[This year, the Canadian TV show Trailer Park Boys turns twenty.
The program’s refusal to patronize its marginal, working-class
characters was key to its comedic and popular success, and won it a
special place in our hearts.] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY, TRAILER PARK BOYS  
[[link removed]]


 

Aaron Giovannone
July 25, 2021
Jacobin
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

_ This year, the Canadian TV show Trailer Park Boys turns twenty. The
program’s refusal to patronize its marginal, working-class
characters was key to its comedic and popular success, and won it a
special place in our hearts. _

Trailer Park Boys is celebrating its twentieth year anniversary.,
(Rick Eglinton / Toronto Star via Getty Images)

 

_Trailer Park Boys, _the Canadian mockumentary series about residents
of the Sunnyvale Trailer Park, debuted in 2001. It would go on to
become a cult classic in Canada and beyond.

In a scene from the first season, Julian, one of the lead characters,
sits on his couch drinking rum and coke wearing the black T-shirt that
would become his uniform throughout the show. He presses play on his
answering machine and listens to a message from his friend:

Hey Julian, it’s Ricky. Just wanted to let you know that I’m
single now. I could really use a friend, so if you want to stop by and
get drunk, I’ll be sleeping in my car in my dad’s driveway.

At the time, moments like this made me laugh but also hit a nerve. I
was single, living at home with my mom again after university, leaning
on my old high-school friends to keep me sane. While featuring
precariously employed and criminalized working-class
characters, _Trailer Park Boys_ also spoke to a form of middle-class
disaffection that was common in the early 2000s.

For many young middle-class Canadians, facing our own failure to
launch and downward mobility, _Trailer Park Boys_ resonated for its
transgressive treatment of class and its warmhearted depiction of
community.

Denizens of Sunnyvale

_Trailer Park Boys _is the project of a longtime group of friends.
Series creator and head writer Mike Clattenburg attended high school
in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, with Robb Wells, who plays Ricky, and
John-Paul Tremblay, who plays Julian. Wells, Tremblay, and Pat Roach,
who plays Randy on the show, co-owned a pizzeria in Charlottetown,
Prince Edward Island.

The friends hung out and collaborated on film and video projects,
including 1998’s _One Last Shot_, a wonderful black-and-white film
that premiered at the Atlantic Canada Film Festival. The following
year, they filmed the pilot for _Trailer Park Boys_. These real-life
friendships shape the fiction of the show.

Ricky, with his mini pompadour and Adidas tear-away pants, can’t
survive without his best friend, Julian. Mike Smith, who Clattenburg
knew from the Halifax music scene, plays the cat-loving, shortsighted
Bubbles, a secondary character when _TPB_ debuted. In the first
season, Smith did sound on set in addition to acting, but by season
two Bubbles had become the third member of the show’s central
trifecta. His orphan’s desire for family bonded him tightly to his
pals. “Besides my kitties,” Bubbles confesses at one point, his
head sticking out of a garbage can, “Ricky and Julian are all I
really have.”

At the beginning of each season, the boys leave prison; at the end,
they return. The get-rich-quick schemes they contrive punctuate this
cycle.

At the beginning of each season, the boys leave prison; at the end,
they return. The get-rich-quick schemes they contrive punctuate this
cycle. These plots are all part of a plan which the team call
“Freedom 35.” “In order to stop breaking the law,” Ricky
explains, “we’ve got to break the law for a couple of minutes.
Then we’re done. Retired.”

In some form or another, Freedom 35 usually involves growing and
selling marijuana. Well before the drug’s 2019 legalization in
Canada, the _TPB_ universe completely normalized its use. The show
avoids the clichés of stoner culture by making marijuana part of the
characters’ vision of the good life. “I’m trying to buy some
weed today,” Ricky says planning to relaunch his grow-op, “I’m
trying to get my life together.”

Standing in their way is trailer park supervisor and disgraced former
cop Jim Lahey, played by John Dunsworth, a legend in Halifax arts and
entertainment. His enmity toward the residents of Sunnyvale is the
show’s go-to formula for conflict. However, Mr Lahey’s authority
is ambiguous and limited. He usually ends up calling the police, who
are the real outsiders.

Despite his contempt for the citizens of Sunnyvale, even Mr Lahey is
an integral part of the community. In season two, Mr Lahey drunkenly
makes a speech in his bid for reelection as trailer park supervisor:

Who in this world doesn’t have problems? Who doesn’t have a drink
too many times once in a while, and even winds up passed out in their
own driveway pissing themselves?

