"Canadian Queer Identity with James Somerton" Transcript

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Okay um, so one of the things we get asked a lot on in comment sections and live streams and everything, when people discover that we're Canadian is, which is, they're always shocked by, is that—

I did that on purpose, is why don't we ever talk about any Canadian content, or being Canadian, or queer Canadian stuff, and usually my answer is that there's not a lot to talk about but really my answer is Americans don't care and that's the majority of YouTube. So I figured today would actually be a good time to kind of focus on that a bit more um, because as Canadian queer content creators and in the process of becoming Canadian queer filmmakers that's a very, like, important thing for me is, you know, there's…

For me anyway, maybe I'm just completely underexposed to it, there's not as big a queer Canadian voice especially in like traditional filmmaking and in television and stuff like that as there is from America. Even if you watch things on like CBC, uh like Schitt's Creek, which we'll get into, that does have, like, major queer characters and storylines, it doesn't seem to get as much attention as a minor queer character on something on CBS, or something like that. And so I figured we would talk about that and why that's kind of frustrating, and how we got there, and maybe what we can do about it?

Uh, this is the place to have that discussion. Um, so this is something that James and I have regularly talked about on our own, uh very frequently is just this, this discussion about why, to use layman’s terms, we know basically nothing about Canadian gay rights in general. Uh, we really have to struggle to kind of think about what we know and even do, like, research. Where, when it comes to American dates like, events and dates we got that on top of our head.

Oh yeah, we can give you a blow by blow of the Stonewall Riots, but ask us about like, queer rights in Canada, it's like ah, ahh, Ginger Snaps came out from like ‘99 I think. And that's that's about it.

I don't think it is.

Yeah and like, having, you know, come from a film background, it is sort of um, the, there's a weird relationship between like Canada and media, and specifically with America's media, because we are so close in culture and in geography that American media just kind of like funnels its way into Canada whether we like it or not. And so when for instance, uh, in when uh, gay marriage became legal in Canada, there wasn't a whole lot of talk about it among people that I knew at the time, and I was a teenager at the time, everyone knew I was gay but I didn't know if anyone else was. Um, but even among the adults and stuff, there was no big drama about it where I lived, there was no discussion of it. It was just something that happened.

Whereas, two, I think it was two years before, um, you know, San Francisco had started issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, and it was the biggest thing, America was going to melt down, the whole world was going to end, and everyone in the whole world--

Yeah [laughs]. And it's sort of like, come to my realization lately that, at least for me, and this might be different from other people, for other people I hope it is, is that when something important happens in Canada, it's almost, even as Canadians, we're kind of like “Oh that happened.”

And when something even minorly of any importance happens in the United States it's, obviously, it makes the news in Canada, it makes the news globally. We as a country I feel like, even like the queer population, we're on the edge of our seats waiting to find out when's America going to get, you know, same-sex marriage when we had already had it for several years beforehand. And it seems like much of the world was the same way, and I think it is because of this American dominated media that just kind of funnels its way into Canada, like.

Closing in on twelve now, I think.

And it's not just America, there's lots of countries, um specifically the ones that come to mind right away are the UK and Japan, they basically create media for the whole world whereas Canadian media is very Canadian-centric, like as someone who has gone to film school in Canada and tried to get movies made the traditional way in Canada, it is nigh impossible to get something made in Canada without it being the most Canadian thing ever made.

And whereas, you know, in the United States, there will be movies made in the United States that take place in every country in the whole world, there'll be movies made in the UK that that happens with, in Australia that that happens with um, whereas here it's very Canadian-centric in order to get the money from the federal government grants and stuff like that. Um, Quebec kind of has its own system and that's why a lot of movies that are produced in Quebec will actually be Oscar-nominated, they will get nominated for best foreign feature [Best International Feature, formerly known as Best Foreign Language Film] and things like that whereas movies produced basically everywhere else in Canada are flatly ignored in the United States.

