Will Netflix colonialize Canada? Yes, maybe
Westworld actor admits in an essay she has ‘no shame about it’
Catherine Tait, the uber-boss of the CBC, has compared Netflix’s television domination to the kind of colonialism exhibited by the British and French empires.
So far, no correlation has been made to Amazon Prime Video being headed by Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan running programming at Hulu, although I imagine those shops would be heavy on drama, light on comedy.
Next, we’ll hear that Tait wants to build the Great Cultural Wall of Canada barring the Americans from flooding the market with their cheap reruns of Three’s Company.
Donald Trump, still trying to build his wall or fence, or semi-permeable Styrofoam barrier, would be impressed.
The reality for Canada, though, is that the barbarians are already at the gate.
You don’t need to be an anthropologist to see what the most recent numbers reveal every week: American culture dominates our viewing habits.
The No. 1 show for several years running in Canada has been the CBS nerd sitcom The Big Bang Theory. ABC’s The Good Doctor and CBS’s Young Sheldon were in second and third place.
No Canadian show made the top 10 except for Lisa LaFlamme holding the fort by gamely talking about Trans Mountain pipelines on the CTV National News.
But bully for Tait for not showing the white flag.
“I was thinking about the British Empire and how, if you were there and you were the viceroy of India, you would feel that you were doing only good for the people of India,” Tait said on a media panel in Ottawa Friday.
“If you were in French Africa, you would think ‘I’m educating them. I’m bringing their resources to the world and I am helping them.’ ”
Tait made her comments while Netflix director of public affairs Stéphane Cardin reportedly shook his head in disbelief — although he might have just been trying to figure out his most recent bonus cheque since the company’s revenues grew by 35 per cent in 2018 to $16 billion (U.S.).
Not bad for a shop that started out sending you DVDs in the mail. Remember DVDs?
Or it could be because Cardin’s heard it all before. Despite the indignation from those in the industry who disagree with her, Tait’s comments aren’t new.
“They are the perfect representation of American cultural imperialism,” Christophe Tardieu, director of France’s National Cinema Centre, the organization that pays for most of the Cannes Film Festival, told the New York Times
When Westworld star Evan Rachel Wood was 22, she survived a harrowing mental health stretch that involved her seeking treatment at a mental hospital.
In a new essay for Nylon, the 31-year-old actor recounts calling her mother and asking her for help after a night where she contemplated suicide.
“I am not a mental health expert, but I can share with you one of my experiences with it,” she wrote. “When I was 22, I willingly checked myself into a psychiatric hospital, and I have absolutely no shame about it … then with an almost hysterical acceptance, without thinking, I picked up the phone. It was one of those moments when you have a choice that goes beyond the initial choice you make by calling out for help: You can not die, or you can come back to life. ‘Mom? … It’s me … I just tried to kill myself … I need to go to a hospital.’ ”
Driving her point home, Wood said, “When I said I needed to go to a hospital, I did not mean I needed to go for any physical injuries I may or may not have had,” she continued. “I meant a hospital for my state of mind.”
Wood partially attributed her mental health issues to her unwitting battle with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“PTSD is considered a mental illness; it can be caused by a number of things and is not limited to brave service people,” she wrote. “My PTSD was caused by multiple rapes and a severely abusive relationship that went on for years.”
She and her mother also ran into the same trouble that many Americans do when seeking mental health care: a scarcity of open beds and “good help.”
“I needed to find a place that had the right treatments for me and could take me immediately and discretely,” she explained. “It’s harder than you think. I watched my mother weep after hanging up the phone for the fifth time saying to herself, ‘I just want to get my daughter help, why is this so hard?’ ”
Once they found a hospital that could admit her, Wood adopted a pseudonym to protect her privacy. But she found it was also liberating in a way she hadn’t expected.
“I felt some relief at choosing this new name,” she said. “I couldn’t remember what it felt like to not be ‘Evan Rachel Wood’ — so much of my selfworth was wrapped in that.” Wood remembered feeling conflicted when it was time to leave the hospital. But a conversation with her psychiatrist gave her the strength to go home and continue her recovery on her own.
“Can I tell you something now that you’re leaving?” her doctor said. “I didn’t want to mention it before … When I was in school, I saw the movie Thirteen, and it made me want to get into this line of work to help people. You’re why I’m here.”
In the 2003 film, Wood played a teenager who severely tests her relationship with her mother (Holly Hunter) as she falls in with the wrong crowd and begins experimenting with drugs and sex.
“I had felt worthless, and like the world was better of without me,” she wrote in her essay. “But it turned out I had helped myself in a way I never thought was possible. I gave to someone who then gave back to me.”
Wood’s other efforts to give back include testifying to the House Judiciary Committee in February 2018 about the need for a federal bill of rights for sexual-assault survivors. She shared her own experience with domestic violence: “The toxic mental, physical and sexual abuse, which started slow but escalated over time, including threats against my life, severe gaslighting and brainwashing, waking up to the man that claimed to love me raping what he believed to be my unconscious body.”
Canada Suicide Prevention Service (CSPS) is available to anyone thinking about or affected by suicide. Call toll-free anytime at 1-833-456-4566 or text at 45645 between 4 p.m. and 12 a.m. ET.
“My PTSD was caused by multiple rapes and a severely abusive relationship.” EVAN RACHEL WOOD