The Songs: Oooo Canada!

Fans of South Park will have a ready-made enemy to vilify if the animated film fails to win the Oscar for best song. They can blame Canada.

The movie South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut mocked just about all creeds, races and nationalities, but the main targets of its crude humor were Canadians.

Blame Canada, a song in which American parents fault the nation to the north for their own potty-mouthed children, scored a victory for crudity when it received an Oscar nomination for best original song.

The movie, a solid hit with $52 million at theaters last summer, also was the latest tongue-in-cheek jab the movie industry has taken at the speech, appearance, mannerisms and lifestyle of Canadians.

Its nomination also comes in a year when Canadian-born actors Jim Carrey and Christopher Plummer delivered acclaimed performances that were passed over by Oscar voters.

Notable past film forays include Michael Moore's comedy Canadian Bacon, about a faltering U.S. president who initiates a cold war with Canada, and Strange Brew, starring Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis as "hosers" Doug and Bob McKenzie, Canadian brothers in bulky parkas and ski hats on a perpetual search for the next beer or hockey game.

"I was definitely a Bob and Doug fan when I was a kid," said South Park co-creator Trey Parker, who co-wrote Blame Canada. "That was more Canadians making fun of Canadians, though, where we're Americans making fun of Canadians, which really sort of ticks people off more."

"Canadians are just so defensive. That's what makes them so fun to make fun of."

In the movie, children begin spewing profanity after sneaking in to see an obscenity-laden movie by Canadian comics Terrence and Phillip. Enraged parents whip up anti-Canadian sentiment, Terrence and Phillip are sentenced to death and bloody war breaks out.

The American parents sing:

"No! Blame Canada, Blame Canada!

With all their beady little eyes and flapping heads so full of lies."

"It sums up one of the basic points of the movie, which is people blaming everyone but themselves for the raising of their children," said Blame Canada co-writer Marc Shaiman.

Canadians are drawn with beady eyes and flapping heads. The Canadian ambassador is scorned by other diplomats when he pronounces "about" as "aboot." Canadians living in the United States are herded into camps, and Army recruitment is aided by the slogan "Kill some Canadian scum."

Lyette Dore of the National Film Board of Canada said Canadians took it all in stride.

"We kind of smiled and took it with a bit of a chuckle," Dore said. "It was clear from reading the words of the song that it's done in jest."

If Canadians are at all bothered by this year's Oscar, it's because The Hurricane by Canadian director Norman Jewison fared poorly, Dore said. The movie has a single nomination, best actor for Denzel Washington.

Canada did score a coup in the short animated film category, with four of the five nominations.

This is Parker's first Oscar nomination, but Shaiman has been nominated four times previously. Three of those nominations were in the category of Original Musical or Comedy Score (The American President, 1995; The First Wives Club, 1996; and Patch Adams, 1998). The fourth, in the category of Original Song, was for A Wink and a Smile from Sleepless in Seattle, 1993.

Besides Blame Canada, this year's song nominees are Diane Warren's Music of My Heart from Music of the Heart; Aimee Mann's Save Me from Magnolia; Randy Newman's When She Loved Me from Toy Story 2; and Phil Collins' You'll Be in My Heart from Tarzan.

All of the nominated songs are traditionally performed on the Oscar telecast.

With just one four-letter word, Blame Canada will be easy to edit for the broadcast, Shaiman said. Other South Park songs would have been difficult or impossible to edit for television, including Terrence and Phillip's ditty about a certain uncle, whose lyrics are mostly expletives.

"A bleeped version would have way more bleeps than words," Parker said.

Written by David Germain