Something like Schitt’s Creek basically became popular in the United States by accident because it was acquired by Netflix, people in the US started watching it on Netflix, started falling in love with the characters, and the story, and the world, and everything, and they had no idea that it was Canadian. And the show, even in the end season, you know, they go to what is ostensibly Toronto or New York, but they don't say what city it is when they go to kind of pitch their idea for uh, spinning off the motel.

And you know, that's on purpose, because if they said we're going to Toronto to talk to these rich people, a huge swamp of the American audience just clicks off.

Yeah, like something that Americans don't really, they might know it but they don't know it, is two of the highest grossing movies ever made were made by a Canadian who actually tried to get them financed in Canada, uh this is both Avatar movies and Titanic, but the Canadian government wasn't interesting, and interested in forking over you know, hundreds of millions of dollars to James Cameron to get these things made. So he went through the traditional studio system and made himself Fox, and I think Paramount—

A huge fortune! And the Canadian populace lost out on that, and we lost out on the ability to say like, that's a Canadian movie because although it was made by Canadian filmmakers, it wasn't Canadian enough. And so we're in this weird position where specifically with the film industry, the federal government does seem to work against—

Yeah, Denis Villeneuve, who is from Quebec, wanted that to take place in Ontario and he wanted it to make it through the Canadian system, so that he could employ Canadians and stuff like that, give back to the system that helped him get to where he was. And the federal government turned him down for the financing, so it ended up taking place in you know, generic flat American state.

Oddly, you know, as even as the government tries to, you know, create a system where the Canadian media industry is built to enhance Canadian identity. it actually goes in the opposite direction because of the constraints put on it.

Yeah um, because Canada kind of acts in a way that um, New Zealand acts with Australia. Australia has a film production industry, New Zealand has a film service industry, where Australian productions will go to New Zealand because of tax breaks and such, but also because New Zealand has a lot of people who are professionals who can work on the film sets for less money, and that's basically how Canada works for the United States.

We have a service industry that is much more popular among American filmmakers than a production industry. We do have a production industry that does make Canadian content, but when you hear of a movie being made in Canada, it's not likely going to be about Canadian issues, it's not going to star Canadians not likely um, probably not going to be written or directed by a Canadian, and we promise this is all going to come back to queer issues eventually.

Yeah, like maple-leaf shaped starships.

Yeah like there's, it, it actually honestly kind of shocks me that there has not been, you know, obviously not a Hollywood movie, but a Canadian movie that has been made, [glances at cellphone] apparently “Likely Fraud” is calling me, um, about the fact that in 1969 in Canada we decriminalized same-sex sex. That did not happen in the United States until 2003. So it took decades and decades in the difference between that happening between the two countries.

But I think you would be hard-pressed to be able, asking a queer person in the United States like what year did, uh I can't remember what it was called now uh, Lawrence v Texas what year did that go through the Supreme Court they can tell you it's 2003. If you ask you know, most queer Canadians what year was um homosexuality decriminalized in Canada I don't think most of us could tell you

Well there's a shockingly undocumented history of police violence against queer people in Canada that goes back like, just as back as far back as United States one does, and we and we all know about the Stonewall riots and everything, we don't know about the riots that happen in Montreal, we don't know about the riots that happened in Toronto, and we don't talk about these things and it might be that we want to kind of act like you know, Canada is above it all and that “Oh, there are no you know big issues in Canada” when it comes to you know like uh race relations, and uh indigenous rights, and queers’ rights and stuff like that like “Oh we figured that out long ago we don't have to talk about it now,” even though it's like no, no.

To kind of, to, to explain what that is um, I'll make it short. Basically in the, I believe it was the late 1700s that might have been the early 1800s—

Uh yeah, when it was Upper and Lower Canada, um there was a Scottish gentleman that um, basically came across over to Canada, he was kicked out of Scotland for being gay and he came over with his twinkie boyfriend. And as the legend basically goes, they moved into a like, manor house in Ontario—

Uh, yeah in northern Church St. and it was like, this is a legend—[Nick interrupts and overlaps here, hard to discern the exact words]

A werewolf that was killing cops and, and this movie has never been made and I would love to make it, because that needs to be made!

Like why are you hiding werewolves from us, Scotland?

