Canada's finalists for Eurovision, and the anthology Never Whistle At Night is bending horror

Get ready for a brand new season of Dragon's Den with a new full-time dragon Drew Scott from Property Brothers Thursdays at 8/30 Newfoundland stream now on CBC and CBC gem brought to you in part by AWS This is a CBC podcast Was it next year for the first time ever Canada is sending a contestant to the Eurovision Song Contest Yesterday the five Canadian Finals were revealed which of them is gonna give Canada its best chance I'm element up to Mahmoud and this is commotion Karen Frickers here with the latest Karen. It's so nice to see you. How's it going? Yeah, it's going great and it was so exciting to be there yesterday for this announcement I feel like we're we're off and running. I was gonna say like this is really happening You've been covering your vision for forever and now we're involved and I got to say Karen like Canada famously not a European country whose idea was this like how did this even happen? Well, about a year ago a line appeared in the Canadian federal budget that was a surprise to many That said that the CBC radio Canada should explore joining Eurovision And we know that the Prime Minister Mark Carney has tweeted in a knowing way about the contest And this fits into a larger agenda for the government about becoming more European getting closer to Europe So I think this is coming from the PM. I should also say that like the idea that CBC writer Canada has involved in doing this thing It is always a country's public broadcaster that sort of manages each entry for each country, right? That's usually how this works Yeah, it is run by the European Broadcasting Union and the competitors are the national broadcasters or public service broadcasters in competing countries Right Karen you spend all of this time covering your vision as a contest going to your vision as a contest watching other countries participate in the parade And then yesterday you sit and you watch the announcement here right here in this building of the CBC They're like hey, we're gonna be not only we gonna be involved in this thing But here are the five people who are gonna do this thing What was the vibe like in terms of you know the reveal of the the finalists I have to say the vibes were good. They had brought in some super fans They used like the fan networks to bring folks in who are very conversant and excited And I mean there was so much emphasis on the historic nature of this moment like this is our first time And so like no pressure But these people are going to be putting us forward on this stage for the first time And 131 million people watched the contest this year in May on on regular on regular channels alone Yeah, a lot talking streaming like this is a huge platform I should so let's let's name the the finalists Okay, so we are down to these five but three hundred and twenty five people applied Three hundred and twenty five people is a lot of people by the way And then we're down to the five finalists who are William Clotier and then Josie Ann and then Rev Tyler Shaw and talk Canadians have until November 5th to vote and then you know they have the final sound who becomes Canada's official pick I'm curious like just historically what makes an artist What makes an artist a particularly good fit for Eurovision? Well, I mean they need to be a world-class singer and they need to be a stage performer with huge charisma Experience and nerves of steel because we've talked about you know this platform In recent years there's been a lot of energy around gender non-conformity body positivity Queerness and the contest which really reflects global youth culture. Yeah, so the one that really popped for me the most around this is talk Who is the which is the performer name of Nicholas Durochet? He's he is a Juno winner in 2024 for best breakout artist He has got this sort of glam rock self-presentation. He's got a great Gabilee voice. Yes. Yeah, and he's a he's a big person He said straight out of the box yesterday like I don't have a cookie cutter body for the music industry And I just think he's like really bang on this kind of like I fly my flag and this is who I am So I think he's he's He really fits. I also fan rev who is from Montreal based in Toronto and um is a lot one of her inspirations is European dance music so she really fits That model she knows the contest well. She's been watching since 2014 And she's also a Juno winner herself for her very catchy dance track control all delete So they all are really strong Those were the two that I thought like okay you you are fitting into the into the contest quite well Can I just tell you like when it was first and I was just like as a question just as a question of oh Canada might be entering your vision Who might be a good fit to to to to represent Canada be first named the popped into mind for me was talk because I'd seen talks Juno performance and it's like this like a wild sort of like I just look a large scale thing That like only talk can pull off, you know it just got this really big voice But also because it's a gigantic kind of liquid performance on stage and so it's it was not a surprise to me to see talk make it to like be one of the five finals And so I hearing you say that you know like talk stood up for you. Yeah, not not not a surprise at all Um, we should talk about the timing of