Beyond the Six String Nation #37: Elbows Up
Mike Myers Meets the Moment
OK, I'm going to do that thing where someone writes about comedy and it isn’t at all funny. And for that I apologize. But at least it’s not going to be long (or is it?) In fact, I had another post to write to celebrate the addition of a new piece to Voyageur’s Calton Case and this thought occurred to me as I was writing that in my head in the middle of the night and I was just going to use it as an opening section but then I decided it should have it’s own space. And the reason I was writing all this in my head at 2:42 in the morning is that – while there’s no way in Hell that leathery orange ratf**ker is taking over my country, he has successfully annexed my sleep time.
From his own descriptions of growing up in Scarborough, Mike Myers’ childhood had many parallels with my own. We lived in adjacent neighbourhoods just one year apart and made the same weekly pilgrimages downtown. His family was from Liverpool, England, my mother was from Birmingham. Sonically, the accents aren’t that far off but somehow the Brummie one is way less charming. And we all had a gift for mimicry, anchored in my case by my mother. But certainly we shared a set of references of both the domestic Canadian and inherited British varieties along with those we absorbed from immersion in American television and music.
When I was 5, my aunt Pam in England sent us a copy of Sgt. Pepper (which I still have) and we learned every note as a family sitting around the Clairtone Console. Two years later, she gave us a heads up about Monty Python’s Flying Circus, when it was announced the show would be coming to CBC in Canada in a late night slot during the fall-to-Christmas season in 1970 and my sister and I were allowed to stay up with mum and dad and have our little minds blown. They ran the whole first series and half of the then-current second and then tried to return to regular programming after Christmas. They were met with howls of protest and actual demonstrations outside CBC offices. CBC relented and made the show a permanent part of the schedule as a result. It took another 4 or 5 years for Python to catch on in America.
Of course, we were fans of lots of American comedy too. We grew up with Get Smart and The Carol Burnett Show and George Carlin and Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart records. And I loved all that too. But if I think about it, the thing that characterized American comedy was that however edgy and dexterous and observant it might be, it always drew from the contemporary American individual point of view. It is, after all, pretty rich territory to mine – action-packed, star-studded, swaggering, self-mythologizing... and all with the giant unspoken scar of genocide and slavery to kind of dance up to the edge of in one way or another, for those who dared. While Python obviously tore apart British manners and class, it was so infused with a sense of the absurd, so deft at the non-sequitur, so playfully illogical, so outside-the-box – always referencing something else in layers of subtext and context. Canadian comedy, I think, was born out of a fusion of these styles and always mindfully referential especially to the British side of the equation.
Of course the Americans caught up with that sense of humour eventually. And it’s always so gratifying to hear comedy geniuses like Conan O’Brien acknowledge the formative influence of both Python and SCTV as well as other Canadian comedy heroes. And, obviously, the impact of Canadian producer Lorne Michaels on the history and development of American comedy cannot be understated. His secret sauce for decades has been to pepper the SNL cast and writing staff with Canadian talent. The broad-stroke American satire absorbed tempering amounts of Canadian nuance and perspective and absurdity that gave it a certain something special (at least some of the time). Mike Myers is arguably the most impactful Canadian inflection on that show of all time, reaching out into the broader culture through his movies and the cultural iconography he created along the way. When you look at his body of work as a whole, it is a veritable symphony of cultural references that he composes with and plays like a comic maestro.
So when, in this cultural and historic moment, on that SNL homebase, wearing that T-shirt, Mike Myers reaches into his deep well of cultural references and pulls out his “Elbows Up” gesture as a call-to-arms (call-to-elbows?) to his fellow Canadians over American airwaves, you’re seeing the essence of Canadian spirit and Canadian comedy packed into the smallest of moments as the credits roll. I’ll be honest – I grew up knowing Gordie Howe and had no idea he was known as “Mr. Elbows” before he was known as “Mr. Hockey” but it was a quick and timely lesson to learn, not just thanks to Myers but to Charlie Angus and everyone else who took up and amplified the rallying cry.
Charlie, Mike, let me know how Voyageur or I can be of service. In the meantime, I’ll do my thing, which is always to get Canadians sharing their own stories in the common creation of a “mythology” that is more true, more grounded, more nuanced and ultimately more durable than George Washington and his non-existent cherry tree.
Now, stand by for the post this one was meant to preface ‘cuz they actually do relate!
Nice one eh!