Canadian Television Studies: All Grown Up?

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1 REVIEW ESSAY Estee Fresco Canadian Television Studies: All Grown Up? A review of Bociurkiw, Marusya Feeling Canadian: Television, Nationalism, and Affect. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Bredin, Marian, Scott Henderson and Sarah A. Matheson, eds Canadian Television: Text and Context. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Hafsteinsson, Sigurjón Baldur and Marian Bredin, eds Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. The field of Canadian television studies is, to quote Marian Bredin, Scott Henderson and Sarah A. Matheson, still in its youth (2012: 14). Indeed, the field is only about a quarter century old. Mary Jane Miller s pioneering work on Canadian television drama, Turn Up the Contrast: CBC Television Drama Since 1952 was first published in 1987 and Paul Rutherford followed in 1990 with the influential book When Television Was Young: Primetime Canada Although the field is young, it is growing and growing up. In the past, research on television studies in Canada was limited to chapters in anthologies about media and culture (Beaty and Sullivan 2006: 5). However, the three works under review join a number of recent academic books that have contributed to an expansion of the field an expansion that, Bart Beaty and Rebecca Sullivan argue, is long overdue (2006: 5). These works include Darrell Varga s edited collection Rain/Drizzle/Fog: Film and Television in Atlantic Canada (2009); Miller s book, Outside Looking In: Viewing First Nations Peoples in Canadian Dramatic Television Series (2008); Zoë Druick and Aspa Kotsopoulos s edited collection, Programming Reality: Perspectives on English-Canadian Television (2008); and Beaty and Sullivan s book, Canadian Television Today (2006). 213 Canadian Television: Text and Context (2012), edited by Bredin, Henderson and Matheson, features essays on English-language television drama in Canada and is divided into three parts. The works in the first section consider the materiality of

2 Canadian television texts and address issues such as the preservation of television series in archives; the chapters in the second part of the book situate Canadian television dramas within the context of media production and policy; the final section features essays dedicated to textual analyses which engage with questions such as how Canadian television shows reflect and shape national identity. Feeling Canadian: Television, Nationalism, and Affect (2011), by Marusya Bociurkiw, examines television shows and televised coverage of historical and recent events in Canada in order to argue that the affective elements of Canadian television texts shape national practices and contribute to the discursive production of the nation. Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada (2010) is, according to its editors, Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson and Marian Bredin, one of the first collections of essays dedicated exclusively to programs and content that are created and/ or produced by Aboriginal media organizations (7). Part one of the book locates Aboriginal media in Canada within a broader social and cultural context, part two is dedicated to essays on programs or practices associated with the Aboriginal People s Television Network (APTN), and part three examines the impact of innovations in digital media on Aboriginal peoples access to and use of media resources. 214 The books under review illustrate that scholars of Canadian television studies no longer emphasize questions of cultural sovereignty and regulation of Canadian media to the exclusion of a focus on the texts themselves. Many of the chapters found in Canadian Television: Text and Context exemplify Liz Czach s observation (made in her 2010 review essay, The Turn in Canadian Television Studies ) that the examination of the content of television shows is finally taking its rightful place as a necessary component of Canadian television study (2010: 175). However, an increasing focus on the textual elements of television shows has not diminished the Canadian focus of scholarship in this field. Henderson s study of Jerry Ciccoritti s made for television films, for example, examines the way in which the director s unconventional cinematographic style gives his films a distinctly Canadian feel. Henderson s work is an excellent example of an analysis that not only foregrounds a consideration of the role that television plays in shaping national identity but goes beyond conventional readings of a television show s narrative or plot in order to analyze the significance of the aesthetic features of the text. Derek S. Foster s argument, found in Canadian Television: Text and Context, that television scholars need to focus greater attention on public debates about Canadian television rather than the content of the shows themselves pushes the limits of textual analysis and opens up exciting and innovative areas of inquiry into the relationship between television shows and their audiences (2012: 146). Additionally, Kyle Asquith s contribution to Canadian Television: Text and Context illustrates that, despite this shift towards a focus on television texts, scholarship on Canadian communication policy is still valuable and relevant. Through a case study of YTV, Asquith incisively observes that hypercommercialism is, problematically, an unregulated component of commercial television in Canada (2012: 99).