this Karen. I feel like that's relevant to this because Canada's trying to sort of assert itself on the world stage as a distinctly united states We're trying to forge our own different relationships with the European countries How does this operate in the realm of soft power? You think Well, we're talking about this on the literal eve of the Canada EU summit in Montreal tomorrow And this is part of Canada's attempts to become closer to Europe and we're negotiating a relationship with the EU That is going to be closer than any non-European country has had. Yeah The thin edge of the wedge was joining the European Broadcasting Union in June and joining Eurovision So these things are are very much connected in terms of the national agenda Uh, Eurovision is famously an incredibly political contest I mean like the stuff that happens on this stage, you know, Eurovision always tries to say this stuff is not political Which makes of course everything else around it incredibly political This year we've seen Ireland and Iceland and Spain and Slovenia and the Netherlands Boycott the contest because of Israel's participation now some people are saying you know what? Canada might be entering Eurovision But we shouldn't participate for the same reason Why is your vision so much more than our public on the song contest like it becomes a it's own sort of political arena Well, we said it's a contest of broadcasters But you compete under the name of your country yeah vote for Israel you vote for Canada And that national representation piece is what has always made it Next level in terms of the stakes and there's always been political controversies like in 1969 The Austrians boy-cotted because it was happening in Spain and they did not endorse the Franco regime So boycotts aren't new and the politics are connected to the national representation piece I should say it's actually pretty common for contestants to be asked about their own political stances How how equipped do you think the finalists that you saw on that stage yesterday? How equipped do you think we are to handle the the political dimension I guess of this whole thing Well, I mean they all struck me as very poised but I will I will I will put this in the context of they are going to need to be prepared And the CBC is going to need to prepare them because that's part of the job like we have a very short runway To put an act together to put a delegation together to put a national commentary team together and part of the work is preparing whoever that artist is To be in that spotlight Which is very intense it is the atmosphere around the contest is very fraught at the moment around the Israel-Palestine issue So I really hope that whoever it is gets all the media training they need I'm glad that you brought up the short runway thing because I think that's maybe one thing that's really useful to mention here Like the timeline is much shorter other broadcasters start preparing for their next year's you know entry Right after your vision wraps up. We're doing this with a much shorter kind of run run time And so this feels like okay, we have to we have to cram in a lot of stuff into the next few months, right? Oh absolutely and the head of delegation for CBC Radio Canada has said we are building this plane as we're flying it You know there as we've noted there there is a political imperative here. Yeah, I mean your vision is so odd because it moves around every year depending on who Who wins so next year we're in Bulgaria because Bulgaria won this year So there's always a shortest runway But we have no experience doing it before we haven't even shown it before right and that and that's where I think the pressure is really on The head of delegation of CBC said that she is on speed dial with a lot of heads of delegations for other broadcasters Great to hear because we're gonna Canada needs a hand here to make sure that we know what to expect and how best to prepare our artist Karen what happens next like we've seen these five finalists, but like what's the next step in this process Well, we it's a talk about short runways. We've we've got until november 5th to vote Folks have folks have can have one vote a day um CBC Radio Canada are really pushing the boat out to promote the artist and so Tom Powers going to be interviewing all of them There's going to be a CBC music program where we can hear them each sing and I think that's really important yes Then collate the votes in november they were saying november early December we're going to find out the act and then I think They they are all they all write their own music and so eat whoever wins is going to write their own song With the support of the CBC. I think that's really important to say yeah, we're not you're your vote is not for A performance of a song you're voting for the performer and then they'll go away and write a song for this right And so that's that's interesting because we there's so many questions still about yeah who it is what the vibe is going to be, what it's going to look like, and then what the promotion is going to look like to get Canada excited about this and to get our person out on the stage of everywhere else. Listen, we know Mark Carney is going to be watching your vision. We know you're going to be watching your vision, but there's a bit of a gamble here. And the gamble is our Canadian is going to pay attention to