No Bodice-Ripping, Please... We’re Canadian | Will CBC’s racy The Tudors survive Heritage and Justice’s proposed content restrictions?
I learned two important things on my recent vacation. One: Walker, Texas Ranger is equally excruciating in Italian. And two, I really watch way too much TV. It’s rotting my brain.
Case in point: Italian TV has real talk shows, such as Primo Piano on TG3, where you can get the Minister of Industry and the national labour union leader hashing it out. Larry King it ain’t. I should have been fascinated. Instead, I kept flipping to Signore Walker.
I realized when I returned home to the hours of American Idol waiting on my PVR, that something is missing in my TV life. Maybe it’s intelligence, maybe it’s controversy, or maybe it’s just the simple fact that I’m not discriminating enough.
Thankfully, the Canadian government will soon start discriminating for me.
A sneaky little amendment to the recent 600-page federal budget gives Heritage and Justice the power to ixnay Telefilm funding and tax credits on projects deemed potentially offensive. In other words, they’ll yank the money for P&A if there’s too much T&A.
Heritage Canada argues that it’s crucial that government support not go to programming that is gratuitously violent or pornographic. Presumably, Telefilm’s existing regulations proscribing funding for projects containing “any elements of serious or gratuitous sexual violence or exploitation, and must not be obscene, indecent or pornographic within the meaning of the Criminal Code, or libelous or in any other way unlawful” is unclear. Yes, I can see how the federal government needs a back-up clause.
Goodbye, Ken Finkleman. Cheerio, The Tudors. And you can forget about a Brent/Karen/Lacey three-way on Corner Gas.
So how do we have to thank for this development? Evangelical crusader Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, has been a busy bee lobbying the Conservative government. Ironically, McVety’s media appearances regarding this provision have backfired, as he seems anxious to roll out Toronto International Film Festival fave Young People Fucking as a prime example of his agenda. Can anyone say “seven second delay”? McVety would be happiest seeing a return to the Porky’s era, when dentists wrote off their investments in softcore porn. Just so long as it’s not public money.
But isn’t this a little counterintuitive? Canadian movies and TV have long held a reputation for being a little on the edgier side, and this artsy-fartsiness (for the most part) has been supported by the feds. As Telefilm has been known to say, “We don’t finance movies. We finance films.” But now these films may have to step back from the edge. Way back.
Let’s face it: Telefilm is not a moneymaker. The government’s ROI on film and TV projects is usually 10-15 per cent, not exactly bullish. But that has never been the aim of the funding agency. The mandate has been culture first, dollars... hopefully. But as the international media marketplace becomes more and more crowded, it seems that it’s not enough to tell Canadian stories, even if they’re laden with sex and violence. You’d think that potentially “offensive” content would sell better anyhow.
I’d like to say that I appreciate both sides of this story, but I really don’t. If the government wants to be the morality police, they can stick to the rating system and let me determine what I’m going to watch. But at least give me the option, okay?
