Degrassi Talks

A retrospective by Nick Peron

When I was in high school, I lived in a town that was part of the "bible belt" of my area, and even though I was attenting a public school a lot of religiously minded assholes put their religious mandates and beliefes into the classes I took. It was not as bad as some, it wasn't like they were telling the science teachers that evolution was only a thoery and that there were other ideas. Thankfully, they couldn't mess with my text books, but they could mess with my dress-code, school ethics, and most importantly, how they taught sex-ed.

Sex-Ed in high school, other than being fucking hillarious, was taught by your gym teacher. Mine at the time couldn't talk about anything in class without going into the Christian-Sex-Scare-Dogma and preaching about abstenance, and telling you to wait for somebody special, instead of getting to the reality of it all, explaining the risks and not trying to guilt trip us into a morality mold that is asthetically pleasing to the Christian minded PTA. No joke, through my entire course of high school there was only one girl I heard of who got pregnant, and they shipped her out so quick you couldn't bat an eye ball.

But I digress... Getting back to my sex ed class here, whenever there was a subject that the teacher couldn't properly articulate the appropriate amount of fear, guilt and shame that a good, pure, sex ed class would have, he would put on a video for all of us to watch. And let me tell you there were plenty of them. There were some vintage biology films about the reproductive organs that told you what they did, and then there were the guilt trip videos. The ones that showed a teenage couple getting pregnant, and would imply that abortion is bad. Or videos that would focus on fear mongering the AIDS epidemic as opposed to educating people about it. Those were the worst.

While they had to teach us every option available when it came to sex, they sure made it a point to identify which ones they frowned upon. It was always subtle, and when I look back at it, it makes me mad that they'd be more worried about the morals they wanted to upkeep than teaching us the facts and letting us form our own opinions on what was right and what was wrong. Not that teenagers are very good at that...

Okay, here I go getting off topic again, let's get back on track here: One series of videos that my gym teacher made us watch was probably the most enjoyable of the bunch: The Degrassi Talks series.

What is Degrassi Talks? Well in the zenith of their popularity, the cast members of the Degrassi series became the moral berometers of teenagers all over the world, who wouldn't want advice from Joey Jaramiah? So the geniuses who made Degrassi made an educational series called "Degrassi Talks" which featured the cast of the show talking about real issues with real people! They'd take cameras and travel all over Canada, asking real kids to tell their stories.

It wasn't about stating too many facts, it was about showcasing teenagers who really fucked up their lives. Sure they'd have a clip of one of the cast members talking about the statistics of drug abuse in teenagers, but for the most part they'd focus on interviewing the poor dope who wasted his life away sniffing glue, or the girl who got knocked up and has to work seven jobs to feed her hell spawn of a child.

As shocking and groundbreaking as this series tried to be, it was marred by two things that made it unintentionally funny:

1.) They used clips from actual Degrassi episodes that dealt with the issue they were talking about - Which as anybody who's ever watched the classic Degrassi series can tell you was pretty fucking funny.

and

2.) These interviews were conducted in the late 80's early 90's: You want to see something frightening? You watch footage of Canadian Teenagers dressed in 80's clothing. Remember, this is an era before mass media, and the internet. Some of us couldn't even get cable in our areas because they were too rural. You're only outlet to what the rest of the world was going to big cities like Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver to keep up with the times, and even then it would be a perverted deformed version of the current trends.

To give you an idea of how these people were like, if you live in a city, hop in your car and drive about an hour into your nearest country side and get out. For those of you who already live in the boonies, then just turn on your radio. Do you hear the Rednecks playing "Cotton Eye Joe"? Congradulations, you're living the nightmare that I'm discribing.

I'm going to take a brief look back at a handful of the Degrassi Talks episodes, what they're about, point out some highlights, and identify which kid probably made a huge fucking mess of their lives.

Onward faithful reader to part 2 of this Retrospective.

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