your vision now that Canada is going to be in it. What's your take on this? Do you think people will pay attention to it? I mean, I have heard this morning, CBC working hard. I heard all of the contestants this morning on Toronto radio this morning. I mean, the promotion is either I am getting a lot of media requests from across the Canadian media sphere, but we haven't shown it before. And to me, that's the difference. When Australia joined about 10 years ago, they'd been showing it for decades, whereas in terms of Canadian public awareness. No, not watching. That's, that's the job. And I mean, big emphasis yesterday on this is the first year. We're figuring it out. We, you know, we, we're going to have a lot of years to do this, but that it's not just we have to do all of this thing in a short amount of time. We also have to interest the Canadian public in it. But you and I talking right now is hopefully helping out. I mean, Karen, I've been walking around for weeks. It's going, I feel like it's got to be talked. I feel like he's got to do a cover of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, but the ship is actually on the stage and there's water raining down and no one's listening to me. And maybe, maybe they shouldn't be. Maybe I shouldn't be in charge of what we do in your vision. Well, clearly, your performer vibes their way, but it can be a cover of an existing song. So we'll have to see what this person, it has to be original music. Listening and learning. Karen, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being your friend. Thanks for having me on. Of course. Good to talk to you. Karen Fricker is a editorial director at Intermission Magazine and a regular right here on commotion for all things. You're a vision head over to cbc.ca/yourvision to learn more about all those finalists for the Eurovision Song Contest 2027. And you can vote. You get to vote for for those contestants. You've got one vote per day until November 5th. Get ready for a brand new season of Dragon Stand with a new full-time Dragon. Drew Scott from Property Brothers. Thursdays at 8/8/30 Newfoundland. Stream now on cvc and cvc gem. Brought to you in part by AWS. I'm Halloween up on my mood and this is commotion. Look, it is Halloween season. Chances are you're looking for something spooky to read right now. There's a brand new anthology of horror short stories that's worth worth checking out. It's called Back for Blood, Never Whistlet Night Part 2. And it features an all-indigenous roster of established and up-and-coming writers. Today, Alicia Elliott is here and Danny Roulette is here. Hello to both of you. Hi. Hi, y'all. Nice to have you here. Danny, I'm going to start with you. This is the second Never Whistlet Night collection. The first one was this collection of dark fiction. Sold really well, spent more than 100 weeks on the indie bestseller book list. Could you just tell us a little bit more about the first anthology and the effect and the effect that it had? Yeah, so the first anthology Never Whistlet Night brought together 26 indigenous writers working across horror and dark fiction. They all had an incredible amount of range, which I think is also true of Back for Blood. There were writers from different nations with completely different voices and relationships to the genre. And I think the response was huge. Because you said it spent a lot of time on the bestseller's list and it became a bestseller for good reason. I think it's success proves something that indigenous writers and readers already knew was that there's an appetite for this type of writing in this genre and that indigenous writers don't need to stick to one specific genre. And I think its impact was also about making space. Yeah, I mean, listen, the first collection was so good. I was, there were a couple of stars. I was like, I need to sort of pace myself in getting through this because I'm a little bit too scared. And I don't read a lot of horror, which actually kind of reminds me, like maybe if I spend more time reading horror, I can build up some kind of immunity to this, but we've not gotten there yet. Alicia, we're now back for Blood. New anthology, you've got some big name writers, you've got Billy Ray Belcourt, you've got Jessica Johns, and then a whole bunch of emerging artists. Alicia, you continue to do this book. What's the vibe of this new collection of short stories? It's kind of great because as you kind of mentioned, there are some really established authors in there. There's Stephen Graham Jones, he's always coming out with amazing stuff, and then Billy Ray Belcourt, which is really fascinating because this is his first foray into horror. So like, if you're curious, he does have a short story called Summer Vacation in here, which is great. But then, you know, there are also emerging writers, which is, I think, one of the great things about the anthologies that kind of puts together people who kind of are already established, and then emerging writers who don't necessarily have the following yet, but this could be kind of like a jumping off point for them, essentially. Yeah. When I think about Billy Ray Belcourt, I think of someone who's probably going to break my heart. I don't think of someone who's going to terrify me. And then, here we are on a calendar. All right, am I ready for this? Am I ready to think of Billy Ray in this