These days, many of us watch far more television and spend far more time online at various sites than we had pre-pandemic. The website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is one of the places where I spend more time these days. I watch more mainstream news from the CBC than I have in the past. And, at the CBC Gem page of the site, I’ve watched every episode of all six seasons of Schitt’s Creek, the outstanding creation of Daniel and Eugene Levy, three times.

The CBC Gem page on the site has a treasure trove of other series, documentaries, and feature films. All of the content at the CBC site is freely available to residents of Canada. If you are outside of Canada, try to get it by going incognito. Or access some of the content below at the links included.

Yesterday, I found this gem: the 2019 documentary “Assholes* *A Theory,” which draws upon the best-selling 2012 book of the same name by philosopher Aaron James. The documentary (John Walker, dir.) features segments with James himself who defines an asshole as: “The guy who allows himself special advantages in cooperative life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.” This doc also features interviews with Monty Python’s John Cleese, various professors of law, undergraduate students, fans of Kanye West, and many others. A must-see doc.

This morning, I found “Picture This,” a characteristically excellent product of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). This gem of a doc focuses on the cultural work with respect to sex, sexuality, and disability of “queer cripple” Andrew Gurza. Over the course of this short doc, Gurza talks about his own struggles to claim a sexuality and sexual identity, the ableist norms of nondisabled gay men’s culture, and personal support workers and assisted sex, among other things. Of special interest to members of the queer community in Ontario and Toronto, in particular. If you can’t get it at the CBC Gem page, check it out at Gurza’s website here.

Riffing on the title of the reality TV series, “Little People, Big World,” the four-minute documentary “Little Big Leaf” centres around life in Vietnam for Phu Dinh Van, a little person who, after meeting a tourist from Toronto, began to teach himself how to speak and write English. Noting the difficulties that he and other little people experience to secure an education and employment, Phu Dinh Van explains that he wants to study English at a Canadian university in order to eventually teach both the subject of English and lessons about disabled people.

If you want to recommend a film, podcast, TV series, or some other media event, drop me a line in the comments on this post. This kind of post may become a regular feature of BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY for the duration of the pandemic.

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