For my 2000th post (already!), and coming off Canada Day, I thought I might delve into my geekly roots a little. A geek is a geek is a geek, but history and geography does shape and mold the KIND of geek we become, and for my "ethnic" group, at least, there is a shared set of geek values. I'm French-Canadian, you see, and that has made a great deal of difference.
French-Canadians, whether Acadian (as I am), Quebequois, Franco-Ontarian or the rarer FCs to the West, have a number of geekly touchstones that bring them together, often transcendent of age so long as we're talking about under-40s.
The first is bande dessinée (or b.d.), what we call "comics" in English, but usually of higher quality (better production values and often, better craftsmanship) than their more disposable American cousins. Tintin, Asterix, Achilles Talon, Valerian, Spirou, Lucky Luke, Les Schtroumpfs, Les Tuniques Bleues, Buck Danny, Boule et Bill, and many many more. Most have been translated, and some have had a measure of success in the States and English Canada, but it's not even a question for French readers. If every English-speaking child has read at least one Archie in his or her life, then every French-speaking child in the West has read a Tintin or an Asterix. Probably more.
And if you're asking me to choose between Archie's recycled Happy Days jokes and Hergé, well... You're not really asking me that, are you? No. No you are not.
Tintin is not a "bathroom reader" or a stack of floppies. It's finely crafted comic art, hardbound to last. Your son will read your copy, and your grandson. And it won't ever require you to put it in a clear plastic bag either. Does this cultural background mean Francophones are more generally exposed to a stronger comics aesthetic? Does it make them better able to appreciate the form? Does the greater variety of content make them more open to that variety?
And this isn't to say that Anglo-centric comics are bad. I read a ton of them every week, and some of them are really quite excellent. I wouldn't take anything away from Eisner or Kirby or Kubert either. I think they're wonderful. But my pre-second language years weren't filled with superheroes, which has certainly informed my tastes.
The other Francophone universal constant seems to lie in certain specific anime series, translated into French and broadcast on our side of the ocean(s) for years. I watched these religiously through the 70s and though I thought they weren't on anymore, 20-somethings and 17 year olds I meet have all seen them. My brother-in-law is right this minute showing episodes to his young children, even if the violence might seem harsh by today's Care Bear-modified standards.
The golden jewel of these is Goldorak (which Americans may have seen as UFO Robot Grendizer). People in the English-speaking world I've spoken to about this have told me it's just another giant robot show surfing the wave of that particular craze, but French Canadians know the warcries for each of the robot's myriad weapons, let me tell you. Goldorak was so popular here that teenage singing sensation Nathalie Simard (think Céline Dion with a children's show instead of Vegas) even remade one of the title songs and put it on an album. Goldorak is extremely culturally significant for us.
But there are others. Albator is a great, strange, and tragic favorite (you might know it as Captain Harlock), as is Demetan, the brutal story of a frog navigating the catfish's underworld of the pond. He always wound up getting the crap beat out of him by the crayfish for some reason. Lots of sci-fi for the boys: Capitaine Flam (Captain Future), Ulysse-31, La Bataille des Planètes (Battle of the Planets has at least made a dent in the American market, as has Astro-Boy, which we only know as Astro). But beautiful stories for girls as well: Candy (a Russian tragedy that always ran after Goldorak and that I peevishly admit to watching - I probably cried too, I'm such a nancy-boy) - Belle et Sebastien, and Heidi. Coming in late so that the younger set universally love them, but I might not have a particular attraction to them: Rémi Sans Famille, Cités d'Or, Le Petit Castor, and others.
So while English-language channels brought us the flavor of the time, whether the somewhat static yet still exciting adventure cartoons of the 70s and early 80s, or the pacified 30-minute toy adverts of later days, French channels were filled with all manner of product made or translated in France. Cartoons from both Europe and Japan also came from different time periods. There's no such thing as "new programming" in translated markets, which also accounts for a certain time delay on television shows I might have watched. For example, though I wasn't born when Time Tunnel first aired, I was quite able to watch and enjoy it in translation. Same with cartoons.
