I'm never more proud of Canada than when I watch this show. Issues of teenage sexuality, gender identity, body image issues are discussed in an honest, progressive way.
As I said before, I watch Degrassi religiously. It offers such beautiful lessons in kindness, tolerance, and self-knowledge. This show is sponsored by the government of Canada. What a contrast to the idiotic government-sponsored abstinence classes in the US. Also, the show couldn't be more different than vapid shows about teenagers made in the US.
Canada seems so close but in some aspects it's light years away.
4 comments:
"This show is sponsored by the government of Canada. What a contrast to the idiotic government-sponsored abstinence classes in the US."
Of course!
"Canada seems so close but in some aspects it's light years away. "
Oh, it's becoming closer and closer. Québec should secede!
The feeling I get from watching Degrassi is that it is utterly ridiculous and unrealistic. Absolutely nothing in that show has ever appeared to me to have the slightest resemblance to what I personally experienced in public high school (in Silver Spring, MD, the suburbs of Washington, D. C.). Maybe I simply lived in a strange place, but one way or another, Degrassi simply appears to me to be utterly otherworldly.
My basic high school experience was basically that everyone went to class and did homework and studied for exams. That's it. No one cared about drugs or sex.
At lunch, people either swapped references to obscure cult-classic movies, or they discussed what they were learning in IB European history. Two of my friends were anarcho-socialists, and they had some interesting discussions. But drugs? Sex? People couldn't have cared less about those.
Certainly, there were never any real interpersonal conflicts or issues. I don't recall ever seeing anyone in high school visibly angry at someone else, and I cannot think of anyone in high school ever doing anything whatsoever that ever offended me. Sometimes, once a year or so, a fistfight would break out, but they usually lasted only about 30 seconds, and so most students heard about them merely by hearsay. They were so rare (again, perhaps once a year or so) that whenever one did occur, it was the subject of much discussion and amazement, discussed the same way followers of tabloids and soap operas discuss their subjects.
Of course, 'Degrassi" is completely unrealistic. But it's such a beautiful fantasy of what everybody should be like: tolerant, kind, mature. It is a different world, indeed, but a much better one. That's why I watch it religiously: it gives me what I missed in high school. :-)
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