Slippery Pastimes

Description

Sixteen essays, written by specialists from many fields, grapple with the problem of a popular culture that is not very popular — but is seen by most as vital to the body politic, whether endangered by globalization or capable of politically progressive messages for its audiences.

Slippery Pastimes covers a variety of topics: Canadian popular music from rock ’n’ roll to country, hip-hop to pop-Celtic; television; advertising; tourism; sport and even postage stamps! As co-editors, Nicks and Sloniowski have taken an open view of the Canadian Popular, and contributors have approached their topics from a variety of perspectives, including cultural studies, women’s studies, film studies, sociology and communication studies. The essays are accessibly written for undergraduate students and interested general readers.

Sujets

• Cultural studies

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780889206663
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

slippery pastimes

Reading the popular in canadian culture

Cultural Studies Series

Cultural Studies is the multi and interdisciplinary study of culture, defined anthropologically as a way of life, performatively as symbolic practice and ideologically as the collective product of media and cultural industries, i.e., pop culture. Although Cultural Studies is a relative new comer to the humanities and social sciences, in less than half a century it has taken interdisciplinary scholarship to a new level of sophistica tion, reinvigorating the liberal arts curriculum with new theories, new topics and new forms of intellectual partnership.

The Cultural Studies series includes topics such as construction of identities; regionalism/nationalism; cultural citizenship; migration; popular culture; consumer cultures; media and film; the body; post colonial criticism; cultural policy; sexualities; cultural theory; youth culture; class relations; and gender.

The new Cultural Studies series from Wilfrid Laurier University Press invites submission of manuscripts concerned with critical discussions on power relations concerning gender, class, sexual preference, ethni city and other macro and micro sites of political struggle.

For further information, please contact the Series Editor: Jodey Castricano Department of English Wilfrid Laurier University Press 75 University Avenue West Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3C5

slippery pastimes

Reading the popular in canadian culture

Edited by Joan Nicks and Jeannette Sloniowski

Cultural Studies Series

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Main entry under title: Slippery pastimes : reading the popular in Canadian culture

(Cultural studies series) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0889203881

1. Popular cultureCanada. I. Nicks, Joan, 1937 II. Sloniowski, Jeannette Marie, 1946 III. Cultural studies series.

FC95.4.S55 2002 F1021.2.S55 2002

306’.0971

© 2002 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5 www.wlupress.wlu.ca

Cover design by Leslie Macredie, using an illustration entitled The Hikers. Illustration © Doug Martin / www.i2iart.com

C20029000122

The following previously published articles have been revised for this volume: Karen Dubinsky, The Pleasure Is Exquisite but Violent’: The Imaginary Geography of Niagara Falls in the Nineteenth Century,Journal of Canadian Studies29.2 (Summer 1994): 6488. Neil Earle, Hockey as Canadian Popular Culture: Team Canada 1972, Television, and the Canadian Identity,Journal of Canadian Studies30.2 (Summer 1995): 10723. Valda Blundell, Riding the Polar Bear Express: And Other Encounters between Tourists and First Peoples in Canada,Journal of Canadian Studies30.4 (Winter 1995): 2851.

The author and publisher have made every reasonable effort to obtain permission to reproduce the secondary material in this book. Any corrections or omissions brought to the attention of the Press will be incorporated in subsequent printings.

Printed in Canada

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any meansgraphic, electronic, or mechanicalwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or reproducing in information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 214 King Street West, Suite 312, Toronto, Ontario M5H 3S6.

for Joe and for Ben, Suzanne and Kenji

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table of contents

introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 heritage The Pleasure Is Exquisite but Violent: The Imaginary Geography of Niagara Falls in the Nineteenth Century Karen Dubinsky. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Aboriginal Cultural Tourism in Canada Valda Blundell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Laura Secord Meets the Candyman: The Image of Laura Secord in Popular Culture Christine Boyko-Head. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Canada Post’sLe petite liseur(The young reader): Framing a Reproduction Loretta Czernis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Dilemmas of Definition Will Straw. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

television Reading Canadian Popular Television: The Case ofE.N.G. Jim Leach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Two Lawyers and an Issue: Reconstructing Quebec’s Nation inA nous deux! Sheila Petty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Straight Upand Youth Television: Navigating Dreams without Nationhood Joan Nicks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

vii

viii

slippery pastimes

Popularizing History:The Valour and the Horror Jeannette Sloniowski. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

music In the Great Midwestern Hardware Store: The Seventies Triumph in EnglishCanadian Rock Music Bart Testa and Jim Shedden. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Reelin’ ’n’ Rockin’: GenreBending and Boundary Crossing in Canada’s East Coast Sound Nick Baxter-Moore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 Forceful Nuance and Stompin’ Tom William Echard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 It’s My Nature: The Discourse of Experience and Black Canadian Music Rinaldo Walcott. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Cowboyography: Matter and Manner in the Songs of Ian Tyson Terrance Cox. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

sports Canada, the Olympics and the RayBan Man Andrew Wernick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Hockey as Canadian Popular Culture: Team Canada 1972, Television and the Canadian Identity Neil Earle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

Introduction

Cultural activity belonged to leisure time, to the amateur. It existed on Mount Olympus far away from the masses, from commerce, from the music, folk dances, and plays of NewCanadian cultural groups, and from the American forms of popular culture upon which ordinary Canadians, according to Bernard K. Sandwell, had become absolutely dependent by 1913. Maria Tippett,Making Culture

W HY S LIPPERY P ASTIMES ? his collection of essays on the Canadian popular brings T together varied research representing several fields of cultural and media studies. As coeditors we have endeavoured to elicit strong, accessible writing that is analytical and engaging for both academic and culturally interested readers. All but three of the essays (and these three have been revised) are original pieces for this publication. The book’s overall focus is largely, though not exclusively, on English Canadian topics, addressing historical, theoretical, and ideological issues, and effectively attempting a cultural reading of the Canadian popular. The purpose is serious, though not necessarily dry or antisep tic, exploration. The collection is analytical and reflective, avoiding mere celebration of, indifference towards, or disavowal of the Canadian popular. We have given priority to examinations of popular culture that address primary artifacts and their contexts in order to enlarge interest in and understanding of, for better or for worse, something beyond what is deemed to be current or, on the other hand, passé, as media ploys would have us believe. Some of the artifacts analyzed by the

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