Comments on Those Fucked Up Canadian PSAs

That one over the weekend with the melty skin hot oil accident freaked my shit out so bad I refuse to click on that video above.

You tricked me into watching the first Canadian PSA, and it scarred me for life. No fucking way am I going to watch another one....

This one isn't as bad as long as you don't consider swearing as bad as the skin burns in the other one, though the one following the link is somewhere between the 2 IMO.

Amazingly, I find these commercials oddly compelling. Thank you, Canada! And thank you, SLOG.

I don't get those 'No such thing as accident' ones. So someone meant for that chick's face to get melted off?

I love those Canadians, eh!

My Dad always gave that advice when I was a kid there's no such thing as an accident. An accident happens when someone does/doesn't do something they shouldn't/should do.

Thankfully, he just repeated it over and over until I heard instead of messing with my fragile psyche like Canada did.

And the burns PSA is the worst of them. The rest are pretty tame comparatively speaking.

USians are going to want to make ads like that too, if our problems ever get as bad here as they are in Canada.

Aww, guys, we're not all crazy gory workplace safety ads. We have also awesome Heritage Minutes -- brought to you by the post office! -- that are warm and fuzzy and very patriotic; there's one about how we invented basketball, and another about how we bring water to thirsty Africans.

I watched the one above with no sound. I doubt I'm missing some huge context without it, but here's the sad thing - we are increasingly living in a world where that's EXACTLY the kind of thing that ought (I'm not saying should, but ought) to be done to people like that. My reasoning behind this being it is the ONLY way to get a point across with a certain type of person.

The reason I would never actually advocate such a response, however, is that - even with what I just said - it STILL wouldn't register with the offending fuckhead to begin with.

I always thought of Canadians as polite, placid folk. Like the US without the Crazy and the rudeness. These PSAs are freaking me the fuck out.

@10. Wowza--the context you missed was how domestic violence isn't okay. My friend, a Seattle-area doctor--was murdered a few years back by her husband who then shot himself. Some might find the commercial corny, but it gets the point across.

And I guess I also disagree that if someone accidentally spills coffee on your saucer you shouldn't necessarily slap the shit out of the person and pour scalding hot coffee on them. Call me crazy!

@5 - An "accident" implies a lack of responsibility or preventability. When they say "no such thing as an accident," what is meant is that accidents have causes and are preventable.

You might think that's obvious, but after doing safety duty for a while, you'd be completely amazed. People just don't make that secondary connection that's required to see how one thing leads to another, which leads to an "accident".

@10,

So if someone spills your coffee (not even on you, on the table) you would slap 'em around and pour scalding coffee on them? Either you're really fucked up or you need to watch the PSA with sound.

The UK has a bunch of awesome drunk driving (which they call "drink driving" for some fucking reason) PSAs. This one's typical:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX1q66ruuBM&feature=related

@5, via 13: Yeah, didn't you see Hot Fuzz?

Traffic collisions > traffic accidents.

@11,

Canadians can be comically polite (I find myself saying 'excuse me' when someone bumps into me), but our humour is much more subtle and twisted than American humour. Partly the British influence, I guess.

Have you never seen SCTV, the Kids in the Hall, Trailer Park Boys? Great stuff.

Irene@17: True, but you also have Red Green.

Then again, we had Home Improvement.

OK, you win, Canada.

The waitress in this one looks kind of like the sous chef in the pervious one. I wonder if the customer is the "amazing guy" she was about to be married to. Kind of a traumatic career path. It would have been good to see that guy get splattered in grease.

Haven't seen the abuse/coffee one on TV, but I think it only runs in Alberta. It's actually kinda old. The other ones are pretty new, and are shown in Ontario, but only after 9 PM due to their graphic nature.

@17: I would agree with you on subtle, twisted Canadian humour, except for four words:

Royal Canadian Air Farce.

Yeah, I guess I never really knew Canada. I can't quit thinking about/watching these fucking things. What 9-1-1 did for "paranoia" in the US is precious little compared to the paranoia Canadians must be feeling. I mean, FUCK -- how do you prevent for that shit? They're called "accidents" because that's what they are!

Re my comment at @10, then @12 & 14 :

OK, so I did miss a little context of the ad itself. However, I stand by my original argument/point, as posted, without the domestic violence angle.

And no, Keshmesi, that's not what I said - nor are you even within remote distance of the point I was actually making, ie, the world being full of people who have zero regard or understanding for what and how their actions affect those around them. (Which, without the domestic violence tag added and/or audible, is what the spot suggests.) You know, kinda like you being unable to then read the part where I said one should NOT retaliate in that manner.

Which, one more time, to be clear, I now see has nothing to do with the clip at hand. Remember, I said I watched it with no sound originally.

OK - so surely I've put enough qualifiers in here to avoid any misunderstanding, right? One would think - but I never bet on such things these days.

The fryer ad and harness ads are shown here because they are meant to remind workers in the province - as well as employers - that safety is a serious issue and "accidents" aren't.

And no - we're not screwing around with the same old weak message. Shock has its place.

