U.S. always borrowing from U.K.

I don’t know about you guys, but despite my weird fascination with Christina Ricci and her… I don’t know about you guys, but despite my weird fascination with Christina Ricci and her films, I hated “Prozac Nation.” Well, maybe not “hated.” Let’s try “was bored with, while being annoyed,” instead. I think that covers the horrifying emotional train ride I took a few months ago as I watched Elizabeth Wurtzel’s entertaining, if occasionally annoying, memoir become a cinematic train wreck, one so bad it causes me to mix my metaphors months later while writing about it.

There is this scene in the movie that seems like it should be cool, even though it isn’t. Ricci is sitting on her bed, talking to someone about something — events tend to fuse and blur together in a boring, dream-like way in this film — and the poster above Ricci, above her bed, is a Joy Division poster.

The poster is an iconic image, the black-and-white one with “Love will tear us apart” written on it. I suppose in the movie it was supposed to function as a kind of foreshadowing device, but it actually was just there to send us, the audience, a simple message. The band on this poster is cool. The character under the poster likes this band. Therefore, by doing cultural math, we are to discover that the character is cool. Again, this is achieved through the use of the band that is featured in the poster.

The movie is set in the ’80s, so a Joy Division poster meant something else then as opposed to what it means now. I would argue that back then, Joy Division was more of a music-nerd band, without their current proto-gloom status — although I cheerfully accept that one might be able to argue the opposite amazingly easily. The basic premise of why they were cool, though, was based heavily on one fact: their country of origin.

Like nearly every good, underground cult band beloved in America during the ’80s, Joy Division was British. The same with The Smiths, The Cure, Depeche Mode and a million other bands with impeccable hair and multiple singles collections. England produced impossibly good pop music and amazingly good pop culture. Growing up in America, one wanted to be English.

It was as if they weren’t satisfied with their cool accents, different ways of spelling simple words like “cheque” and “colour.” No, Britain needed to dominate in terms of catchy bands with amazing live shows and rock-solid albums. I’m not sure if it made up for their loss of the Empire, but they certainly owned the empire of cool foreign pop albums.

Now, however, I have the tragic responsibility of saying that their empire has crashed, burned overnight and been taken over by our neighbor — Canada.

Because, people, look at the facts. Canada has The Arcade Fire, Metric, Broken Social Scene, Wolf Eyes, Final Fantasy, Stars and as many other bands that Broken Social Scene wants to create as side projects. England has what? Kaiser Chiefs? Bloc Party? Freaking Coldplay? They can’t even claim Franz Ferdinand because the band, despite being British, defines itself as Scottish. That is so messed up I can barley even comprehend it, much less type it. Can you imagine Damon Albarn saying he identifies as Welsh? I didn’t think you could.

But look at the world: It’s gone utterly insane. Morrisey lives in L.A., for God’s sake. How is something like that possible? It’s possible because Britain is done. No longer is this the cool English-speaking country whose pop culture we consumed as if it were a mildly addictive additive. No, now it’s a faded place, a forgotten island whose best days are behind it, whose currency has been absorbed into the force that is the European Union, a place that will begin to import its trends wholesale.

Except, wait a minute, hold on, isn’t Canada still under England’s yoke? Isn’t that why “Kids in the Hall” featured the Queen as a character? Doesn’t Canada even have the Queen on its money?

So, if England owns Canada like Hall owns Oates, does this mean Britain is still the cool foreign country whose rock music we consume, albeit through the proxy of our northernmost neighbor? So does that nullify this entire column? Does this mean, two freaking centuries later, that we are still in debt to Britain?

I’m not sure. Let me put on Louder Than Bombs and read my Alan Moore, and I’ll get back to you.

E-mail Kevin at kjs34@pitt.edu.