Soap Opera News

I picked up my Saturday edition of Canada’s national paper and see that there is a two-page spread on the ups and tragic downs of Inuit painter Annie Pootoogook. I groan and then instruct myself that I should resist reading this spread… that there has been too much predictable reduction of the talented artist’s life to just another racist soap opera. And I know damn well that I will read it, and I notice that the writer does check his own temptation to write a soap opera episode by using intelligent quotes from friends of the artist who problematize the stereotypical narrative. And then I cure the fact that this talented artist, whose work I had seen but whom I had never met, had died under suspicious circumstances too damn early.