Shifting as the wind blows

[fajrdrako]

I just read an interesting poll on the Globe and Mail website. Now, I don't think such polls are worth the paper they aren't written on, but this one was interesting. The question was, "Do you think Canada's social and cultural values have shifted away from those of the United States?" Now, I had to stop and think for a minute, because it's a little like "have you stopped beating your wife?" - I don't think Canadian social and cultural values have ever been very close to those of the States in numerous fundamental ways from 1776 onwards, unless you're talking in the broadest way of 'freedom' and 'democracy' and I'm not sure we even mean the same things by these words.

Anyway, I think our history has always been a push-pull thing, constantly influenced by American cultural values, and constantly going our own directions. Accepting and rejecting American trends and ideas alternately. Accepting McDonald's, but preferring Tim Horton's - that sort of thing.

So, on consideration I voted "yes" but I kind of thought other people would be voting "no".

To my surprise, the results were 8,767 votes saying we were shifting away from American cultural values, to 2,011 people saying we weren't.

Really! I can only conclude that this reflects Canadian horror of the States' presence in Iraq, or fear of Bush's polite right-wing bullying of Canada, or the problems with the border, or the loud voice of American fundamentalists. Or something else I'm not thinking of?

Comments

[in-stead.livejournal.com]

I once read a book that suggested that the Canadian identity is composed of negatives -- we consider ourselves not the US and not Britain. Of course that says very little about what we are. It's a fundamental tenant of logic that you can't define a thing by what it isn't. Or, rather, you can, but it's going to take a very long time to list everything in existence that a thing isn't before you get to a reasonable picture of what it is. We are not the US or Britain, but we are also not Romania, China, Portugal, Belize, India, and so on.

But that isn't quite the same question as the one that the Globe & Mail is asking, and so quite an aside.

Faced with the question "Do you think Canada's social and cultural values have shifted away from those of the United States?", I have to agree with you. Our values have never been those of the US. Of course, that answer isn't quite good enough, because people who don't realise that are forever asking whether Canada has become less like the US or, the mirror question, whether Canada has become more like the US. The ever-popular question that floats around Canadian Studies departments is whether Canada has effectively been colonised by American culture.

I think the Globe & Mail question is presuming that Canada has lost its cultural autonomy, and that the question now is whether or not we're going to see that change. But I don't think that's an appropriate presumption at all. I think what people seem to miss when making assumptions about the effect of the influx of US cultural products into Canada is the matter of how we, as Canadians, recieve those cultural products. Just because this TV show or that band or this book comes from the US doesn't mean that Canadians watch or listen or read it in the same way that an American audience does. You can show us whatever you like, but that doesn't mean we're going to think about it the way you expect us to.

Why?

Because Canada is culturally different than the US. We have always been culturally different. We have a different history and different values.

Admittedly, there are a number of similarities. Rightfully so. We're both largely the product of British colonialism. But after those boats of British settlers hit North American shores, our cultures went their separate ways. The US has their War of Independence, their constitution which grants primacy to the rights of the individual, and the melting pot immigration policy. We have our BNA Act of 1867, a legal system that honours the rights of the community over those of the individual, and that ever-cliched cultural mosiac.

I'm not saying that our way or their way is better than the other, but it is different.

So there, Globe & Mail. Where was your ticky box that said all of that?!

*climbs down from soap box*

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I find this a fascinating question because of the various questions it raises - what is a national identity, or a national culture? What and who determines its nature? What is a nation, when it comes to that? I don't think Americans ask themselves about their own national identity: it's obvious and self-evident to them. To be American is to be American. I wonder if it's that simple for Australians, or Jamaicans - or any other nation not defined by an exclusive national language.

There's a lot of truth to the idea that a Canadian's idea of our identity is to be not-American, but there's more to it than that. I think it's far more unconscious, though all the harder to pinpoint because of it. Something to do with taking it for granted that beer will taste a certain way, or measuring klicks on the highway.

To a large extent Canada has been colonised by American culture, but I think that is a moot point - so has the rest of the world. I was just reading Long Way Round by Ewan MacGregor and Charley Boorman, and was impressed that they were recognized in the street by people in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan - even though they couldn't speak the languages they could make out the words Star Wars. That's American culture. But they also heard the words Moulin Rouge -that isn't. Canadians didn't adopt electricity and the automobile because they were American innovations any more than they adopted the train because it was British. They adopted them because they were useful - as the Internet is useful, or the printing press, or the use of fire. (Note how adroitly I'm avoiding the disputed territory of the telephone.)

