Posted on 08/12/2006 5:56:19 AM PDT by grundle
My family immigrated to Canada in May 1990, just two weeks after my thirteenth birthday. I already had a preconceived notion of what I would discover here. I had studied North American culture carefully, or so I thought, through the pages of an Archie comic book.
Now I know that one of the biggest lies my circle of friends in the Philippines had been exposed to was Archie and his cast of friends.
To be fair, we were all aware that the gentle, predictable humour and plots of Archie comic books were fiction in the true sense of the word. But we thought that they were exaggerated, but essentially true, representations of North American youth. We believed that North American teens would more or less conform to all those cookie-cutter paragons that were the norm in Archie comics.
Imagine it, a group of naive twelve and thirteen year olds gathering around to read the brightly coloured double digests, gullibly believing that life in North America was that well packaged. It was a beautiful promise to us all. Never mind that there were no prominent Asian characters and that everything was coated in those beautiful pastel hues. My friends and I believed in it, and that was all that mattered then.
So there I was on the plane, on my way to the world according to Archie, wondering if I would meet people who would fit the molds of the characters of an Archie comic. Would I meet an Archie, a Jughead and a Betty? Would I see a Moose running after a Reggie because he had hit on his girl? Would my school principal be fat like Mr. Weatherbee? Would there be weekly explosions in Professor Flutesnoot's chemistry lab?
Still on the plane, and wondering how I would fit in, I thought the role of the teenage prodigy Dilton would be mine. That turned out to be one of my more pathetically egotistical moments.
When we arrived, everything seemed to fit. On that chilly night, the streets looked clean, the air was fresh and crisp and there were lights everywhere. The greenery that lined the streets and the tidy houses were a source of amazement to me. I had always thought that this was the one definite exaggeration in the comic book.
But I was surprised to see the many differently coloured people in the airport and on the streets. In Archie, everyone was white with very few exceptions.
With my high expectations of life in North America, it is no surprise that my first year in Canada was one of the most depressing periods of my life. After a few days at my new school, the myth of Archie began to slowly crumble before my eyes. Not everyone was friendly and everything was not in pastel.
It was a shock for me to realize that a lot of what I had thought about North American youth culture was not true. The locale, the people and the culture had changed, but the basic rules of life and human nature were the same here as they were in the Philippines. I had to acknowledge that Archie and the promise he represented did not exist.
Life for youth in Canada was not as sweet and simple as it appeared in the colourful pages of those double digests. If the characters of Archie comics appeared in real life, we would see them very differently. Moose would be dyslexic, Jughead a vicious misogynist and Veronica a cranky nymphomaniac. Betty would have an inferiority complex, and Archie would be going to a therapist to talk about his commitment problems.
I also began to realize that life according to Archie comics was neither possible, not desirable. Things are so simple in those books, and that enhances their appeal. The gray areas of life are so easily ignored. It represents an ideal, where everyone gets along, even if they are narcissistic and petty. It also demonstrates the appeal of stagnancy, because all the characters are stuck in a bizarre time warp. And perhaps its strongest feature is its stubborn optimism. Even when Reggie gets beaten up for hitting on Moose's girl, and even when Betty and Veronica fight over Archie, the comic's gentle approach refuses to be muddied by ongoing conflict and instead deals all the characters a happy ending.
Months after our arrival, my brother and I started to buy various double digests. We were overjoyed to find how cheap they were and we read them from cover to cover.
It was then that I began to realize how flat the characters were and how absurd they could be. I would find myself laughing, both at the comics and at myself. For the first time, I read the comics the way they were supposed to be read - with complete suspension of reality, belief and logic.
I laughed and smiled the way I had when I read Archie for the first time. Except this time, I truly understood the cosmic joke.
You mean Cuba isn't like those Bogart movies or Hemmingway novels? Tell me it ain't so!!
You need to change the title...the kid immigrated to Canada.
If the kid wanted to know exactly what Canada is like, he should have rented the movie "Strange Brew."
Canada is part of America.
And, except for Big Ethel, all the young women have perfect and perfectly identical bodies, except their hair.
I wasted 3 or 4 perfectly good minutes reading this drivel. Where do I go to get my 3 or 4 minutes back, Jericho?
Immigrant dude: So sorry to give you the idea that chicks that look like Veronica and Betty will be fighting over you in your high school years.
Immigrant dude: At least in Canada. That stuff happens all the time in the USA.
Immigrant Dude: Even Canadian chicks like Pam Anderson come down to the USA to fight over Americans.
How odd.
Oh well, at least he's not jihading over it.
Yet.
Archy was "out of date" when I was a kid in the 1950s. I think they were stuck in a time warp of around 1940.
What does it tell you when someone from the corrupt, dysfunctional world of the Phillippines thinks Canada is the same? Too much multiculturalism and relativism, maybe?
I could do Veronica.
***through the pages of an Archie comic book***
Not very bright, is he.
Veronica Lodge is the daughter of a rich -- I don't remember what, industrialist?
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