light? Fine. I'm on board. These are all original stories. We should say, half commissioned and half sort of open call. So there's some kind of wide variety in this. Danny, how are you feeling about this new collection? I really enjoyed it. I think one thing that stood out to me was how different each story feels. You have body horror and supernatural and psychological. And then I think one of the most frightening things were where the horrible thing are the humans. So I really like that contrast. Talk to me about the thing that makes the horror effective in this one. What do you think sort of, what approach to horror is really working for you in this collection? I think kind of the last thing I touched on is that the supernatural and the real are often sitting very close beside each other. So there might be a creature or something that seems impossible happening. But underneath that, you're dealing with these really human elements agree for addiction or racism or violence. And I think as an indigenous reader, there's moments where something might seem completely supernatural to another reader. But for an indigenous reader, that relationship isn't necessarily that distant. So sometimes the question wasn't, is this thing real? The story already accepts that it is. It's just the horror is what happened next. Alicia, you have a story in here. I'm kind of curious to hear from you on this. How are the authors in this collection engaging with the horror as a genre? What are the presumptions that readers may have that you read this book and kind of go like, oh, I was thinking this was going to go in this direction, but actually it kind of subversed the reader's expectations. Yeah, it's interesting because I mean, it's always kind of hard to like, you know, have a general theme. I guess where everything kind of fits in, especially due to the nature of how the book kind of came together. However, I do think it's really fascinating because there was this this kind of really interesting horror essay that Eve Tuck and See rewrote like years ago called Glossary of a haunting, which kind of talks about the way that the way that haunting and horror operates in terms of like culturally. So for example, they kind of talked about how in a lot of American horror in particular, there is this kind of white, passive, innocent protagonist, and the horror just kind of happens to them and they didn't do anything to cause it. And then, you know, and it kind of, and then and sometimes, you know, maybe the cause of that horror is an Indian burial branch, you know, or something like that, right? And you contrast that with, you know, within a culture where you are dehumanized, where your people are dehumanized, then, you know, it's what's interesting in here is that they are not necessarily, there's not really passive protagonists in the same way. There are these very active protagonists and often there is almost this way that, you know, it's almost like, well, we're already being dehumanized. So what have we lean into that? You know, so I think what's fascinating is seeing these authors kind of depicting characters who are choosing to be monstrous or, you know, embracing kind of their toxicity or, you know, whatever, and they are saying, okay, we're not haunted. We are haunting and we are choosing to do that. I appreciate that frame shift also because I don't think I realize how much of the horror that I consume or that it react to is really built on that really passive protagonist was like, I'm just walking in the world and I'm an innocent person and all things are sort of happening to me. And the idea of like shifting that frame to say, actually, innocence is not going to be presumed, you know, and if we start from that assumption kind of being subverted, where else can we go? Where else can we go in this particular, you know, in this particular culture? Danny, there's a lot of different types of horror in this collection. You got body horror, you got supernatural horror, you got some psychological horror, but I'm wondering if there's any, like, through lines, are there any kind of connective tissue that runs through all the stories that you see here? So as an Indigenous reader, the thing I kept coming back to is that the monster wasn't always the most frightening thing. I think it sort of gave shape to put a lens on colonialism and grief and violence and addiction. And I think there were also a lot of questions about like, what's right and wrong, morality, like the choices people make when they're scared, even when it affects their friends or family, that was something that really impacted me more reading. At least you're right about you, any through lines as soon as to get for you. Something that was kind of fun is that there were a lot of coming, coming of age stories, which I found kind of interesting because, you know, there's obviously, when you're talking about coming of age, that kind of idea of when you go from being a child to a teenager, you kind of become sort of like a demon. So I guess it makes sense, right? Especially if you're a parent, you know, you're like, oh my gosh, who is this child? I don't know who they are anymore, right? And so I thought it was kind of fascinating seeing kind of these different coming-of-age stories, you know, whether that was coming-of-age to be a, you know, a werewolf or, you know, coming-of-age to become different