So part of the Canadian-culture question is the global-culture question, which I think is valid - Japan, Singapore, South Africa, wherever - the whole world is becoming a square-dance of ideas. Of course a lot of the ideas are American: Americans have a lot of influence, through wealth and strength of numbers, and that big stick business - not to mention being damn good at making TV shows and movies. So of course they have influence with us, too. But I don't think they shape our values. To some extent, they share our values, but that doesn't me we adopted the values that they held before us. Call it parallel philosophical evolution. Shared ideas, not ideas imposed or borrowed.

Put another way: Baseball may be popular here, but it isn't our favourite sport.

I like your sentence: You can show us whatever you like, but that doesn't mean we're going to think about it the way you expect us to. So true!

Re the BNA Act: I remember a line in one of my journalism texts (antiquated now, I'm sure) which said that Americans were promised 'the pursuit of happiness', a fuzzy notion likely to lead to stress, confusion and insanity, while the Canadian promise of 'peace, order and good government' was the best one could expect from any governing body.


Clearly, The Globe and Mail should have included more tick-boxes.

[in-stead.livejournal.com]

(LJ is making me break this into two parts! Unbelievable! I've never had to break up a comment before! Clearly, this has hit a few hot buttons that I didn't even realise I had.)

Definitely, more ticky boxes are required.

I once saw Paul Gross (one of my favourite Canadian cultural products!) give an interview on why government subsidies to Canadian film, television, music, and other artistic endeavours are so important. He was, at that time, the spokesperson of an organisation of Canadian artists opposing proposed budget cuts to institutions such as Telefilm Canada. In the interview, he said that the people who wanted to cut arts funding kept pointing to the United States model of art production. Their big argument was 'you don't see the US government subsidising HOLLYWOOD, do you?!'

And, as Paul Gross said, of course you don't, but that's beside the point. The American system is unique in the world and just because we live next door doesn't mean we should be looking at them as a model. Almost every other country with enough money to spare and the social stability to manage it subsidises cultural production. Canadian artists cannot compete in a free market with Hollywood. The independent system of funding that exists in the US does not exist in Canada. To cut funding to Canadian artists would be to kill Canadian art.

'Why,' supporters of the budget cuts would respond, 'should that matter? Hollywood makes good movies!'

Which, of course, they do.

But, as Paul Gross went on to say, it is important for a nation to tell stories of itself to itself. It is important for Canadians to see their lives and their experiences reflected in art. We can go and see a Hollywood movie and enjoy it just fine, but to be from Nova Scotia or Manitoba or British Columbia and see a movie set in those places, something that looks and sounds like the life that you're living, that's something that's more important than the two hours of harmless fun you got out of the Hollywood movie.

The question of nation and national identity is, of course, quite complex. It is, I think, even more complex for those countries that are the products of the British Empire. It's one thing to talk about the national identity of European or Asian countries, which have developed organicly over their very long histories. But how do you define a national identity for Canada when the values and social systems and even the history of the country are so similar to those of, for example, New Zealand? The US, of course, is the exception that proves the rule. Somehow they have sorted themselves out -- to be American is to be American. There's none of this namby-pamby questioning of uniqueness that Canadians do.

Part of the issue of national identity for Canadians is the regionalism of our country. To be a Canadian living in Nova Scotia is not the same experience as to be a Canadian living in Ontario, which is different again from a Canadian living in Saskatchewan, and people from British Columbia are, of course, a whole other ball of wax again. Never mind the north.

But leave Canada, and the issue of national identity doesn't seem all that complicated at all. I doubt any Canadian standing in India has ever felt that the very existence of a uniquely Canadian identity is in question.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I once saw Paul Gross (one of my favourite Canadian cultural products!)

How could I argue with that? There is a wonderful, select list of wonderful actors whom I adore who are Canadian - Christopher Plummer, Nick Mancuso, Paul Gross, Nathan Fillion....

Canadian artists cannot compete in a free market with Hollywood.

Of course not - no one can. Not in terms of resources, and not in terms of market. There's nothing else in the world like Hollywood.


But, as Paul Gross went on to say, it is important for a nation to tell stories of itself to itself.

And preferably not just on CBC radio. Not just in any one venue anywhere. There are of course wonderful movies out of Hollywood, but a movie set in a Canadian city has a familiarity that an American movie just doesn't manage - an identification factor that adds another dimension.

And that's a good point, that we often feel our national identity most when we are outside the country. I also often think that people in Ottawa get a different perspective; people in the rest of the country are more likely to think of themselves as being from their own region, be it Newfoundland or BC; in Ottawa there's more of a sense of being Canadian first, Ottawan second, and a resident of Ontario as a sort of distant third. At least, this has been my uncorroborated observation over the years.

