Reception
The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song (1999). This created controversy, because all nominated songs are traditionally performed during the Oscar broadcast, but the song contained the word fuck, which the FCC prohibits using in prime time broadcasts. Comedian Robin Williams performed the song with a chorus who gasped when the word was to be sung (Williams turned around at the crucial moment, and did not actually sing it). He included digs at Margaret Trudeau and Bryan Adams, partially taken from lyrics of Sheila Broflovski's reprise of the song in "La Resistance". He referenced Celine Dion as well. Mary Kay Bergman, the voice actress who sang the female parts in the song, committed suicide months before the performance, forcing the organizers to search for a replacement for her and Trey Parker, who did the male voices. Williams introduced the song by speaking with duct tape over his mouth so that his speech resembled that of Kenny McCormick, then tearing it off and finally saying Stan Marsh's trademark line, "Oh my god! They killed Kenny!"
There was also some concern about the fact the song referred to well-known Canadian singer Anne Murray as a "bitch", but Murray indicated that she was not offended by the tongue-in-cheek lyric (Murray was even invited to sing the song herself on the Oscar telecast, but had to decline due to a prior commitment). When asked, the Canadian Consul General (and former Prime Minister) Kim Campbell noted that she was not offended by the song since it was clearly a silly satirical piece not intended to insult her country. This is made clear in the final line of the song:
We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before somebody thinks of blaming us!
Coincidentally, the Canadian Oscar telecast in which Robin Williams sang the song included the premiere of the famous "I Am Canadian" rant advertisement, which counters many perceived Canadian stereotypes.
Read more about this topic: Blame Canada
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)