things. Like I thought that that was kind of fun seeing that in there. And then also obviously kind of what Danny is saying, right? Like is it's fascinating seeing these kind of realistic social things that are kind of becoming the horror, right? They're the metaphor that is driving forward and helping us examine what is scary, what do we fear, and why? I think Danny, one thing that I've been kind of curious about over the last maybe four or five years or so has been this gigantic explosion that we've seen in Indigenous writers who are turning to horror, turning to horror as a genre, turning to the avenue of horror to say, okay, there's a lot to explore in this place. When we look at horror, not just in literature, but I guess like across the board in general, what's the thing that horror can do that other genres you think can't do? I think it allows us to speak about those horrifying things through a story that people wouldn't expect to examine such serious issues. You know, we have the focus of the monster, body horror or gore and blood, but then there's this very real undercurrent of social issues that have affected Indigenous people since time immemorial, since colonialism, and people might not go into a horror novel expecting to read that. And so I think it's like this duality of fear in two very different forms. At least I'll ask you the same question. Why do you think Indigenous authors are turning to horror? Like what's the thing that horror can offer as a vehicle, you think? Well, I think I love horror, and I think that the fascinating thing about it is the way that it is kind of as Danny was mentioning able to kind of almost trojan horse in messages, right? So, you know, it has this kind of like, there's this part where it's like, you know, you have the obvious text, right? That's saying, you know, let's say the, you know, character becomes a aware wolf as it kind of happens in the story animal dumb. Okay, so there's that. But then if you choose to go any deeper, there is a subtext where you can say, okay, well, this is also not just about like, you know, as I mentioned, kind of coming of age, but also coming of age and realizing that you are gay and people consider you monstrous because of that and things like that, right? And so I think horror has this really great way of utilizing metaphor where it can kind of stand in for whatever the reader kind of, as long as there's like stuff to kind of, to base this on, you can kind of, you know, interpret it in many different ways. And it's also great because horror kind of operates as a mirror to society. Even when the author isn't necessarily consciously choosing to do that, there are ways that, you know, whatever time period that a piece of horror media is produced in reflects back the fears of that society overall. And I think that that's really amazing, like even, you know, thinking about the movie Night of the Living Dead, right? There was like, you know, not necessarily an intention to make that have a kind of race allegory. And yet that is clearly there when you watch it, especially thinking about the time period that it was made in. So, you know, I think that that's what's kind of great about horror is that it offers us these meanings on different levels. And, you know, allows us to kind of explore these things that maybe people wouldn't necessarily want to explore in other circumstances, you know, you might not want to talk about like the horror of, you know, of bad boyfriends or weird obsessive creeps. And yet, you know, you go see something like obsession. And all of a sudden, we're all talking about that, right? And so, yeah, I love that. I love how horror kind of just naturally kind of does that. Yeah, it opens the door in a way, and it makes people look just so excited to sort of chime in on a specific conversation in a way that I think very few other donors can sort of do the same thing. Dan, I'm going to give you the last word here. If you had to recommend one story from this anthology, what is the story that you think you'd recommend? No pressure. Yeah. Each one is so good. It was really hard for me to think. But I thought about the one that made me audibly gassed. I was reading it at work on my lunch break. And my coworker was like, what's wrong? But that summer vacation by Billy Ray Velquart. Okay. Yeah. I think that one is just amazing. I think any day that you're holding a book and it makes you audibly gasp. That's exactly what you want. Like that is actually like the greatest possible response you could have to something like that. I really appreciate your time. You guys, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thanks so much again. Thank you. I appreciate. Yeah, good to talk to you. Thank you again. Daniel Roulette is a Ojibwe artist and book blogger from Dark Creek First Nation. You can find her at Thunderbird Woman Reads on Instagram. She's in Winnipeg. Alicia Elliott is Tuscarora and Mohawk Ryder from Six Nations of the Grand River. She's also the author and then she fell. She's in Guelph. Back for blood. Never whistle at night. Part two is out now. That's it for the show today. My name is Aluminum Dumahmoud. This show is called Commotion. Hey, we'll be back tomorrow. So if you're around at the same time, we would love to see you in the meantime. Have a great day. Talk to you then. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.