The camera pans across the faces of the Sunnyvale residents, who nod
along, moved. Mr Lahey wins in a landslide.

Society produces stereotypes about the poor and the working class
which pathologize poverty. _Trailer Park Boys_ uses these
stereotypes as the raw material for unique characters who we not only
laugh at but identify with.

In _Trailer Park Boys: The Movie_, Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles are in
court again. “These boys don’t have any education,” their public
defender argues “they’re addicted to drugs and alcohol, and they
live in a trailer park.” But Ricky knows this is the wrong way to
see things. “What does [sic] that supposed to mean!?” he yells
before dismissing his counsel and victoriously representing himself
and his friends.

Ricky’s celebrated malapropisms — “Rickyisms” as fans of the
show dubbed them — constitute his irreverent idiolect. At one point,
when facing the “worst case Ontario,” he passes with “flying
fucking carpets.” Ricky’s trick is that he disregards not only the
rules of grammar, but the authority of his supposed superiors. He
speaks to the professional-class characters the same way he talks to
everyone else, expecting to get one over on them. It doesn’t always
work, but it’s a delight when it does, appealing to our own
fantasies of resistance.

Take This Job and Shove It

The alienation and proletarianization of middle-class work was a
consistent theme in the comedy of that era. 1999’s _Office
Space_ and the British series _The Office_, which debuted in 2001,
mined the crushing monotony and subservience of cubicle life for
comedy. Although its characters occupy a very different social
position, _Trailer Park Boys_ draws on the same critique of working
life.

“Alternative culture” of the ’90s celebrated dropping out of
middle-class life, dressing in old and torn clothes as if you were
poor, rather like the actors in _Trailer Park Boys_. “We’re
really an anti-TV show,” Mike Clattenburg once remarked. “It was
always anti-TV, indie television — just some laughs, crazy
characters, no production value.” The lack of professionalism —
the fact that making this show supposedly wasn’t a job —
gave _TPB_ its dirtbag aesthetic.

In the moral economy of the show, taking a real job is not just a
failure — it also pits you against your friends.

As Ricky once says to Julian: “A job? You know us, we don’t
work.” In the moral economy of the show, taking a real job is not
just a failure — it also pits you against your friends. When Ricky
becomes a mall cop, he tries to stop Bubbles from making off with the
shopping carts. In a later season, when Ricky has ended up taking Mr
Lahey’s job, Julian gives him some friendly advice: “Why don’t
you focus more on the weed, less on being trailer park supervisor?”

Although_ Trailer Park Boys _depicts the wish for a life free of
alienated labor, it also acknowledges that _someone_ has to do the
dirty work. At the heart of the Sunnyvale economy is the exploitation
and abuse of the eternal whipping boys, Cory and Trevor. Their
misfortunes are one of the show’s central running gags. The other
trailer park boys call upon the duo to labor, to take risks (and
blame), and to give Ricky cigarettes whenever he asks.

They do this because they want to belong. “I don’t want to be all
sentimental and stuff,” says Cory, “but I love them guys, and I
think they sincerely love us too.” Cory and Trevor are pathetic,
partly because they believe that work will actually provide them with
anything of value.

TPB’s Nova Scotia

The Nova Scotia setting of the show situates its characters within the
context of Canadian economic decline. Atlantic Canada underwent
deindustrialization early, experiencing a decades-long decline
[[link removed]] in
its coal-mining sector which started in the 1960s, and the degradation
of fisheries in the late 1980s.

The Nova Scotia setting of the show situates its characters within the
context of Canadian economic decline.

In his book _The Quest of the Folk_
[[link removed]],
historian Ian McKay argues that Nova Scotia has had its industrial
history and class conflict erased through state-sponsored and popular
depictions of the province as rural, traditional, and quaint: “A
tourism-oriented politics of commemoration entailed the willful
eradication of a challenging past.” Urban cultural producers, McKay
suggests, constructed the Nova Scotian countryside “as the romantic
antithesis to everything they disliked about modern urban and
industrial life.”

_TPB_ works within but also against this folk tradition. The show’s
unforgettable opening sequence, with a slow chiming theme song over
black-and-white footage of the park, signals Sunnyvale as a pastoral
place welcoming the audience. The scenery is often beautiful. Ricky
gives interviews against the backdrop of a gorgeous sunset. In one
episode, we get a glimpse of the ocean foregrounded by Mr Lahey and
Randy, who are tied onto the top of the trailer by the show’s other
protagonists.

