Sunday, January 11, 2009
hey, canada: ya mothuh wears combat boots
julie showed me this post, born in the blog of one of her professors and (as later installments revealed) written in a very bad mood. still, because i have been as baffled as the poster as to the canadian mystique which surrounds montreal, i'm going to put up the post--also, i like controversy, and this blog needs a youtube-style comments section in which my sexuality is repeatedly compared to that of a turkish bathhouse. so, canada, here's the question: why the hell do you love montreal so much?
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I feel like when you're from New York, everything is either New York or not New York. I feel like when you're a human from any other part of the world that isn't New York (which I'm told is most of the population on earth), you like places for other reasons than whether they are or are not New York.
ReplyDeleteMOs ppl seme 2 lik Montral 4 the sam reesun that mot ppl likd (Slumdawg milyonare": they aren't FAGGGS!
ReplyDeletethe guy who wrote the blog isn't from new york, he's from california. also, contrary to what is apparently a popular belief, i believe other places are cool, too. you know where i like? toronto. it was fun to visit. you know what other place is really nice? burlington, vermont. now how about some real answers? what is it in the canadian imagination that makes montreal so mythical?
ReplyDeleteIt isn't just the Canadian imagination. I, like the author, am from California. I also happen to like Montreal. I'm not sure if there's a quantifiable ingredient that makes it a pleasant or enjoyable place to live for me.
ReplyDeletelol.
He may not have spent his childhood wrestling with Jubilant in an alley, but he did spend six years getting his MA and PhD at Columbia, and he signs off his letter with "A very happy new year from 125th Street in Harlem. I will be returning to my usual, deracinated life up north a few days from now". I can't find any information on where he grew up (just that he did he BA in California... and Russia), but he is, as someone who feels they have roots in New York, a New Yorker. And the whole point of the article, really, is to compare Montreal and New York, quantitatively and qualitatively. If this is your goal, explicit or implicit, you will always, always come up with the same conclusion: most of the world seems provincial when you're standing in Manhattan. Or, as he wankishly puts it, "In New York, in contrast, I always know, in the same way I know I exist, that I am most assuredly, metaphysically there. You cannot be in New York and doubt that you are in New York."
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, and I realize I'm getting off topic but the article got weaker the more I read it, Smith spends most of his time casting aspersions in the wrong direction (somehow, cheap shit that gets sold on St. Cat's is reflective of Montreal's obsession with it's own skyline) or widening his scope so far beyond his target that he, unsurprisingly, misses the point. Montreal has hipsters; therefore, it is a place that lacks "beauty" or "the intensity and importance of the things the grown-ups there are up to" (importance, like pizza, is the ultimate yardstick here). I suppose if you assume that Montreal has only ever existed to perpetuate a minor and fairly recent subculture, then yes, again, it can't compare to New York, where people first found out how to wear tight pants and reconnect with their star signs.
Also, complaining about Denys Arcand's use of skyline shots as some kind of tourist propaganda would make sense if Denys Arcand's movies ever portrayed Quebecois culture in a favourable light. L'Age des Tenebres, his most recent movie, is all about how the Quebec government is/will soon be a straight up dictatorship.
Anyway, I feel like I could go on but I shouldn't. And honestly, I can't offer a very complete explanation for why Canadians love Montreal. I can tell you that most Albertans don't, and that in reality Canada is so regionally fragmented that any "Canadian imagination" that you purport to have witnessed reflects, at most, a Central/Eastern perspective more than anything else. I like Montreal because it has history, because its the closest thing Canada has to a successful bilingual polis, because its not Calgary, and because it is, at least in this rustic prairie boy's eyes, a big city with all the culture that brings.
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ReplyDeletelight years later, i'm going to correct you on one point. choosing to call yourself a new yorker doesn't make you one, just like choosing to call myself a doctor won't get me into a hospital. it's one of the twatiest things you can do. it's only in the days of instant gratification that somebody can move somewhere, settle down for four or five years and then act as if they've been there their whole lives. but that, i think, is fodder for another article.
ReplyDelete