TV & the NationCOMS 426

Welcome to Canada

Byer’s Article + Other LitTelevision as a nation building medium

– fostering an imagined community

Telling stories that make sense, that we can relate to, and that show the nation as it wants to be represented.

But which stories are “successful”? Which stories have marketability so that they can transcend national boundaries to become transnational productions?

What is the Nation?How does one define Canada?

Stories and MythsThe Myths of Canada –

White

Peaceful/Peacekeepers

Middle power – not dominant or aggressive like the US

Not a colonizing or imperial power like the US or Britain

Equality (racial and sexual)

Harper“We are one of the most stable

regimes in history…. We are unique in that regard.…. We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or both them” (reported Sept 25, 2009).

To Be or Not To Be: Erasing history, flattening race, celebrating NationVancouver, Olympics 2010

The Nation in Harmony

Center vs RegionsRegions as “small nations”

Regional identity part of the national identity

Love/hate relationship

Regional identifiers as central to national identity but also as central to transnational appeal.

Atlantic regions vs urban metropolitan cities(Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver)

Prairies – farmland and ‘country’ as opposed to cosmopolitan cities

Little Mosque on the Prairieshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=_I4YrgGHCXE

Linkshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

_I4YrgGHCXE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZQSRmM6K_s

Interview with George Stroumboulopoulos

Zarqa Nawaz Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmubPwdpmic

Geo-ideologicalCombination of geography and

ideological – how space is articulated in an ideological manner or the ideological representation of space:

‘the fundamental sense in which our perception of the geographical-as-location inevitably carries within it a prevailing sense of the ideological signing of that location.’ (e.g. what particular neighborhoods mean, how locales are interpreted). - Billingham

What do the prairies mean?Farms, rural space, wide spaces,

inherently white or settler populations

What the prairies are – native land

Saskatchewan – 2014 statistics indicate a population of 1,129,899

Native population, based on 2011 statistics: 157,740 or 15.6% of the total population (http://stats.gov.sk.ca/stats/pop/2011Aboriginal%20People.pdf)

Little Mosque – Whitewashing the PrairiesByers:

“Deracinated texts, of which LM might be considered an example, offer representations that may be of great value in terms of attracting transnational (and national) audiences. But this requires that specific histories, politics, and meanings of their particular sites (their geo-ideologies) be covered over or, at least, not rendered with undue specificity.”

Trailer Park Boys

Began with a movie, then television series, and then 4 other movies, now on Netflix

Trailer Park BoysMockumentary –

Opening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bhC0cbmre4

Documentary on the making of the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIVXAaLBJkI

Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sRpJCDdvTY

LocationDartmouth – outside of Halifax/suburbs

What the trailer park represents – and represented historically – whiteness, but also the rendition of it on the TV program – white trash

Masculine aspect of the program

Amateurish – home video look/in contrast to the polish of urban, big city productions

Geo-ideologyAtlantic region – settler land

Erasure of African-Canadian histories and the race relations in the province.

The Story of Africville:

http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/society/racism/africville-expropriating-black-nova-scotians/africville-is-an-eyesore.html

https://www.nfb.ca/film/remember_africville

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/polite-racism-inequality-still-linger-in-n-s-say-minority-groups-1.2831606

Byer’s methodologyFocus on the opening sequences and

pilot episodes

Opening sequences – are the paratext of the show

Establish characters, plot and genre of the show

What a show says as much as what it doesn’t say about the realities of the place and the people inhabiting that space.