I Am the Audience

Well, I've had two Canadian visitors since I made my post about Canadian content, and they each came through searches for terms that had nothing whatsoever to do with Canada. I'm not planning to go on a crusade or anything to drum up Canadian readers, but in that vein anyway, here's an intriguing post I happened to come across in my own search for something that had nothing whatsoever to do with Canada.

But first, here's a little bit of background for the non-Canadians among us (which, if my hits are accurate, are all my recent readers except two). For a number of years, Canada has been very concerned about maintaining Canadian culture, which makes a certain amount of sense. Canada lives right next to the largest economy in the world, so it's only natural that Canadians are self conscious. American culture is pervasive throughout the world, and even if it weren't, its effects would seep through the border to its next-door neighbors. On top of that, Canada also has its historic ties to England and its culture. With all those influences stirring around, Canada has to pay attention to its own culture or, the fear is, it will become subsumed to a more amorphous "global culture" (with heavy American input). One way the nation has addressed this issue is by devising "Canadian content" rules for Canadian media, which usually take the form of requiring a certain percentage of what it carries be made up of such material. But what is Canadian content, you ask? Unfortunately, it often depends on who you ask.

Matt Watts is a Canadian writer and performer who addressed this issue recently in his blog. In talking about writing from a Canadian perspective, he also had some insights into writers and their audience. Who do writers write for? How much should they be concerned about the people reading their words (or in Matt Watts's case, seeing their TV show or listening to their radio show)? This is something I think about a fair amount, and this piece sums it up as simply as I've seen lately. I'm going to quote a little bit, but go read the whole thing--it's thought provoking.

All I can do - and I think it's all any writer can do - is write for myself. I'll write a story that I would like to hear, and HOPE that the themes, the characters, the story itself will appeal to as broad an audience as possible . . . Farmers included.

You can't please everyone. Or at least, you can't set out to please everyone. Shows that do that - that try to have universal appeal - stink of banality. We've all seen those shows, they're the ones that try too hard, and ultimately have no appeal.

Sometimes a story will, unintentionally, have universal appeal. Because it is a GREAT story, and it just happens to appeal to everyone.

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It's a risk, of course. Because what I like might not appeal to anyone. And then, well, I'll be out of a job.