from maps at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. in the United States, in IKEA stores, on the map of the board games Pandemic[4] and Risk, on the map of the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit in which Prime Minister of New Zealand John Key participated, at a world map seal at the United Nations Office at Geneva in Switzerland, on the newspaper Daily Mail,[5] on Government Executive's newsletter Defense One, on the magazine Forbes, on the digital media platform Mashable, on the Pyongyang International Airport in North Korea[2] and on the logo of the Flat Earth Society. It was also excluded from maps promoting the 2015 Rugby World Cup even though New Zealand was the then world champion."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_of_New_Zealand_from_maps
Unknown, that was a simply awesome corrective. There are two separate phenomena happening here, all in Anglospheric countries, and I'm not sure how to separate them. The US treats Canada as the invisible little brother, but at least Canada has an enormous physical map presence to force it into world consciousness. England has long treated Ireland as an invisible younger brother, but at least Ireland has a solid culture, a linguistic difference, and a completely separate cultural presence in the US to counteract that. But what has NZ got to fight back with when even Australia treats it as invisible? It is on the wrong side of the world in both longitude and latitude for international pushback. It doesn't have large, sexy mammals except in the ocean, and those are only variants of things available everywhere: dolphins, whales, sea lions.
ReplyDeletePeter Jackson filmed LOTR there, and they love him so much for it that he could accidentally poison an entire province and they would shrug it off. Yet even that is fading.
It is oh, so fashionable to talk about marginalised peoples now, but I think New Zealand has a solid claim to be included here. Which tells me that I have to send this to the two geographers in my life.
Question for the AVI League: Does this happen outside the Anglosphere? Are there neglected groups in the Chinese, Iberian, or Ashkenazi Diasporas?
ReplyDeleteLong may the supposed slighting last.
ReplyDeleteI doubt v much Mr Pengun wants hordes to pack their bags and move to his East of Eden.
Think of New Zealand like an Anglophone Quebec and that is closer, although still wrong. It is not as wrong as putting the Canada/US template onto it.
Ive been here more years than Canada, (almost 30 there) with time off for good behaviour sev years in Australia. It only took me my first 20 years to start to figure the place out.
The best kind of Ozzie (there are still plenty) differs from the NZer in that they are kind, whereas NZ is fair. But if you piss off, that kind of Strine you will know faster than a New York minute so watch yourself, said with your interest in mind. You won't know from the typical NZer, so watch yourself there too, pardner.
This is amusing as the roles are reversed, I have to bite my lip here when people who watch TV think they know what N America and N Americans are about.