As for the "fucking bitch" line in the domestic violence PSA - we make ads like that because they get the message across clearly in no uncertain terms. We aren't fucking around - and we don't live in a country where 35% of the electorate identifies as Conservative Christian or evangelicals. That percentage in Canada is, instead, a mere 8%.

That difference - about 27% - explains the gap between Canadian and American national responses in polls on basically every single social issue you would care to name: Abortion, drug use, premarital sex, sex education in schools, gay marriage, medical marijuana, etc.

Too much Jesus.

Truth is, liberal Canadians are not much different than liberal Americans. You just have far too many bible thumpers down there in Jesus Land to run the show - while we don't share that problem.

All the angst and hand-wringing? It's about that 27% difference. Get right down to it - that number explains everything

@18 how could you put down red green? That show is the bomb. Maybe you didn't grow up on a huge weird property filled with your family's precious junk.

but @21 you're right. Royal bla bla air farce is a travesty.

This ad made my stomach turn.

@23,

OK, then clarify exactly what you meant, because I interpreted this:

I watched the one above with no sound. I doubt I'm missing some huge context without it, but here's the sad thing - we are increasingly living in a world where that's EXACTLY the kind of thing that ought (I'm not saying should, but ought) to be done to people like that. My reasoning behind this being it is the ONLY way to get a point across with a certain type of person.

Because my interpretation is that you think that anyone who makes a minor mistake (i.e. spilling coffee) ought, not should, ought to be beaten and brutalized.

@26 - You're a bit dim, aren't you?

For the second time now, you seem to not be able to register the comment I made AFTER that - where I specifically said it should NOT be done. My point was that sometimes - MANY times - in today's world, doing something like that would seem to be the ONLY way to make them understand, or more to the point, be AWARE of things that go on, and how they might affect, those around them.

One more time : NOT that you SHOULD do that - but that it would SEEM that SOME people might ONLY, if even then, respond to that type of response. Can you hear me now? Gooooood........

As for being "beaten and brutalized" - that's you grafting those terms on to the argument, and taking things a wee bit too literally than is healthy. I sincerely wish you the best in dealing with whatever's simmering inside of you that keeps nudging you in that direction.

I didn't think this one was that bad. But I couldn't watch the one with the nice man working overtime for his family. I could sense some sort of horrific welding tragedy about to unfold.

Wowza, Keshmeshi is taking issue with your point that this type of retaliation (a man assaulting a woman for spilling his coffee) is only unacceptable because "it STILL wouldn't register with the offending fuckhead [i.e., the waitress] to begin with".

Within the context of the video, sound or no sound, your point is indeed, "really fucked up".

Irena - you're just as incapable as he is at understanding that the "man assaulting a woman" is not what I am talking about, nor was it ever what I was talking about.

Or maybe these comments are just sly agreements/affirmations of what I was trying to say in the first place. Or if not, they're certainly skewing that direction at this point...

So, um, does anyone here know what domestic violence is? It's too bad we don't have PSAs like that in the u.s., where men's violence against women (85-95% of the time...) in intimate partner relationships is an epidemic. Maybe it was gratuitous, but with well over a quarter of relationships in the u.s. being abusive...maybe it should be if were to adopt a similar shock strategy. As the leading cause of emergency visits for women in the u.s. is intimate partner violence, the need for more awareness (at the minimum) is justified. Further, it's nothing many, many children in the u.s. don't see every single day play out in their homes...and much, much worse.

I don't think it's really appropriate to talk about the lighting, though, or the insubordination of the server or other servers, or any of the other frivolous things when three people are murdered every day as a direct result of the kind of beliefs operative in this man's choice. But hey, societal wide minimization and willful ignorance is largley why this problem continues.

Those PSAs are fucking awesome.

What I don't get is that these workers have a special power to FORESEE THE FUTURE OF THEIR FATES. Yet they don't play hooky to avoid that awful fate! I mean, come ON!

I don't understand why people are calling these commercials stupid. It's drawing attention to terrible working conditions and domestic abuse. What's better? A floating smiley head knocking back prices EVEN FURTHER? Or seeing Burger King's latest delicious heart attack creation?

Okay, Wowza, but when you say:

"that's EXACTLY the kind of thing that ought...to be done to people like that"

...you might want to make it clear that that is not EXACTLY what you mean.

FYI, Cafe Minnie's downtown is closed now. They blame the smoking ban.

The idea that there's "no such thing as accidents" is a fairy tale that we in the west have developed to make ourselves feel better about the uncertainties of life that our cushy existence allows us to fret about.

Of course there are accidents. Speaking as an engineer, every system has failure modes. Product designers can design around the failure modes that they know, but for all complex systems they are discovering new modes *all* the time. And then there are synergistic effects, like when you add radiotransmitters (like cell phones) to other radiotransmitters (any other electronics).

Some industries are pretty mature- we haven't found a major new failure mode in wide-body aircraft in over five years, for instance (wake turbulence at JFK, natch). And *many* accidents are preventable. But life is risky.

@35 - OK, Irena - in the future, whenever I see you about, I will make sure to get out the flannels, chalk and big, fun plastic letters so you know EXACTLY what I mean.

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