You know, it's, I think I feel like a part of it is our, as a country's fault, that we do have this really interesting, these really interesting pieces of queer history in Canada, um, that we don't brag about. We don't talk about like, every queer American will tell you the story of Stonewall up and down, they'll get it wrong about who threw a brick and everything—

Oh God, I can't remember. Um, but like they will know that and even those of us who do know these stories, if we want to tell it, it's very difficult for us to tell it you know besides like, Nick and I making a video essay about it that has you know, limited reach because YouTube just does not like queer stuff.

Um, but you know that's kind of something that you know, recently we have discovered oh there's an audience for queer stories with things like Heartstopper, and Red, White & Royal Blue, and things like that, and it's like oh people actually like these things, and will watch them and…then we're sitting on this trove of historical stories that are real life things that were just like [hums and hms jokingly].

Like as a teenager I could tell you like, chapter and verse American history, from like the Mayflower onward and…I might have known who the first Prime Minister was, it's Johnny MacDonald, I know that now, but when I was 16 I might not have known that.

I think—

There's a, there's a focus. Like Canadians will we kind of hyper focus on queer rights in America, because again we think oh you know we won, it's over, um, and we're not paying attention to the fact that New Brunswick just recently passed some anti-queer laws and put them into effect that are gonna affect a lot of people in school.

And most of us don't know this is happening, we know stuff's going on in Florida and Texas and everything, but again that's that media permanent, permanence that just comes into Canada, and we know what's going on in Florida and we know, you know, that all of that stuff with the presidential election we know there's crazy stuff that's going on there, but we don't know that oh it's actually happening here to a lesser degree very quietly, and we're just completely out of the loop on it—

They feel like, they feel safe that they're out of, that they're keeping us out of the loop.

This was much more like, detailed, planned out before we started talking. Usually what happens—

Yeah.

Yeah like there were parties like, I remember when the Supreme Court said that you know, you could have same-sex marriage in the United States, there were parties in Canada in Toronto and Vancouver and Montreal, just like there were in the United States. But when we did that I don't remember giant parties happening.

We’re very proud of that.

That happened a lot.

Yeah like, well that, that happened. The first time I remember that happening was on the TV show Queer as Folk um, which was actually a Canadian co-production that never gets any credit for being a Canadian co-production.

And I think it was in season four they went to Canada on a, on a charity bike ride, and uh Michael and Ben got married, and it was this, this whole you know storyline about how safe it was in Canada and stuff like that, versus the United States and everything. And like, that was the image of Canada that queer Americans were being given, that it's like, you know, Canada is this, like, this, which, yeah.

Yeah!

Yeah we do, we do get that a lot that like, “Oh everything's great in Canada like, you guys got gay marriage in like 2006,” I think? Um—

Yeah, and you know, there were so many Americans I remember like being online, chronically online in like 2006, 2007, and having a lot of American friends, and then kind of kind of saying like, “You guys got gay marriage, like everything's good now,” and I'm like, I have a lot of disabled friends who are queer, that would disagree with you, because if they get gay married, they're going to lose benefits, and that's something we still haven't dealt with—

And that we don't like to talk about it.

Yeah um, I assume, I've never been either so [laughter].

Well there's you know, tax breaks and stuff like that that you get when you're married, and in a lot of states, if you're not married they won't let you into hospitals and stuff like that, which—

Those are maybe rights that are worth fighting for.

Employment non-discrimination—

Should have been on the dock at first.

And to just prove the point we've spent the last five minutes talking about America, and because American media, American news just finds its way in, it's like a brain worm that just goes in and just kind of sticks in there.

Yeah, and like, like you said like, that doesn't so much happen with, with, what was it? The Netherlands?

Yeah, I know way more Americans who know what uh, Bon Cop, Bad Cop is.

So it's like, I know way more Americans who know what that is and like, we covered that in film school and everything, than Americans who might know, you know, damn, now I can't even think of a Canadian movie.

When did that happen?

That got Oscar buzz?

Yeah like um, oh, I can see the movie poster.

