Meme: February 26: O Canada
February 26 - 
commodorified requested and required me to talk about Canada Fandom.
I feel like this is probably a term that requires at least a little explaining, and I expect I am probably the wrong person to do the explaining, but I'll give it a shot from my American-former-member-of-due-South-fandom perspective.
My sense of "Canada fandom" is that it refers to a tendency of a swathe of fandom centered on Canadian media, which I saw as epicentered on due South fandom and spreading outward through other shows and movies featuring Paul Gross, Callum Keith Rennie, Hugh Dillon, and other people who seem to show up in movies with those actors possibly on the basis of a casting phone tree. On top of being fannish about all these sources featuring Canadians, and set in Canada, a lot of people seem to extend a certain fannish attachment to the country of Canada itself, in a way that I have to assume is super weird to actual Canadians. (Sorry, Canadians. IN THE END, IT'S LOVE.)
Having happy fannish feelings about maple leaves and curling and the Canadian Arctic were all just sort of extensions of having happy fannish feelings about Benton Fraser, who loved those things, too, and then, you know: Canada fandom. I guess why Canada is sort of answerable in terms of readily available English-language media for the average USAn fan and sort of like... why corgis and why otters and why flower crowns. Because the internet, eh?
I myself had the odd sensation of being a little bit of a Canada hipster upon arriving in due South fandom: having grown up in southeast lower Michigan as a hockey fan, I already had my own fair share of exposure to excellent things coming from Canada. I totally liked Canada before it was cool, you guys. It was the birthplace of a solid half of the Red Wings roster. I grew up with the CBC as a standard TV channel. From the small town where I grew up, the nearest water park was over the border in Canada. In high school the annual drama club was to see The Phantom of the Opera in Toronto, and my parents redeemed the betrayal of forbidding me my middle school class trip by packing me off to Canada for a weekend at age fourteen. When I was in college Canada was where you went to drink legally in bars at age nineteen or twenty, and in the morning you could get Tim Horton's and Kinder Eggs before you crossed back over the border. So I always knew that Canada was where to get better chocolate and freer drinks and it was some little fraction as weird for me, encountering people who thought Canada was mostly about Mounties and Canadian films, as it must be for Canadians. Canada was the (excellent) place across the river for me, and I had always loved it in that way, even before I got into the fandoms that loved it along with me.
This entry was originally posted at http://dira.dreamwidth.org/689119.html. There are currently
comments there.
commodorified requested and required me to talk about Canada Fandom.
I feel like this is probably a term that requires at least a little explaining, and I expect I am probably the wrong person to do the explaining, but I'll give it a shot from my American-former-member-of-due-South-fandom perspective.
My sense of "Canada fandom" is that it refers to a tendency of a swathe of fandom centered on Canadian media, which I saw as epicentered on due South fandom and spreading outward through other shows and movies featuring Paul Gross, Callum Keith Rennie, Hugh Dillon, and other people who seem to show up in movies with those actors possibly on the basis of a casting phone tree. On top of being fannish about all these sources featuring Canadians, and set in Canada, a lot of people seem to extend a certain fannish attachment to the country of Canada itself, in a way that I have to assume is super weird to actual Canadians. (Sorry, Canadians. IN THE END, IT'S LOVE.)
Having happy fannish feelings about maple leaves and curling and the Canadian Arctic were all just sort of extensions of having happy fannish feelings about Benton Fraser, who loved those things, too, and then, you know: Canada fandom. I guess why Canada is sort of answerable in terms of readily available English-language media for the average USAn fan and sort of like... why corgis and why otters and why flower crowns. Because the internet, eh?
I myself had the odd sensation of being a little bit of a Canada hipster upon arriving in due South fandom: having grown up in southeast lower Michigan as a hockey fan, I already had my own fair share of exposure to excellent things coming from Canada. I totally liked Canada before it was cool, you guys. It was the birthplace of a solid half of the Red Wings roster. I grew up with the CBC as a standard TV channel. From the small town where I grew up, the nearest water park was over the border in Canada. In high school the annual drama club was to see The Phantom of the Opera in Toronto, and my parents redeemed the betrayal of forbidding me my middle school class trip by packing me off to Canada for a weekend at age fourteen. When I was in college Canada was where you went to drink legally in bars at age nineteen or twenty, and in the morning you could get Tim Horton's and Kinder Eggs before you crossed back over the border. So I always knew that Canada was where to get better chocolate and freer drinks and it was some little fraction as weird for me, encountering people who thought Canada was mostly about Mounties and Canadian films, as it must be for Canadians. Canada was the (excellent) place across the river for me, and I had always loved it in that way, even before I got into the fandoms that loved it along with me.
This entry was originally posted at http://dira.dreamwidth.org/689119.html. There are currently
comments there.