Known on Youtube as Culture en Péril, this is the English version with subtitles – Culture in Danger.

This is a great satirical video about the recent brouhaha our Canadian Conservative government is causing by adopting a slash and burn attitude to the arts and cultural funding coupled with infringing censhorship measures. ( Did I say coupled? Will someone censor me now?)

***IMPORTANT NOTE: To see subtitles, you need to turn the Youtube captions “on” by clicking on the arrow button at the bottom right of the screen, then hover over the CC symbol and turn the captions “on”. Thanks.***

Quebecer Michel Rivard, band member of ” Beau Dommage” and organizer of a small music festival visits a governmental committee overseeing cultural financing to ask for money to promote their songs in France. What ensues is a slew of translation and cultural misunderstandings as the anglophone bureaucrats in tight suits are are offended by the content due to what they deem are obscenities and censor and reject the application.

The song is called “La Complainte du Phoque en Alaska” – The Complaint of the Seal in Alaska. In Quebec phoque is pronounced like phuk – which tickled me pink when I was 19 and studying French in Montreal.

But I am not 19 anymore, and I am all about the phoques.

I am also vehemently opposed to censorship and believe that there is big trouble ahead when the government gets in the way of art and artists. No good comes from censorship, Stephen Harper. Learn from history please. Actually – learn from the present. The more the government censors – the bigger the hellhole it is to live in. I believe it’s the opposite of freedom.