That one, um the video store I grew up near had that poster up for like a decade. Um, stuff like that and—

And that was, that was actually, I remember when Juno first came out, like every Canadian being like, “Oh, this is a Canadian movie, look at all the Americans watching the Canadian movie” and that was a movie the Canadian government refused to fund, even though it had a Canadian, mostly Canadian cast, Canadian director, Canadian producers, they had to go to America, getting America to get the money, and then it made a couple hundred million dollars and won some Oscars.

And it's like, that cycle keeps repeating itself, that there are these movies that we would be able to take credit for that the government, the federal government um, no matter what party's in charge, for some reason they're always like “No, it's not Canadian enough. No, we don't want to say that Titanic is a Canadian movie, or Avatar, or Juno, or Aliens, we don't want to say that these are Canadian movies, or Arrival”—

Well they're not politicians, they're not elected.

And I mean they're even currently trying to put into effect things that will make it harder for Canadians to see Canadian content on YouTube, because their their thought process behind it with these bills, these Canadian Heritage bills that they've recently passed, that are trying to basically bring online media, give parity between online media and television um, is that you know they want more Canadian content to be put in front of Canadian eyeballs is their thought process, but what is actually happening is they're like, “Okay, if you don't, okay, Facebook, YouTube, if you don't do this we're gonna fine you,” and so YouTube and Facebook are like, “Okay, well we're just gonna not show any Canadian stuff at all to Canadians,” and I've seen it like on my computer that like I've clicked on a CTV News video and it's like “This is blocked in your region,” I'm like “What?”

But not in America.

They're not anonymous but they're, most people don't know who they are.

The right amount of beavers.

You do have options there's maple leafs, beavers—

Parliament, you can show Parliament.

It's much more, in the, you know, the dangerous word, it's much more driven toward Canadian propaganda, than it is Canadian media. The federal government would much prefer, you know, which, nobody wants to see propaganda in general, let alone people from another country. And so it seems like, you know, the heritage ministers and stuff like that are more interested in that, than they are in actually promoting—

Canadian people.They want to promote the idea of—

And Canadian excellence are movies like Arrival, and like, things that Denis Villeneuve has done, and James Cameron, and like…these amazing actors that leave Canada, because they can't work.

Mmhm.

Yeah.

Something that's more easily taken credit for.

Mmhmm, yeah.

Well Margaret Atwood's an example of, she just left, she tried being published, you know, the writer of The Handmaid's Tale and multiple like, classic novels, tried being published in Canada, was turned down because their books weren't Canadian enough—

And then left, and became one of the most, you know, published through New York, and became one of the most celebrated authors of the generation.

No.

Technically, Canada wasn’t a country in the 1800s, I don't know if you'd say—

I have no idea.

Yeah and like, for instance, this was something that, Nick wrote a novel called Gentlemen's Club and it takes place in San Francisco, and we were going through the list of the Canadian book awards that Canadian authors can submit to, and it was disqualified from all of them, because it doesn't take place in Canada and so even though it's a Canadian author, you know, that is, and it's about you know, queer superheroes, and—

Yeah, and so, even though it's like it is Canadian excellence, it is disqualified from being an example of Canadian excellence, because well, it takes place in San Francisco, instead of—

We are supposed to, yeah.

And like, I think that kind of makes the point is that we as queer Canadians don't, for the most part, have a real idea of what a queer Canadian identity or is and—

Well, yeah, I was going to say, because, you know, it's not that the information isn't there, the books are available in the libraries and stuff, like that. You can read them. I, I've read several the last couple of years, um, but the media that people watch the most, TV shows, movies, that's not there to, kind of, say, like, there is a queer Canadian history that you don't know exists.

The basketball commercial.

Yeah, and the thing that, like, it doesn't confuse me, because I know why it doesn't happen, um, is you will see things that are co-produced by the BBC and HBO, and they're very British, they are the most British things you will ever see, and they're promoted by HBO or Netflix. Why isn't CBC trying to do that? Netflix Canada is a thing.