3 In contrast to many of the works in Canadian Television: Text and Context that do not engage in-depth with theory, Bociurkiw successfully grounds her analysis of Canadian television texts in a theoretical framework. Her examination, in Feeling Canadian: Television, Nationalism and Affect, of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation s (CBC) coverage of the 1995 Quebec referendum is a particularly strong example of her application of affect theory to a study of Canadian television; she argues that national sentiment was used to depict a melodramatic battle between the good of federation and the evil of separation (2011: 56). I would have liked to see Bociurkiw expand on her argument, at the end of the book, that the Vancouver Olympics are emblematic of the intersection between consumption, affect and nationalism. For example, she could have expanded on her observation that the consumption of Canadian television shows and advertisements contributes to the construction of citizenship by examining how companies such as Tim Hortons and Molson Canadian create an association between their brand and the feelings of patriotism and national pride that viewers experience when they watch the Olympics. The works in all three books under review consider how minority groups are represented on television. Bociurkiw, for example, argues that the series Canada: A People s History reproduces the image of the Indian that conforms to a white imperial imaginary (2011: 77) while Matheson, in Canadian Television: Text and Context, examines how representations of Muslims in Little Mosque on the Prairie disrupt the convention of depicting Muslims on television as the Other (2012: ). However, Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada is the only book under review that sustains an in-depth examination of the relationship between the production of media texts and their content. The articles in the book examine the decolonizing potential of media texts that are produced by Aboriginal peoples and/ or feature Aboriginal actors and journalists. 215 In his forward to Canadian Television: Text and Context, television critic John Doyle argues that television shows featuring victims are popular with Canadian audiences (2011: xi), an argument that echoes Margaret Atwood s famous observation that there is a superabundance of victims in Canadian literature (1972: 39). Christine Ramsay s chapter in Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada on Moccasin Flats, which is the first dramatic television series in North America that was created, written, produced and performed by Aboriginal peoples, demonstrates that creating and producing media provides Aboriginal peoples with the opportunity to represent their communities in ways that challenge the prevalence of victims on television screens in Canada. She examines how a project that began as a way to give the young people of North Central Regina a voice turned into a successful film and television series that promotes the message that people can live with integrity and dignity in the midst of poverty (2010: 115).

4 Miller, writing in Canadian Television: Text and Context, argues that television scholars should engage in dialogues with professionals in the television industry (2012: 27). However, neither Canadian Television: Text and Context nor Feeling Canadian: Television, Nationalism and Affect features substantial work based on interviews or other interactions with creators and producers of television texts. On the other hand, Hafsteinsson s contribution to Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada relies on interviews with Aboriginal journalists working for APTN s national news program in order to illustrate that these journalists have entered an industry that has been dominated by their colonizers since the advent of mass media (2010: 55) and have begun to produce news stories that foster respect for and understanding of Aboriginal cultures and issues (2010: 62). 216 Although Asquith s chapter in Canadian Television: Text and Context examines the relationship between YTV s website and the television shows that it broadcasts, few of the works in the books under review address the influence of digital technology on the production and consumption of Canadian television shows. Bredin, Henderson and Matheson argue, in the introduction to Canadian Television: Text and Context, that television studies in Canada still lag behind the American and British tradition of scholarship in this field (2012: 14). However, by neglecting to include articles in the book that sufficiently address the theme of technology s impact on television, Bredin, Henderson and Matheson help to maintain the distance between Canadian and American/ European television studies. In Feeling Canadian: Television, Nationalism and Affect, Bociurkiw argues that, in the weeks following 9/11, there was an overflow of information shared in the home, through television narratives, the Internet and cell phones and on the street (2011: 122). Unfortunately, she does not examine this argument in depth and her observation draws attention to an underdeveloped area in Canadian television studies that is ripe for further research. Doris Baltruschat s contribution to Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada examines how the Nunavut-based production company Igloolik Isuma Productions uses the Internet along with film to educate the public about Inuit culture and traditions. While her work is a rare example of scholarship that considers the flow of information between different media in Canada, it is unfortunate that there is not, to use Czach s term, more cross-pollination (2010: 177) between the chapters in Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada dedicated to the screen cultures of the Internet and television. Baltruschat briefly mentions Isuma TV, a website that allows viewers to watch movies and television shows related to Aboriginal culture on-line. However, she does not explore how this website and ones like it work in conjunction with APTN to provide Aboriginal viewers with an alternative to traditional, mainstream media content in Canada. Jennifer VanderBurgh s observation, in Canadian Television: Text and Context, that archives containing Canadian television series are incomplete and often difficult

