Home Turf

1 comment on “Home Turf”

1. Susan MacRae says:
   April 29th, 2007 at 5:39 pm

   Personally, I think that the working class as well as Nova Scotia are being fetishized in Canadian literature
   as much as anything that is about Ireland. Nova Scotia is now either a travel brochure, or a drunken slum
   depending if you are talking to an advertiser or a reviewer from the Globe & Mail.

   I mean — nobody fetishizes Edmonton now, do they? When in fact, my family is from the MacRaes of the
   box houses, who were there for all of five years, and lived beside the shopping mall. You’ll remember
   when the recession hit, and everyone had to sell their Winnebago (not the nation but the RV). Of course,
   south Edmonton has a higher alcoholicism rate than anywhere in Nova Scotia (this is totally true).
   And we used to call anybody from out of town intelligent.

   Although, speaking as a fantasy gay cowgirl who has had a tent scene herself, Annie Proulx did an ok job — although
   it was a bit much on Ennis smelling the stinky, blood-stained shirt after twenty years. But hell, all
   of that area of Alberta — Kananaskis country — is totally gay. (It wasn’t Wyoming; it was Alberta but
   we were supposed to pretend that it was Wyoming. Just like the actors were pretending to be gay,
   and it was ’such an incredible stretch’ and they were so ‘brave to get it up the bum’ — as if only
   gay cowboys from pretend Wyoming do that!) Still, if anyone wants to talk about fetishizing, let’s talk
   about fetishing dead gays in the movie. You can be a gay cowboy in fake-Wyoming, but apparently noone
   can survive being a gay cowboy in fake Wyoming.

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