In what way has Wayne Gretzky affected American culture?
It seems to be Lorne Michaels is really the only logical answer. He created Saturday Night Live, and has sheperded the program through decades of influence on American comedy; American pop culture, bith on TV and in cinema, would be remarkably different today without Michaels creating SNL.
You can say William Shatner’s a big star, but he’s just an okay actor who got a big part that could quite conceivably have been played by dozens of other men. The man who made Star Trek a big deal isn’t Shatner, it’s Gene Roddenberry. And Gene wasn’t a Canadian.
Lorne Michaels is, and he gave us Eddie Murphy, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Mike Myers, Phil Hartman, Will Ferrell (ugh), Adam Sandler, and God knows how many others. SNL became the farm team of big time comedy.
Louis B. Mayer is obviously enormously influential, but defining his as “Canadian” is pretty slim. Mayer was born in Russia, moved to Canada when he was a kid, and left for the USA at 19. He passed through, at most. Michaels was actually born and raised in Canada and began his career here.
Well, I do consider basketball and football as big aspects of the daily American experience. Just read the paper every day and you will know what I mean. What is the topic around the water cooler usually about ?
But the fact that there are many Americans who are alive today as a result of Banting doesn’t affect what is going on and talked about in the American community.
Its what you eat, drink, listen too, read, believe , play and watch on a regular basis because you happen to live in a particular society. Or, its about how a particular society spends its time.
But please, don’t let me limit anyone. If you feel a Canadian deserves recognition
for what he’s done for Americans, I’m happy to hear of it.
Btw, I believe Lorne Michaels comes second only to Naismith.
RickJay pretty much summed it up. The only sports in America that come close to full market saturation are NFL football and MLB baseball. Basketball is a distant 3rd. Hockey is possibly fourth or even lower. So Naismith and Gretzky and Howe, while influential, are remarkably known in their fields but their impact diminishes when you step out of their respective areas. My wife, for instance, knows the names of 15-20 major football and baseball stars. She could probably name Lebron James as an NBAer. I know she couldn’t tell you one NHL player’s name. She would probably recognize Gretzky from tabloids and commercials and not realize he was one of the greatest hockey players ever. I think that’s probably true of the average American non-sports fan.
Whether it’s John Belushi, Martin Short, Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and of course Eddie Murphy, damn near every American knows SNL skits, the comics, or their post-SNL films or personas. And it’s been this way for 40 years. Lorne Michaels has had a hand in shaping the trajectory of all these careers and often is the bankroller of these comedians’ first films. His impact is pervasive. Really, I can’t think of anyone even close to him. And that’s knowing that a crapload of Americans couldn’t identify him by his picture, or recognize his name.
Not to get all technical, but Eddie Murphy was hired during the Jean Doumanian era of SNL which was after Lorne Michaels had quit producing the show, so I don’t really think we have Michaels to thank for the Velvet Jones School of Technology.
I don’t argue that Michaels hasn’t had a tremendous amount of influence on American culture, but just that he didn’t have anything to do directly with Murphy becoming a phenomenon.
This may be contrary to the intent of the OP, but I can’t help but think that any real answer to the question would have to be someone who did what they grew famous for primarily in Canada, to such big effect that its influence seeped over the border into the United States.
James Naismith, for example, may have been born in Canada, but he created basketball in Massachusetts and died in Kansas. Lorne Michaels created his most famous and influential work in New York City. There’s nothing discernibly “Canadian” about either basketball or Saturday Night Live just because their creators were born north of the border.
I’m not sure where that leaves us. Maybe the guys from “Kids in the Hall”? That’s a Canadian cultural artifact that has probably been influential in the US.
Without him, Bobby Clarke could not have played for the Philadelphia Flyers — or any other team, inside or outside of Canada — hmmm; OK, I have it: thereby impoverishing hockey culture.
Iunno, Lorne Michaels seems to get in by proxy because of all the people who got their start on SNL, and then got really famous doing other stuff. I’d vote for James Naismith, myself. He flat out invented a completely new sport that is enormously popular.
Of course, there’s also Laura Secord, who [del]was a nosy old broad with good legs[/del] single handedly won the war of 1812. It would be hard to make the case for Manifest Destiny if the Americans had conquered Canada, and so every foreign policy decision of the US gov’t for the past 200 years can be directly attributed to her work.
What is scary is that none of these people have had any real influence at all. My Canadian friends, you have a lovely reputation for being good and polite, except when one of you is dismembering and eating people, but is your goodness standing in the way of your greatness? Do you have what it takes to be world-class assholes? The Brits have done it forever and your cousins in the US took it to a whole 'nother level. Man up or you will be condemned to ride on the short bus of world history forever.
