"Degrassi" looks at teenage life

Sam Biederman Backpage Editor

Whenever the United States seems to take a hard right, progressives progress northward. Although the U.S. claims to be the Land of the Free, a convincing argument can be made that Canada is the rightful holder of that title. A historical refuge for runaway slaves and Vietnam draftees alike, Canada now gives its citizens the universal health care and equal marriage rights that are maddeningly elusive down here. Sensible social legislation, humane foreign policy, and a populace whose famous kindness is so extreme that it is often mistaken for stupidity all make Canada particularly attractive to those of us who have recently felt pushed to the margins in the United States.

I’d be lying, though, if I said that my motivation for checking out apartment prices on Craig’s List Toronto is entirely political. Canadian-style democracy would be nice, but the rights to marriage, pot, and free gynecological exams are, for me, just icing on the cake. I really just want to be closer to the cast of “Degrassi: The Next Generation.”

“Degrassi” is a weekly Canadian soap opera that appears in the United States on the television channel Noggin. The show rotates around the lives of the huge cast of characters who attend the titular Toronto high school. The characters in the show are admittedly familiar (good girl, slut, class clown, garage rocker, et cetera) as are the plotlines (drugs, losing virginity, drugs, coming out, drugs). In terms of what happens and who it’s happening to, the show’s no different from an after-school special or a mundane episode of “90210.”

But it’s not what the show does; it’s how it does it. Having neither the raised eyebrow nor sweeps week mentality of its American counterparts, “Degrassi” at times resembles Othello more than it does “The O.C.” The show’s actors are all in high school themselves and look accordingly awkward. The plotting evokes a similar pimpled reality: most episodes end with plotlines that don’t quite hang, but resolve in such a way that nothing is quite right.

When the “Degrassi” themes become sensational, they’re explored without being sensationalized. For instance, when 14 year-old Manny has an abortion, she considers her options carefully, goes through with the procedure, and doesn’t regret her decision. The episode’s realistic and sensible treatment of the subject got it banned in the United States and earned “Degrassi” an article in The New York Times.

Because most episodes have made it past our censors, the show has a small cult following in the United States. But “Degrassi” is an institution in Canada, comparable in universality only to “Sesame Street.” It has been around for years, having gone through a number of different incarnations—in the ‘80’s, it was “The Kids of Degrassi Street” and the early ‘90’s, “Degrassi Junior High." Actors who have appeared on the show are major celebrities in Canada. (There are countless websites devoted to “Degrassi” sightings, most of which involve something called broomball.) And the show is aired regularly in Canadian public schools as part of students’ social and cultural education.

We should all be so lucky.

The new season of “Degrassi: The Next Generation” premieres on Oct. 1 on Noggin.