The Beaver Bites Back?
Description
The contributing authors explore three aspects of American culture: its transmission by means of print and broadcast media and through live events in sport, entertainment, religious evangelism, and other public productions; its influence on Canadian popular culture; and the variety of Canadian responses. They suggest that the Canadian version of American popular culture is far more than a copy. Instead, it is frequently a creative response - often parodic in tone and subversive in intent - that gives public expression to Canadian sentiment and sensibility and provides protection from, and resistance to, American domination. Ironically, it may be in responding to American culture that Canadian sovereignty finds its most meaningful and potent articulation. Specialists and scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, the contributors discuss a range of cultural forms and performances. Each example, while "made in Canada," is related to an American alternative but has a large Canadian audience. Taking a rich variety of perspectives on this complex relationship, The Beaver Bites Back? demands that Canadian popular culture be accorded its proper status. The contributors are G. Stuart Adam, Michael M. Ames, Robert Knight Barney, Seth Feldman, Bruce Feldhusen, David H. Flaherty, Reid Gilbert, Andrew Lyons, Harriet Lyons, John MacAloon, Frank E. Manning, Thelma McCormack, Mary Jane Miller, Bernard Ostry, Charline Poirier, Paul Rutherford, Robert A. Stebbins, Michael Taft, Geoffrey Wall, and Andrew Wernick.
Reviews
"Few studies have addressed the complex, sometimes adversarial and sometimes fruitful, influences of American culture on this country. By taking this relationship as a defining feature of Canadian culture, this collection of essays is already on relatively untouched terrain. This book will be a valuable contribution to the study of Canadian contemporary culture." Charles R. Acland, Department of Film Studies, Queen's University. "This systematic comparison between Canadian and American forms of popular culture is useful because it provides evidence that culture transfers are neither linear nor simple and that popular culture theorizing needs to be more complex than supposed by mass society theorists and by leisure studies scholars ... The book also permits the reader to begin to ponder ways in which different types of popular culture performances, genres, and venues interact with each other ... It brings together scholarship from a variety of different disciplines indicating the multi-disciplinary interest which popular culture has aroused since the seventies." Gertrude J. Robinson, Graduate Programme in Communications, McGill University.