Industrial Nova Scotia always looms in the background of the seemingly
rural Sunnyvale. Many of the criminal activities of the show’s
characters feed off this relationship between rural and urban.

The residents of Sunnyvale are urban, not rural types, existing on the
city’s economic and social peripheries. Industrial Nova Scotia
always looms in the background of the seemingly rural Sunnyvale. Many
of the criminal activities of the show’s characters feed off this
relationship between rural and urban: Bubbles takes shopping carts
from the mall, while Ricky and Julian head downtown to steal change
from parking meters. This juxtaposition shows that Sunnyvale is the
product of, rather than an escape from, the class conflict and poverty
of contemporary urban places.

Sunset on Sunnyvale

The show’s original seven-season run on the Canadian Showcase
Network ended in 2007, but the original creative team continued to
pump out television specials, films, and live performances over the
years that followed. The show also won an international fandom. First
broadcast in the United States on BBC America (edited for profanity,
which is hard to believe), by 2009 it had found a more suitable home
on Direct TV.

In 2013, Wells, Tremblay, and Smith bought control of the franchise
from Mike Clattenburg and the other producers. Soon afterward, Netflix
picked up _TPB_, producing five more seasons from 2014 to 2020, plus
an animated version, a spin off called _Out of the Park_, and several
live specials. This was when _Trailer Park Boys_ found its greatest
mainstream success, with celebrity guests such as Snoop Dogg visiting
Sunnyvale. Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles even appeared as guests
on _Jimmy Kimmel Live!_

Over the course of this second act, the Sunnyvale community, which was
so integral to the show, dwindled. Jonathan Torrens, who portrayed
rapper J-Roc, quit in 2016, perhaps because he found it untenable to
continue acting as a white man who believes himself to be black. In
the same year, police arrested Mike Smith for domestic abuse; his
costar Lucy DeCoutere quit in response to these charges, which were
subsequently dropped. Finally, John Dunsworth, who had played Mr Lahey
with tremendous aplomb, passed away in 2017.

Quite apart from the show’s organic decline, its tone does not play
well in today’s overtly politicized culture.

Quite apart from the show’s organic decline, its tone does not play
well in today’s overtly politicized culture. In the hipster heyday
of the 2000s, the largely white _TPB_ could mine topics such as
poverty, addiction, crime, and policing for humor, with a
transgressive spirit that seemed apolitical and racially innocent.
This is no longer possible. Whatever else we might say about the turn
to identity politics, the need for popular culture to reckon properly
with the racial aspects of such questions is surely a positive
development.

Later seasons of the show shy away from social problems. Rather than
surfing the currents of change, the writing became less confident,
leaning heavily on prop comedy and swearing, with genuine laughs
harder to come by. What now seems to sustain the show is the
audience’s parasocial connection (myself included) to the three
remaining stars.

The remaining cast launched a video podcast on their subscription-only
SwearNet. Sitting in Ricky’s kitchen in Halifax, they improvise
about weird news items, eating chips, getting drunk and stoned for
real, occasionally slipping out of character. This might be the best
way to enjoy _Trailer Park Boys _now, with the fiction stripped
away.

Luckily for fans, Ricky, Bubbles, and Julian don’t plan to stop.
“It would be funny to do a _Coronation Street_ thing,” says Mike
Smith, referring to the British soap opera that has been on the air
since 1960:

I would love to see Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles in twenty years . . .
that would be funny.

I’m not sure how funny it would be, but I still hope it happens.
Like old friends you don’t see that much anymore, it’ll be nice to
know that they’re still doing well.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Facebook
Twitter
Email

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aaron Giovannone is a writer and English professor based in Calgary,
Alberta, Canada. He hosts Sweater Weather, a video and audio podcast
about Canadian arts and culture.

* SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]]
* DONATE [[link removed]]

OUR NEW ISSUE, “THE WORKING CLASS,” IS OUT IN PRINT AND ONLINE
SOON. SUBSCRIBE TODAY [[link removed]] TO GET IT.

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web [[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [[link removed]]
Manage subscription [[link removed]]
Visit portside.org [[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 



########################################################################

[link removed]

To unsubscribe from the xxxxxx list, click the following link:
[link removed]