POP-CULTURE COLUMN: How Canadians Have Enriched American Culture
By Dan Brown The United States of America doesn’t need Canada. That might be true. But in these tense times, a gentle reminder may be in order. Such a reminder could help to repair the fractured relations between our two nations by listing all the ways Canada (through individual Canadians) has enriched American culture over the decades. You can probably come up with your own list, so consider this one a starting point. It’s in no particular order. *Mary Pickford: America’s Sweetheart was born in Toronto. Hollywood’s first millionaire, she was one of the co-founders of the United Artists film studio, which was designed to be a haven for creative types where they didn’t have to answer to the studio bosses. She also helped found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which lives on to this day in the form of the Oscars. James Cameron, to name just one example, is a Canadian who followed in Pickford’s footsteps, becoming a modern-day titan in Tinseltown. Imagine how many American jobs Canadians have created in Los Angeles! *The SCTV gang: John Candy, Catherine O’Hara, Rick Moranis, and others. They reflected a slightly skewed version of smalltown America – Melonville – back at American viewers, making them laugh and think about their own lives and institutions. *Dan Aykroyd, the Kingston funnyman who was on a mission from God to save the blues. The 1980 comedy the Blues Brothers came at a crucial time in the history of the blues, one of America’s truly original art forms. It helped to reignite interest in rhythm and blues music at a time when disco ruled. Aykroyd and his American partner John Belushi famously returned the royalties from their cover songs to the original artists, who had not been treated kindly by the record companies. If not for Akyroyd and Belushi, who knows how music history would have turned out. *James Naismith was born before Confederation and went on to be a McGill University educator before inventing basketball. Arguably the second-most popular spectator sport in the United States, basketball has generated billions of dollars in revenues for U.S. individuals and companies – where would Nike be without hoops? Professional basketball has now grown into a business with a global presence, inspiring leagues around the world. *Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Tommy Chong, and others. They all make America laugh, which is no small feat. *Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Yes, the Americans claim him, as do the Scottish, but let’s go ahead and lay claim to him anyway. The cellphone – evolving through the decades off of Bell’s origins designs – is arguably the most-used, most important invention on the planet today. Canada had at least something to do with its inception. *Justin Bieber was born in London and raised in Stratford, and went on to conquer the world of popular music at the beginning of this century! And he’s still at it! *Filmmaker Norman Jewison directed a long list of movies, becoming one of the most influential figures in 1970s America. If you zero in on just one of those films, In the Heat of the Night, you can see how he helped bridge the racial divide in the United States at a time of high tension between black and white Americans. For that movie alone, he is surely owed some props. *Lorne Michaels is one of the most powerful people in show biz. He took his idea for a late-night variety show to the TV powers-that be in the United States and turned it into an American cultural institution that has launched the careers of countless actors, writers and producers. I would love for a business-type person to try to calculate the economic impact of more than 50 years of Saturday Night Live, including the movie spinoffs the series has spawned. Honorary mentions: Neil Young (ally to one side or the other of the political spectrum), Margaret Atwood (warned against a theocratic future America), Marshall McLuhan (visionary media thinker who came up with the term “global village.”), Celine Dion (what would Las Vegas be without her?). When you look at a list like this, it’s hard not to conclude that Canada has had a bigger impact on the United States than any other country. Remember, the above are just a few examples. But who would you add? Leave your candidates in the comments! Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 34 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.
No One Feels Guilty About Their Guilty Pleasures
By Dan Brown What are your guilty pleasures? Reality TV? Soap operas? Disco music? The Three Stooges? Something else? My guilty pleasures include old Marvel comic books, black-and-white sci-fi magazines, and yacht rock. But here’s the thing: If you’re like me, you probably don’t feel all that guilty while enjoying your guilty pleasures. In fact, almost no one does. It’s time to admit that the term “guilty pleasure” has outlived its usefulness. It’s been a long time since any of us felt shame for liking so-called “lowbrow” culture, and there are a number of reasons for the shift. The original idea behind putting those two words together was that some movies, songs, TV shows, et cetera were so cruddy they were beneath supposedly cultured people. It was a way to separate the things that were Art from the stuff that was crap. This meant going to the opera was better for you than, say, watching Road Runner cartoons. If you appreciated highbrow things, you were a better person and if you liked pop culture, your tastes were considered stunted. (The question this line of thinking prompts is, why are all the things that are supposed to be good for me so hard to consume? In this view, culture is medicinal – it tastes awful, but you’ll be better for experiencing it.) Somewhere along the line, our collective thinking changed. Thank goodness. As pop culture has moved to the centre of our culture (our “discourse,” if you want to use a fancy academic word), it has become more respectable, more like Art. When I was a kid delivering the London Free Press in the 1970s, they didn’t report weekend movie grosses every Monday. Fast-forward to today and Hollywood is a big, legitimate business. No one disputes motion pictures have a role to play in telling our collective story. Even horror pictures! Or look at what’s happened with TV. Once derided as the boob tube (because TV shows were made for viewers of low intelligence), network TV underwent a renaissance in the 1990s that has given way to the streaming revolution we are now experiencing. We are in a TV Golden Age. Much more money and effort is invested into making entertainment in the 2020s than 50 years ago. And we also have the internet, a global communications hub that allows us to talk with other fans around the world, and guess what? They agree there’s a lot more going on in populist culture than the snobs ever gave it credit for. Superman is a metaphor for the immigrant experience? Not just a dumb comic about a hero who punches bad guys? What the? The theory of the long tail means those who love Dungeons & Dragons, for instance, in one community don’t feel so alone anymore – there are RPG enthusiasts everywhere, and if that many people love gaming, can they all be wrong? The middle phase in this shift was when people would say they appreciated something “ironically,” which was another way to wink, to indicate you were too smart to be enjoying something, but you were self-aware enough to know it wasn’t really that mentally nutritious. Well, in 2025 no one says that much anymore, either. For better or worse, we no longer live in a shame-based society. So if you catch yourself copping to your own “guilty pleasures,” don’t feel you need to use those words. Consider this column permission to like whatever culture you prefer – and not feel ashamed or embarrassed while enjoying it. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