Again, language, history and geography allowed me to experience a wider panorama of "geek material" much sooner than I might on my own power. You could say my culture ENABLES geekdom by putting the tools at our disposal. I don't know how this compares to others' experiences however. Perhaps cable stations (rarely in French, and unheard of when I was growing up) probably served the same function as the needs of translation for English-speaking geeks.
But I'd like to hear it from you! Did your (pop) cultural background help you become a geek? Or was it hard work and completely isolating?
French-Canadians, whether Acadian (as I am), Quebequois, Franco-Ontarian or the rarer FCs to the West, have a number of geekly touchstones that bring them together, often transcendent of age so long as we're talking about under-40s.
The first is bande dessinée (or b.d.), what we call "comics" in English, but usually of higher quality (better production values and often, better craftsmanship) than their more disposable American cousins. Tintin, Asterix, Achilles Talon, Valerian, Spirou, Lucky Luke, Les Schtroumpfs, Les Tuniques Bleues, Buck Danny, Boule et Bill, and many many more. Most have been translated, and some have had a measure of success in the States and English Canada, but it's not even a question for French readers. If every English-speaking child has read at least one Archie in his or her life, then every French-speaking child in the West has read a Tintin or an Asterix. Probably more.And if you're asking me to choose between Archie's recycled Happy Days jokes and Hergé, well... You're not really asking me that, are you? No. No you are not.
Tintin is not a "bathroom reader" or a stack of floppies. It's finely crafted comic art, hardbound to last. Your son will read your copy, and your grandson. And it won't ever require you to put it in a clear plastic bag either. Does this cultural background mean Francophones are more generally exposed to a stronger comics aesthetic? Does it make them better able to appreciate the form? Does the greater variety of content make them more open to that variety?
And this isn't to say that Anglo-centric comics are bad. I read a ton of them every week, and some of them are really quite excellent. I wouldn't take anything away from Eisner or Kirby or Kubert either. I think they're wonderful. But my pre-second language years weren't filled with superheroes, which has certainly informed my tastes.
The other Francophone universal constant seems to lie in certain specific anime series, translated into French and broadcast on our side of the ocean(s) for years. I watched these religiously through the 70s and though I thought they weren't on anymore, 20-somethings and 17 year olds I meet have all seen them. My brother-in-law is right this minute showing episodes to his young children, even if the violence might seem harsh by today's Care Bear-modified standards.
The golden jewel of these is Goldorak (which Americans may have seen as UFO Robot Grendizer). People in the English-speaking world I've spoken to about this have told me it's just another giant robot show surfing the wave of that particular craze, but French Canadians know the warcries for each of the robot's myriad weapons, let me tell you. Goldorak was so popular here that teenage singing sensation Nathalie Simard (think Céline Dion with a children's show instead of Vegas) even remade one of the title songs and put it on an album. Goldorak is extremely culturally significant for us.
But there are others. Albator is a great, strange, and tragic favorite (you might know it as Captain Harlock), as is Demetan, the brutal story of a frog navigating the catfish's underworld of the pond. He always wound up getting the crap beat out of him by the crayfish for some reason. Lots of sci-fi for the boys: Capitaine Flam (Captain Future), Ulysse-31, La Bataille des Planètes (Battle of the Planets has at least made a dent in the American market, as has Astro-Boy, which we only know as Astro). But beautiful stories for girls as well: Candy (a Russian tragedy that always ran after Goldorak and that I peevishly admit to watching - I probably cried too, I'm such a nancy-boy) - Belle et Sebastien, and Heidi. Coming in late so that the younger set universally love them, but I might not have a particular attraction to them: Rémi Sans Famille, Cités d'Or, Le Petit Castor, and others.So while English-language channels brought us the flavor of the time, whether the somewhat static yet still exciting adventure cartoons of the 70s and early 80s, or the pacified 30-minute toy adverts of later days, French channels were filled with all manner of product made or translated in France. Cartoons from both Europe and Japan also came from different time periods. There's no such thing as "new programming" in translated markets, which also accounts for a certain time delay on television shows I might have watched. For example, though I wasn't born when Time Tunnel first aired, I was quite able to watch and enjoy it in translation. Same with cartoons.