Yeah, and again, that comes back to Schitt’s Creek which was, you know, Canadian across the board: it was filmed in Canada, it started Canadians, all of that, but they never said it was in Canada.

Mmhmm.

Like it's very telling, I think um, that you know the producers of Schitt’s Creek, after it was a huge success in Canada, in the US, across the world on Netflix, they never got a production deal in the US. It's like, well, why not? Why was there no Hollywood production deal? Why was there no follow-up production deal with CBC, or anything?

And there was a hot minute right after um, Schitt’s Creek won like every Emmy for its final season that um, the federal Liberals were talking about changing the Heritage laws, the Heritage Act, so that more generally produced content could be funded in Canada, and then the pandemic happened and that just went away, um.

Maybe someday. Um, but, you know, until then, that is one thing that, you know, little self-promotion, Telos, our production company, is actually making, we're going into production in, in 2024, of a movie that is, again, doesn't take place in a Canadian city, but it is starring Canadians, it's written and produced by Canadians, directed by Canadians, and takes place in Canada, but there's not going to be any maple leafs flying around or anything like that, but it is Canadian media, queer Canadian media that will be put out there, and you know, just to test the waters and see if there there is an audience for that, because I think there is.

Yeah.

As we've kind of proven there's 320,000 subscribers on the YouTube channel who actually care about what two Canadians think.

I don't know why.

But yeah, so I think like, in closing, just kind of saying, you know, I, I think that there is, that there is a distinct queer Canadian identity that is distinct from the American identity.

I think, well, I think it does exist, we just don't reflect it back at ourselves.

Yeah. And that's not necessarily how many beavers you can fit into ninety minutes.

Well, Turning Red took place in Canada.

Yeah, exactly!

Question time?

Yeah.

Yeah, because Canadians, as Canadians, as a country we do have a whole lot of work left to do, and looking at America via American media and saying “Well, we've got a good compared to them”—

Regress, yeah, the, yeah that's the direction. Okay so, um, yeah, so I guess that's that. Uh, we rambled a lot. I thought it would—no, I'm not shocked at all. Uh, so does anybody have any questions? Yeah.

Yeah, like I the only time that I'm like “Oh, this is Canadian,” is when I can tell it's been produced following the heritage laws because it's got all the specific things. Um, but I think with something like music, it's, there's a much lower barrier to entry, so to, you know, produce a record costs, you know, a percentage of what it would cost to make a movie or a TV show—

Yeah, uh, mostly hard drives. Um, whereas…sorry, my brain just went blank there.

Um, yeah, so it is a much lower barrier to entry for music, and I think that there's kind of a democratization going on now with, you know, like, TikTok, and with YouTube, and stuff like that where you don't need half a million dollars to make something and send it out there, and you can kind of do what we kind of did, which was just be Canadian, and have Canadian perspectives on things, and kind of trick people into paying attention to you, and—

Pretty much. And like, across social media like, there's a lot of, and on YouTube, there's a lot of Canadian YouTubers, and a lot of queer Canadian YouTubers that nobody knows that they're Canadian.

I just watched a compilation of that, of people reacting to that commercial—

Yeah, yeah.

“I can put my arm back on, you can’t.”

I just watched a compilation of Americans reacting to that, to the house hippo commercial and so many of them thinking, Nick interrupts with “Is that actually”] “Does Canada have pygmy hippos?”

Yeah, completely missed

I think that answered the question, I think?

Yeah, um. Uh, to answer the first one, we've actually got some videos planned coming up in the fall and the early winter, um, because I've been noticing that too. Um—

Kind of, with my kind of business school/media hat, I know why it's happening and I feel like I need to make a video explaining why it's happening, so people can kind of, change, and hopefully change their trajectory on stuff, um.

Like specifically because if you ask—

If you ask gay men on Twitter what they think of Heartstopper, they will usually say they don't watch it, so there's a [both laugh].

Yeah.

And as for your second question, um, at least for me, I grew up in a really small town, and so it was this really weird kind of thing, where I kind of didn't know that gay people existed, but I knew I liked boys, and there wasn't like, the realization of it until, I can't remember what, I think it was the movie, Kiss Me Guido, my mom rented it, and I was, and we were watching it and I was like [gasps] okay!

