Comments on: Little Mosque on the Prairie

By: lucky4life

lucky4life — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:13:47 +0000

thid is a great show and i hope people realize that the show isn’t making fun of canadians. But, is a way to show what happens (sometimes, and usually) out on the streets of a small city. Which hasn’t opened up to the diversity.

By: Devin

Devin — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 05:19:07 +0000

Tom, it’s interesting that you feel the show is written by and for Liberal Urbanite Canadians, because if you look up Sharqa Nawaz, the creator, you will discover that much of the show is based on her own experiences as a Muslim woman in small-town Saskatchewan.

By: pauvah

pauvah — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:26:07 +0000

Please feel free to take part in a discussion about the Episode Topics at Little Experiences …

http://littlemosqueontheprairie.wordpress.com

The idea is to build a community from around the Globe where readers can share their stories in relation to the episode’s content.

Go ahead and share your Little Experiences …

By: chachaji

chachaji — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:15:44 +0000

And that is kind of what I am getting with the "Little Mosque" show. In the end it isn't really about small town Saskatchewan or Muslim communities living within small town Saskatchewan. In the end what it comes down to is just Liberal Urbanite Canadians talking to Liberal Urbanite Canadians, with their political message being far more important to them than whether or not the situation portrayed reflects a real situation in the country accurately enough.

I have only seen the promo clips so far, and I admit, those did strike me as a bit over the top. But their purpose is to get you interested enough to watch, and they seem to do that well. The idea of LMoP, as far as I can tell, is not so much representational accuracy as the use of a barely plausible, (or even implausible) premise to drive home the broader message. But every cultural product or literary expression has some 'message', and it is naive to expect otherwise.

Also, the kind of 'representational infidelity' - to coin a term - that you bring up, occurs all the time. Did you ask yourself how well Denzel Washington (for example) can represent a 19th Century slave (or freedman for that matter) in a movie about the civil war? Can a late 20th Century 'assimilated' American Jew represent pre-WWII Polish Jews in a movie about the Holocaust?

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:50:20 +0000

"Little Mosque" depends of offensive stereotypes for its humour.

Also, while at times funny, I do wonder about how "real" the situation is. I once saw a show about how the Nazis made two propaganda films about the conflict between the British and the Irish. The films, at least according to those who were interviewed who had seen them were quite good. The only problem was that the people in the movies were not Irish. What I mean by that was that the culture of the Irish portrayed in the films in no way reflected actual Irish culture as I guess the Germans who wrote, produced, and acted in the movies never took the time to get to understand the traditions and feel of the Irish people. It just wasn't important to them because in the end it had nothing to do with the Irish. It was as one commentator of the movies said "Germans talking to Germans".

And that is kind of what I am getting with the "Little Mosque" show. In the end it isn't really about small town Saskatchewan or Muslim communities living within small town Saskatchewan. In the end what it comes down to is just Liberal Urbanite Canadians talking to Liberal Urbanite Canadians, with their political message being far more important to them than whether or not the situation portrayed reflects a real situation in the country accurately enough.

By the way, why does "The She Mayor" remind me so much of the mayor on South Park?

By: chachaji

chachaji — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:30:38 +0000

Oops. The 'LToT' link above will work only from the 22 minutes website. (It's a video clip). Sorry about that.

By: chachaji

chachaji — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 19:41:43 +0000

Checking out the CBC website, found this variation on the theme: Little Temple on the Tundra. Not (yet?) a full-fledged show of course, just promises to be a regular skit on CBC's This Hour has 22 Minutes. Or at least, one hopes it will.

By: chachaji

chachaji — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 16:59:12 +0000

God bless you, Madhu! I haven't watched it yet myself, and this gives me a chance. Too bad the site doesn't also have the Rick Mercer Report, 'coz this week he 'goes Bollywood' to Brampton, Ontario with Liberal MP Dr. Ruby Dhalla. Rick Mercer's a real, rip-roaring funny laugh riot, and Ruby, man, she sure is the gal.

By: Madhu

Madhu — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 08:28:34 +0000

You can also catch Little Mosque on the Prarie http://tv.peekvid.com/“>here. I haven’t watched it yet, but was trying to catch last week’s Studio 60 on the site, and the show’s title caught my eye while I was scrolling down. I obviously became a little obsessed with trying to find out more about it and checked out their website (kind of funny) and figured the mutineers had already blogged about it (which you had!).

By: Gerald Harrison

Gerald Harrison — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 07:58:06 +0000

Little Mosque on the Prairie is as good as its promotional previews promised and CBC is the one to deliver it. George Bush and his henchmen did their best to demonise all Muslims as an excuse to wage their dirty illegal war. CBC has had the guts to try to turn this around and force us to regard Muslims as people like the rest of us–complete with warts and other foibles. “Me and the Mosque” is another earlier documentary film of Zarqa’s and is available from the National Film Board of Canada. It offers an excellent examination of modern Muslim society struggling with tradition and modernity as it regards segregating Muslim women from men during prayers in the mosque.