Again, language, history and geography allowed me to experience a wider panorama of "geek material" much sooner than I might on my own power. You could say my culture ENABLES geekdom by putting the tools at our disposal. I don't know how this compares to others' experiences however. Perhaps cable stations (rarely in French, and unheard of when I was growing up) probably served the same function as the needs of translation for English-speaking geeks.
But I'd like to hear it from you! Did your (pop) cultural background help you become a geek? Or was it hard work and completely isolating?
Comments
I find my nostalgia going back to the bd more than anything else these days, looking even for great translations for the birthdays of the few kids we have in our lives. It's a different take on how to use the medium and having both present in my younger years was both weird and eye opening.
It was indeed the best of both worlds. (And I imagine, especially true outside Quebec.)
My broad generalisation is obviously North America-centric.
I have one measley VHS of the first two episodes, which I wish I was watching right now. Funny, I was going to watch Gaiking this weekend, since it came up and my memory was a lot fuzzier on it.
Battle of the Planets was part of it, but to me the two touchstones of American anime were Starblazers (Yamato) and then later the Robotech series. I think a lot of folks will point to Voltron, but I was never as impressed by it. Watching Mexican Spanish translations was more of rarity at the time, but we would still catch episodes of Galaxy Express and a more Christian themed one that the name escapes me (something involving a windmill). Overall, I think it made me favor the idea of a continuous story over the more single-story episode of so much cartoon fare of the time.
The internet came, and back then you needed to dig hard to find anything and you also needed frikin connections if you wanted to see last weeks episode.
As for comics I grew up with all the BDs you mentioned. For the longest time all comics had levels for me. First, Those small Archi and Garfield, then Superhero comics, followed by Bande Dessiné and lastly graphic novels. I simply never got into superhero comics because nobody around here had any, so my interested was non-existent as for BDs everyone was reading them and were accessible from the library. As for comics at the time, asking my parents to drive me 45 minutes to town to buy a dollar worth comic was out of the question.
We did a lot of geeky stuff me and my friend but we didn't think of it has geeky really. Maybe because we did a lot of non-geeky stuff too. Funny thing is that some stuff that we though was obscure we now find out they're actually really popular and vice versa, for example H2G2; never heard of it until I randomly found it one day, absolutely loved the book to death. At first I though it was really obscure because nobody of my friends heard of it but I was so wrong, it has a huge following.
Contained in the small region everything is placed on my single exposure of my social group in question. I only realized how geeky some of the stuff I did, like a little more than a year ago.
Nizbel: Yeah, I discovered Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when I was in high school and it became one of my group's obsessions. But then, the UK stuff interested us as much if not more so than the American stuff (Monty Python, Dr Who, even Benny Hill).
I own just about every single animated Harlock appearance - from Space Pirate Captain Harlock to Galaxy Express 999 to Space Symphony Maetel to The Endless Odyssey - and I have NEVER encountered ANY storyline in which we find out Harlock is a woman. In fact, in the film Arcadia of My Youth, we learn Harlock was once engaged to be married.
So I think that either A) you're joking in that pic or B) you've heard rumor that Harlock's gal-pal Emeraldas was actually Harlock in drag. Which can never be true as they appear TOGETHER in numerous storylines.
Anyway, LOVE me some Harlock.
Peace out.
Wha---Zoicite is a MAN?!
When I'd gone through every b.d. they had (which was a LOT), I found a little bookshelf in a corner with English translations and read all of those. Pretty cool how they came up with completely different puns for Asterix, etc. A lot of effort was put into reproducing the reading experience in other languages... especially compared to some very badly lettered superhero comics translations put out by Heritage.