I hadn’t seen The Birdcage till I was like 17 weeks?

Next question. Go ahead.

Well, we are going from left to right.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, um—

There’s one, there’s basically one place to be distributed.

Whereas in America, you have, I mean, just in, like a block on New York City, you have five different theater chains, whereas Cineplex basically has the monopoly in Canada. There are some like, small art house theaters which will show like, second run movies and stuff but like—

Yeah, they're dying off and basically everything is Cineplex. So you need to, be able to have the money to be able to get into a Cineplex theater, and that isn't very easy to do when—you first you need like, quite a bit of money, so in order to do that, you basically need in Canada, you need the government funding, and so that's kind of…you’re out of luck there, unless you've got some angel investor in Dubai or something who's just throwing money at you, um.

But even then you do need to be able to, like, if you make a movie that gets onto Netflix Canada, awesome. Well you're not on Netflix US, it might as well not exist.

And so you do need that international distribution, and there's basically nowhere in Canada to, there's basically nowhere in Canada that does international distribution—

Let alone and, and, there is only one theater chain in Canada.

There's lots of people who will help, just not, like, government.

Well like, who's gonna get it out there, who's gonna like, put it out into the world? I don't mean like, your friend who's gonna you know sit with you and edit your book for free over several months of laborious um, reading out louds over a table, like, I mean like, you know, like, people who are looking to try and make money off of your stuff, there's no one helping you.

Yeah, because there are like in the United States, there are tons of distribution companies that will find a way to put your movie into theaters, specifically because you need a specific theatrical run to be eligible for Oscars, um, and so if they think your movie's good enough, they need to get you into at least one week in New York and LA in order to be considered for Oscars. Um, whereas like…so there's a ton of different distribution companies that can, that can do that, and then there's, you know, home video and streaming and stuff like that, whereas in Canada there's really not a whole lot of distribution companies.

There's, there's Maple, um, which it does mostly, um, uh, uh, horror stuff and a bit of queer stuff, and then there's, there was Alliance Atlantis, but I don't know if they're actually still in business. They basically worked as Warner Brothers distributor in Canada and everything else is American distribution unless you're going through like Crave or something like that.

The film industry is not dissimilar from past years.

It's because when Hollywood makes movies about Hollywood, it's very laudatory.

They never actually make movies about Hollywood.

Okay.

Okay.

Really?

I'm immediately impressed and interested, so I'm definitely going to check that out. Thank you.

The good and bad, like America will talk about the bad stuff.

Mmhmm.

But like, like I said again, it's basically, CanCon is basically Canadian propaganda. Uh, it is like, a very nice word for Canadian propaganda. Not all of it, some of it's actually, really good, but this, most of the stuff from the government is very, that the government will fund is very laudatory of Canada. Um, and so, you know, talking about the, you know, the native school children and the graves, and the stuff like that, they—even though that's something that is like, you know, what I think Americans, and you know, British people, and everyone around the world, that's something they'd be interested in knowing, and…but we are very squeamish to admit that we did anything wrong [Nick interrupts and start to speak and then stops] and I'm kind of like, Germany produces movies about the Holocaust, but we are just very much like, “Yeah, yeah, look Justin Trudeau has the pride flag!”

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Yes!

Very openly.

It's an industry, it's a whole industry.

Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like I, I completely, I'm a true crime junkie, like—

Like, the, I am convinced that the fact that there has not been a, like, a series about the Bruce McArthur murders is because of what the people he killed looked like. Like, there is a, there's a Netflix series, it's a docu-series and those murders got a two-parter in it. People were talking about it all over Twitter and there is like nothing about it in Canada, and it's, I think again, that sort of propaganda idea of “Oh, we don't want to talk about that because that makes us look racist and bad,” and it's like, or you can point out “Yes—”

“It would.”

Like that's an HBO miniseries waiting to happen, they made Dahmer, like, Jesus.

Yes. [laughs] Don't let Ryan Murphy near it.

Yeah.