Who Are You Calling "Dodger"?

I've been wondering about another commercial. This one is a sort of public service announcement about energy conservation. The commercial, which you can see here (click on "TV-Habitat"), features David Suzuki visiting the natural habitat of a "draft dodger."

David Suzuki is like Canada's Al Gore, only with a better if sadder backstory (childhood in Japanese internment camps in Canada during WWII), more personality and credibility (he's an actual scientist), and fewer Oscars (though he is known for his TV shows). He also carries a bit of the legacies of Marlin Perkins and Jacques Cousteau (without the toque), especially in this ad.

The commercial shows Suzuki (sloppily) caulking the windows in a 60s-era bungalow, which is said to be the natural habitat of the "draft dodger." The dodger, when he appears, is a middle-aged schlub in a bathrobe who seems understandably confused by the man speaking in hushed tones in his living room (which has a surprising lack of furniture). Suzuki then sneaks out, giving the dodger the caulking gun along the way, presumably so as not to disturb the guy in his natural habitat. Which doesn't make sense, but hey, it's a commercial, so narrative consistency may be too much to ask for.

So here are the things about this commercial I understand. It's good to caulk windows. Also, we all know that David Suzuki intrudes on our consciousness with environmental messages and has been since Al Gore was just a privileged senator from Tennessee, so here he is again, that wacky David Suzuki, and he has a sense of humor, or humour, about his image even though his message is serious.

Also, I "get" it: draft dodger = person with windows that need caulking. Get it? Draft?

However, who else could a "draft dodger" be? Hmm. Canada last had a draft during World War II, so a draft dodger from that era would be 90 or older, and also probably wouldn't be living in Canada, given that he had to escape to somewhere else to dodge the draft. The commercial guy is middle-aged--about the era of someone dodging the draft during the 60s and early 70s, or the Viet Nam era. Which, would make him--an American!

Roy assures me that Canadians think of Viet Nam draft dodgers as guys who were doing the right thing--not necessarily heroes, but definitely people of conscience practicing civil disobedience. Fine. However, I agree with my mother, who pointed out that those who object to war have a process they can follow legally instead of fleeing the country, and I'm proud of my oldest brother, who followed that process and become a conscientious objector and stuck around in the U.S. to contribute from inside the country.

But back to the commercial. This draft dodger seems to be an American. And I can't help but think that the sub-subtext of the commercial is that bad as Canadians may be about drafty windows, Americans are worse.

That statement may be true--certainly Americans as well as Canadians are fortunate (read: wasteful) compared to people in the rest of the world. And "everybody knows" that the U.S. may have signed the Kyoto protocol but the U.S. did not ratify it.

And of course, that sub-subtext may be there; it may not. I may be reading too much into the commercial. I have been called "over-sensitive" before (by an American, though). And in a country with a reputation for "polite," in which writing a sternly-worded letter of complaint is a major step, one does wonder. One must.