Talk:Shivers (1975 film)

Was the film actually debated on the floor of the Canadian House of Commons?

I was curious about the claim that David Cronenberg's theatrical debut film, "Shivers" (1975), was debated in the Canadian House of Commons. It is frequently repeated bit of film history trivia and I wanted to see what was actually said in the debates and protests by MPs, so I looked into the parliamentary debates archive from 1975 (30th Parliament, 1st Session), the year the film was released (https://parl.canadiana.ca/browse/eng/c/debates/30-1) and to my surprise I found no mention of the film in the records. I also looked forward in time as far as the records go for that session (12 Oct 1976) because it is possible that the film did not cause an immediate controversy, and instead, I found debates around another film "Sweet Movie" also funded by the Canadian Film Development Corporation and released earlier in 1975—a film that is mentioned by name in the several times between July and October of that year (https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC3001_08/1). I even checked the index of topics; there, I found other films mentioned along with "Sweet Movie" but no mention of "Shivers" (https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC3001_20/1). I even checked for Shivers' alternative titles, including the French one, but no luck. If it was mentioned in Parliamentary debate, it appears it was not central to the debate nor significant enough to record its mention (a bit hard to believe given the thoroughness of these record (eg. vol. 8 is 1000 pages). Furthermore, all other evidence I can find for this claim is mere hearsay, even the book cited for the claim in the Wiki article merely says that it was debated in Parliament, but does not give any dates or references itself (again, more mere hearsay). Does anyone know of any additional evidence to the contrary? If not, the article should be edited to reflect this widely misattributed piece of film history and trivia.

My hypothesis is that the memory of the debate around "Sweet Movie" was transferred to "Shivers" at some point, likely because it's not unbelievable that it would be debated and David Cronenberg's film is more famous. But, it was "Sweet Movie", not "Shivers", that was called an example of "insane, filthy productions" being funded by the Canadian taxpayer, and over which the CFDC was accused of "wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars" (p. 7721, HOC3001_8; cf pp. 7814, 7816, 8179, 8180, 8614). RageandSteel (talk) 18:49, 18 November 2023 (UTC)