The Film Trailer Park Boys

The film Trailer Park Boys

The movie “Trailer Park Boys,” directed by Mike Clattenburg is about two men that get kicked out from jail days before the guard/inmate ball hockey final. Ricky, Julian and Bubbles return to Sunnyvale trailer park with a plan for “The Big Dirty”, the biggest heist of their long criminal history: a dimwitted scheme to steal vast quantities of change, when it occurs to Julian that coins are untraceable. Meanwhile, Ricky is pondering taking his relationship with longtime girlfriend Lucy to the next level when he discovers that Lucy has some newly enhanced anatomy and a job at the Gentleman's Club. Later, visiting the club, Julian meets and falls for the beautiful featured dancer Wanda and the Boys have their first encounter with Sonny, the dangerous owner of the club. As the day of the Big Dirty approaches, the boys train less-than-able assistants Cory and Trevor. But before their plan can succeed, they will have to outrun helicopters, survive shootouts and face down drunken Trailer Park Supervisor Mr. Lahey and his cheeseburger-loving assistant Randy in a deadly game of Sunnyvale Chicken.

Clattenburg confesses: “Early on[…the reaction was not good. Most industry people couldn’t get past the antiproduction-value look and ribald humour.” TPB also sparked debate over the exploitative representation of stereotypical вЂ?white trash’ on television. In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, University of Calgary communications and culture professor Bart Beaty lambasted the show as making fun of an underprivileged and marginalized segment of society. “That sort of thing used to be centred around racial issues. Now we get around this by making it about white populations rather than about native or black populations. But it’s still about laughing at the poor.” Mike Smith retorts by defending the show’s ultimate morality: “[Ricky] doesn’t make the best decisions, but he’s trying to do the right thin. There’s a lot of humanity in Trailer Park Boys. It’s not just a bunch of crazies running around swearing and firing guns at each other.” Wells adds: “People say we’re making fun of trailer parks, but it’s the exact opposite […] In many ways [Ricky and Julian] are better than most people in the real world. They’d do anything for their family, do anything for their friends.” In essence, Ricky acts as a microcosm of the show itself: Not always making the most intelligent choices, but remaining true to albeit an upturned, but nonetheless existent set of principles.

The equation of TPB is similar to that typified by episodic television conventions: the characters possess and exhibit obvious, definable вЂ"often mono-dimensionalвЂ" traits which viewers grow to identify and anticipate. A space (the park) is defined, within which these characters will interact; as elements are added into this space, the characters respond according to their previously defined characteristics. For example, when Mr. Lahey has Ricky’s father arrested for disability fraud, the question for an audience is not whether Ricky will be angry, but how angry, and indeed, and what various articles will be damaged вЂ"and expletives employed in consequence.

But for this investigation, the veritable question remains: why are the characters вЂ"particularly Ricky and JulianвЂ" programmed with these specific characteristics in the first place? And why, though the pair is implanted with a handful of redeemable qualities, are they destined for perennial failure; each season ending with their return to prison? These questions can be answered by taking quick stock of the вЂ?Hoser’ archetype in English Canadian cinema, thus tracing how the historical tenets of the male protagonist have crept into this contemporary incarnation.

This discourse of cinematic representations of the male Canuck may appear to be no more than a bitter cup of Tim Horton’s coffee, but if we roll up the rim, there may be a silver lining. This incarnation of characters can not easily be reduced to a product of our film industry’s inadequacy in the face of the big American brother and its culture machine; there is something more important at work. The paradoxically engendering nature of the series lies in its militant opposition to the standards of American film and television production. Coupled with the influence of the depressing duos of historical hoserdom, is the desire to take possession of something rightfully belonging to the Canadian experience, negative or not.

The anti-social, indeed violent nature of TPB and its characters may be interpreted as a typically Canadian reaction to American cultural hegemony. It is not active, but rather, an indirect attempt to assert a unique cultural manifestation into the marketplace historically dominated by American corporatists and their generic products. Recently, Canada has given the undiplomatic finger to our American cousins through our relaxed marijuana laws, and the legalization of same-sex unions, despite repeated political pressure from Conservative government representatives. Let us observe that the themes of the show include habitual criminality, addiction and homosexuality, garnished with a vernacular of profanity; themes that brashly oppose all that are traditionally deemed appropriate for American audiences. It may be argued that the popularity of TPB both domestically and internationally negates the failure of the characters themselves. In essence, our industry has emerged triumphant in the marketplace while resting on the shoulders of hosers.

In addition to its inverted family value system, TPB has comparatively far less interest in the subversion of cinematic representation by corporate interests. All of the commodities consumed on-screen are deliberately obscured, signaling the show’s non-alignment with a policy of product placement exercised by many of its American contemporaries. There is a growing disparity between the lifestyle portrayed on television (i.e. Friends, The Sopranos, Sex and the City) and the lifestyle affordable to the average viewer. But TPB resists this trend; although the characters are consumers, their products of choice are chiefly illegal, or at least condemnable by U.S. production standards. In terms of the representation of bodily features, Ricky, Julian and Bubbles truly personify a more realistic physicality than the flawless skin, freshly cut hair and chiseled abdominal sections of Joey and Ross. TPB represents a departure from the culture of