5 or impossible for researchers to access draws attention to one of the main barriers to the growth of the field of Canadian television (2012: 42, 47). A number of factors, including commercial interests and legal restrictions, influence the selective preservation of and restricted access to Canadian television texts (VanderBurgh in Bredin, Henderson and Matheson 2012: 47). Additionally, Bociurkiw observes that although the CBC is a public institution, it has privatized the documents in its archives, making it costly and difficult for academics and members of the public to view and study these documents (2012: 37). Limited access to television shows that are no longer on-air, Michele Byers argues, risks erasing Canadian television series from Canada s cultural map (Byers in Bredin, Henderson and Matheson 2012: 117). On a related note, Robin Nelson and Lez Cooke write that archivists and researchers must ensure that the cultural memories mobilized by television are not unduly selective (2010: xvix). The chapters in Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada illustrate that the same concerns VanderBurgh, Byers and Nelson and Cooke raise about the physical archives of television shows apply to the way in which Canadian television texts preserve national cultural identity. Like the physical archive of texts, television shows influence what and how we remember (VanderBurgh 2012: 41). A major theme that runs through Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada is that, in contrast to mainstream media that has historically contributed to the decline of Aboriginal cultures and identity, the media texts produced by Aboriginal peoples help document and preserve Aboriginal cultures and traditions. For example, Baltruschat observes that the SILA project and Isuma TV create an archive of stories, cultural practices and traditions for future generations (2010: 139). Additionally, Kerstin Knopf argues that although the recording process separates traditional oral storytelling from its cultural context and makes the interaction between a storyteller and his audience impossible, television programs are electronic containers of cultural knowledge that otherwise would be seriously diminished (2010: 94). These considerations illustrate that a concern with the role that television plays in preserving national identity and cultures is not, as Beaty and Sullivan put it, nationalistic navel gazing but of central importance to scholarship dedicated to the study of television in Canada (2006: 3). 217 Whereas many of the articles in Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada consider the way in which television preserves cultural memory for future generations of Aboriginal peoples, Bociurkiw interrogates the ways in which Canadians remember the past through television. She argues that shame helps to create the boundaries of the nation (2011: 46) and that national memory is as much about forgetting as remembering (2011: 71). However, it is unfortunate that Bociurkiw s analysis of Canadian television does not extend past 2002 to address the televised apology Prime Minister Harper delivered to Aboriginal peoples in If, as the author writes, she chose to focus on moments in televised Canadian history that ruptured, and then tried to resolve, the imagined community of nation, the Prime Minister s

6 apology is an unmistakable example of one such moment (2011: 11). Moreover, Bociurkiw s analysis of how affect, and trauma in particular, contributes to the way in which the nation defines itself provides an ideal theoretical framework in which to examine the ways in which Harper s apology operated as a flawed effort to resolve a trauma in Canada s (colonial) past and relieve settlers and the Canadian government of the ongoing need to remember Canada s history (Martin 2009: 49). 218 Jacques Derrida argues that the origin of the Greek word for archive is linked to concepts of domiciliation and housing (1996: 3). The question of what belongs and does not belong in the physical structures that house archives is a key concern of scholars like VanderBurg who are interested in the preservation of television texts. However, on a more metaphorical level, many of the authors of the works under review examine how television helps to shape and challenge notions of who is and is not considered at home in Canada and, in doing so, make important contributions to a consideration of how, as Bociurkiw claims, television helps to discursively produce the nation (2011: 38). She argues that, post 9/11, there was a sharp increase in Canadian news stories about home and the desire to send undesirables back home became constitutive of nationalism (2011: 119). On the other hand, Byers, in Canadian Television: Text and Context, argues that television shows geared towards young Canadians, like Degrassi Junior High and Ready or Not, promote the message that belonging in Canada requires a rejection of the racist views of older generations (2012: 116). Additionally, Hafsteinsson interrogates the borders that delimit home from away when he argues, in Indigenous Screen Cultures in Canada, that, by naming distinctive Aboriginal nations on the news, APTN s current-affairs programs help to redefine how citizens are conceptualized within the nation s unstable boundaries (2010: 66). In response to Francois Demers s argument, made in 2003, that Canadian television scholarship was in crisis, Czach writes that, in the time since his alarmist commentary the study of Canadian television has emerged as a reimagined and reinvigorated field of study (2010: 175). The books discussed in this review support Czach s optimistic statement and make valuable contributions to this reinvigorated field. Moreover, they open up doors leading to unexplored areas of Canadian television that young scholars should examine with the enthusiasm of scholars fortunate enough to work in an exciting and growing field. Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Dr. Daniel Robinson, Dr. Sasha Torres and Mike Munroe for their encouragement and thoughtful input.

7 References Atwood, Margaret Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: House of Anansi Press. Beaty, Bart and Rebecca Sullivan Introduction. Canadian Television Today, edited by Bart Beaty and Rebecca Sullivan, Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Czach, Liz The Turn in Canadian Television Studies. Journal of Canadian Studies 44(3): Derrida, Jacques Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Druick, Zoë and Aspa Kotsopoulos Introduction. Programming Reality: Perspectives on English-Canadian Television, edited by Zoë Druik and Aspa Kotsopoulos, Waterloo: Wilfrid University Press. Martin, Keavy Truth, Reconciliation, and Amnesia: Porcupines and China Dolls and the Canadian Conscience. English Studies in Canada. 35(1): Nelson, Robin and Lez Cooke Television Archives: Accessing TV History. Critical Studies in Television. 5(2): xvii-xix. 219

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