[in-stead.livejournal.com]

(part two of the same)

If I remember correctly, a recent perspective on the question of national identity is that the problem isn't with the answer, but with the question. The concept of nation, the theory goes, is outdated, a hold over from the nineteenth century world view. This, I think, goes way to far in the opposite direction. Of course, to answer the question of "what is national identity?" isn't easy. Everyone has their own opinion on the subject. My experience of being Canadian isn't the same as your experience of being Canadian, so in trying to answer the question of what it means to be Canadian, we're going to have different answers.

But I don't think that the mistake lies in asking questions about 'nation', I think that the mistake lies in expecting there to be a simple answer. The important thing is that, however we would each answer, you and I would both be calling ourselves Canadian. As long as we continue to believe in the existence of Canada and of a unique Canadian experience, that we don't agree what that experience is doesn't seem all that important to me.

Cultures in the modern world aren't as well delineated as they were in the sixteenth or seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Of course they aren't. There has been a certain degree of globalisation of culture. But I think to view the changes that have come with an increase of contact between the cultures of the world as the destruction of 'authentic' culture is ridiculous. It is the nature of cultures to change, even in total isolation. Cultures, all cultures, evolve. At what point in history would you fix an 'authentic' Canadian culture? And in what way is everything after that point somehow 'inauthentic'?

Our proximity to the US is a big part of what it is to be Canadian. It's one of the things that makes us different from everyone else in the world. That Canadian and American culture are similar is something else that makes up a part of the Canadian experience. But that's not the same as being American.

To be Canadian is not to be not-American or not-British. To be Canadian is to be Canadian. It's that simple. If we stopped asking the question of national identity, I think our national identity might stop being in question.


(This has been another instalment of free association philosophizing. Tune in next week for...more of the same, really.)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

The concept of nation, the theory goes, is outdated, a hold over from the nineteenth century world view.

I often think it ought to be outdated, but looking at the global village I see nationalism all over the place - sometimes in the form of wars, sometimes in the form of competitive sports, sometimes in the form of linguistic entities - an almost infinite array of nationalisms. It may be outmoded, but as long as it's there in people's minds (and it is), it's a significant and real factor.

I sometimes wonder if my notion of what it is to be Canadian has something to do with my age - with being adolescent at the time of Centennial, when Canadian nationalism, pride, and a sense of our own history peaked. At the time I was an outspoken internationalist and anti-nationalist rebel; but the times affected me. Though I still oppose any kind if chauvinism, Canadian or otherwise, I like to see a sense of national pride. Canadians have it, I think, but don't know how to show it well. Maybe because they aren't sure exactly what it is. Maybe when a culture becomes 'authentic' is is also stagnant, like old-fashioned crafts in a gift shop - relics of the past, leading nowhere.

Whatever the conclusions or non-conclusions, this conversation is fun!

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

Hell, the United States' values are shifting away from the United States.

It's a comparative thing, but the US has had more in common with Canada and England than with, say, China or Afghanistan. From there we move out to "slightly less in common" with France, Spain, Italy, etc. -- still a lot of shared history and the historical conclusions that come with it, but different languages, some different classics and references, slightly different cultures -- and then to countries with whom we may share certain values and expectations, but the cultures and experiences become more and more the sort of thing you need to read books to understand.

As a US citizen from birth I've obviously got a different view from my window, but I would have interpreted the question as more or less: "As a materially comfortable, well-educated, Western country with a history of social justice and rationality stretching back to the Age of the Enlightment, do you feel Canada and US have made sharply different turns recently?" "Why, yes; the US seems to be moving backwards, past the Age of Enlightment, tearing up all that highway in its hurry to get to the Dark Ages."

Though clearly I could just be depressed about the current state of things in my country. Sigh.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Though clearly I could just be depressed about the current state of things in my country. Sigh.

Well, I could hardly blame you, as I am somewhat depressed about the current state of things in my country, with the government at a crisis due to former corruption and the right-wing idiots taking advantage and muckraking us into an unnecssary election. Sorry, my bias is showing!

You're quite right, culture is a comparative thing, and we will always have much in common with the U.S. simply because we do share aspects of a common history and we share the same continent; and a goodly number of us share the same language. Which leads back to the question of where culture, identity, and nationhood overlap as concepts - and I'm not sure that is an answerable question, or that any two people would necessarily agree on the answer. Sometimes I think I have more in common culturally with the average American than with my French-speaking fellow Canadians living down the street. Sometimes I think otherwise. It's such a complicated question, that "identity" thing, complicated a thousandfold when it's a collective rather than individual identity. I may know what I am, if I'm lucky, but do I know what a Canadian is? And if I think I know, to I know any better than someone else who might have an entirely different opinon?

If we all end up in the Dark Ages together, maybe we can bring fandom into the Age of Darkness and liven it up a little.