CBC Literary Awards

I was just reading Alison Pick's winning entry for the most recent awards. If you click on the title above, or this link — CBC Literary Awards 2006 — you will open a window on the links to all the winners from last year. Pick's entry is pretty impressive.

When one enters one of these contests, it is useful to be able to read previous winners, just so you can allow yourself to fall into the morass of despond and not expect too much. * signs and pounds forehead *

The winners are published in Air Canada's En Route Magazine, which appends the following disclaimer:

"The views expressed by the writers do not represent the views of enRoute, Spafax or Air Canada. Certain readers may be offended by the contents."

Don't you love it? More of Big Brother looking out for those of us who may be offended. I think there are a lot of people in this world who should be offended more often. Just in our own country they should be offended by child poverty, homelessness, the hoarding of wealth — and the list goes on; don't get me started.

On that subject, I am offended by the huge number of times TV programs warn us after each commercial break that "the following program may contain scenes of nudity, violence and coarse language. Viewer descretion is advised" — and then after they've gotten my hopes up, the closest thing to nudity is an occasional unclad family pet, the closest thing to coarse language wouldn't be bleeped on The Actors Studio and the violence is all about the same as you see on the street at noon. I recall sending a letter home to parents in the seventies, when we decided to show Roman Polanski's MacBeth* to students in the school auditorium. I told them that the film was reputed to have a nude scene and considerable violence. The only reaction I got back from the parents was that they applauded our decision to show the kids saw something with some issues in it, keep up the good work. The film really impressed the kids, and the followup classroom discussions were very productive. About ten years later, I showed the same film, and found the kids giggling at the gory death scenes, then realized, during the followup discussions that they were seeing the gore through the filter of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I think may have used the same costumes. How times change.


* Produced, dear readers, by Playboy Magazine