''Mosque see'' TV?

If you live in Canada and aren't a hermit, you've probably heard that the venerable and much maligned CBC is premiering it's daring and cutting edge comedy Little Mosque on the Prairie tonight at 8:30PM. What's that you say? Never heard of it?

Well maybe you don't have to be a hermit not to have heard of it; maybe it's more that if you hang out on the web with TV types, especially Canadian TV types you can't help but have heard about it. I've been doing that lately; in particular over at DeadThings on Sticks, the blog of Canadian TV writer Denis McGrath. He's really excited about this new undertaking by CBC. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Little Mosque wants us to look away from the constant negative depictions of Muslims proliferating on virtually every news broadcast we've seen since 9/11. ( And if you don't think you've been inundated with negative depictions, ask yourself how a date, or, more consicely, an arrangement of keystrokes - 9, /, 11 - can come to be so full of images and feelings and opinions and motivations and stigma and fear in most of the Western world.) Little Mosque wants to try and 'lighten things up a bit', remind us that, as in the immortal words of Art Linkletter*, People are Funny.

Picture small town Saskatchewan; should be easy, just think Corner Gas. Now put a Mosque and its congregation next to Ruby's. It's close enough to give you the idea, right down to the big city person coming to town and starting a new life.

The idea is to show that it doesn't matter who you are or what you believe, as you go about your daily life thing are going to happen that are funny. It's just that in this case we're going to be running into situations we're not so familiar with... and sometimes when that happens the laughter can be for the 'wrong' reasons; because we are nervous or uncomfortable or because we don't want to show how ignorant we are of other peoples lives.

It's going to be very important that we are laughing with these characters, the small town yokels and the Muslims, as they try to get through the day, not AT them. If we laugh with them the show will have done what its creators and supporters want it to do. If too many people tune in to laugh AT the unfamiliar customs or the problems of integrating two very different ways of life into one healthy and productive community we'll be left with an embarrassing mess and those who proliferate the negative, destructive stereotypes will be able to walk away, shake their heads and say 'we told you so'.

* and no, I had no idea that Art Linkletter was born here