In some more lighthearted Canadian news tonight; Canadian Tatiana Maslany has won the Emmy award for best lead actress in a Drama, for Orphan Black (which is also filmed in Canada).
Which is, in fact, a Canadian series, though you might not know it, given the extremes to which the series goes to pretend to be American.
yeah, one of my biggest pet peeves in life is the idiocy and xenophobia of tv show networks. ob along with the vast majority of canadian tv shows are explicitly told, by the international networks that pick them up, that they HAVE to make their show seem like it takes place in an ambiguous north american city. networks think that the rest of the world (aka the us-american audiences) won’t understand/take the show seriously if it’s explicitly shown that the show is canadian and it takes place in canada. I’ve heard ppl tell me that when they worked on canadian shows, here in my home province, they would often have to reshoot two separate takes of the same scenes when currency was in them. one was done with canadian cash and the other with usa cash, because -heaven forbid- the show be aired in the states with not-us money. it’s all a load of bullshit.
Canada Does Not Exist
While I agree that this trope is everywhere and is a very interesting manifestation of Canadians + anxiety about our identity, where does Orphan Black play into it? Personally, I find the show very casually Canadian, in the sense that it doesn’t have to remind us loudly that it takes place in Canada, just like we ourselves don’t remind one another that we’re here either? And by doing so, it allows it to take place in Canada without taking me out of the story (which I find happens to me when shows and movies are less subtle about being Canadian).
Orphan Black uses Canadian currency, takes place in a Canadian city, makes reference to real locations and real neighbourhoods within that city, even in regards to where the characters live? Like Felix would totally live in a loft in Queen West, and of course Allison lives in the suburbs of Scarborough (iirc, they actually film in Markham though), and S would live in Leslieville, and I knew exactly where Elizabeth Childs’ house was located as soon as I saw it. Cosima’s school is filmed at a real life sciences school in Toronto, they visit iconic landmarks within the city, even places that are innocuous like the dry cleaners keep their location-based names, such as Riverdale Dry Cleaners rather than changing it to Bob’s Cleaners (as many shows do). Scenes including the CN Tower don’t edit the skyline, because it is the skyline of the setting of the show. Even transitioning scenes are very much scenes of Toronto.
This of course doesn’t apply when the show has scenes in Iceland or the UK, which it has done, but otherwise i find it pretty obviously Canadian in a way that’s subtle about it. I’m just curious about where it erases the fact that it’s Canadian, is there something I’m not seeing?
okay, so this is the thing. OB “earned” the right to do these canadian things. There was an interview with john, graeme and someone from bbc america talking about this. bbc america was very hesitant to pick up the show because it was canadian, so they had to make the show, again, an ambiguous north american city. which it was, and still actually is to a large degree. the first season there was no money shown. that right was earned later down the line, after the show proved itself. and to this day the city of toronto nor canada has not ONCE been named by name in ob. it’s only in the little stuff, the stuff that you mentioned above. the canadians know it’s canada, but illiterately no one else does (except for the hard core fans). naming parts of the gta means nothing to ppl outside of canada. hell, it means near to nothing to me, who is outside of ontario. ob is a canadian codded show. it’s not out and proud. if you want to see a canadian show that’s canadian-canadian watch continuum. it takes place in vancouver, and they reference vancouver all the time like a normal show. the vancouver cops and actually vancouver cops, unlike beth and art who are toronto cops but never identify themselves as such, because that’s too loud for the international audience.
