Articles of the Month

Culture Pop at the Fringe

Today we went to see a Fringe theatre performance. When it was suggested that we attend the Fringe, we didn't take it all that seriously. If we make it there, we thought, we make it, but if not we could simply book theatre tickets to any one of the many other plays being performed in Calgary. Within our first few minutes of watching the fringe performance, we realized that no traditional play could compare.

The Fringe show I went to see was called Culture Pop. Performed by university students, the play resembled the experience of channel surfing. Commercials, music videos, dramas and comedies were all corrupted to demonstrate the insanity of our lives. To quote their program, it was "a journey into a wilderness you may find frighteningly familiar."

The opening song was titled "Pop Gets Stupider" and the rest of the play showed us both what pop culture is and could be. Pop culture is a place where we watch movies with the same gimmicky plots and view commercials that try to sell us on medications with more side-effects than potential to cure (Just watch any American network on cable, and you will know that feeling). Yet pop culture could be a place where we examine ourselves, laugh at ourselves, and ask again that question "is this really the way we want to live?"

Satire is important. It allows us to step far enough out of life to walk back in with a changed outlook on something as frighteningly real as the "axis of evil" foreign policy of the only remaining Superpower to something as simple as the weather forecast. Yes, the weather forecast. We were presented three versions of a weather forecast, satirized to make the banality of this 6 o'clock news staple painfully evident. Having grown up with the antics of Bill Matheson on ITV in Edmonton, the weather forecast-as-entertainment is not surprising. However, having it rapped to me in Beastie Boys style still made me realize how useless a weather forecast is, and yet how much importance it holds in our collective conscience. Why do we need to know what the weather will be like in five days, and why does it have to be sold to us like snake oil? Perhaps it is all just a conspiracy...

This play was not Broadway. It did not pretend to be, nor need to be. The Fringe festival, anywhere in Canada, is something different. All fringe and not just the one show I managed to watch this year - is important because it gives people a place to play and a chance to be heard, no matter how crazy or off the wall the ideas are. The Fringe, I imagine, is an allusion to the Lunatic Fringe of our society, those people who live and speak the alternative to the mainstream. It is critical and irreverent, but still needs to be heard. Culture Pop held up a slightly cracked mirror to our pop culture, and allowed us to see the reflections of ourselves in it.