PETER U R Q UH A RT AND IRA WAGMAN
C O NSI D ERI N G CANAD IAN TE L E V I S ION:
Intersections, Missed Directions, and the
Prospects for Textual Expansion
n this special issue of CJFS/RCEC, we turn our attention to a consideration of
the cultural and artistic location of television in Canada. At first blush, there
seems to be nothing particularly revolutionary about this objective; it is not as if
television represents a new medium, never before studied in any great detail. We
nod in agreement with John Corner, who notes that there appears currently to
be both a strengthening and a widening of interest in the study of television in
different national contexts. According to Corner, this has produced important
results, including “engagements with the cultural character of television (the
development of its generic forms, its diverse connections with the changing
terms of popular reality) rather than isolating itself off as a chronicle simply of
technological change, corporate development and the growth (and perhaps erosion!) of national policy.”1 With this in mind, we wanted to see how and to what
extent such engagements with television were taking place in Canada.
Realizing that it was impossible for a single journal issue to span the range
of methodological and theoretical approaches towards television, we belie ved a
tighter thematic focus for this issue would produce the highest intellectual dividends. In considering different conceptual frameworks, we came to realize that
“intersection” offered a particularly useful theme for our purposes. This is not
only because “intersection” represented the coming together of the two editors’
shared research interests in two different disciplines (communication and film)
or a symbolic geographical point where the editors, located in Ottawa and
Nottingham, could meet. Instead, the theme sprang from our observation that this
journal’s mandate “to promote scholarship on Canadian film and television” is
only half fulfilled when, as is the case historically, few contributions are devoted
to the cultural character of Canadian television. As a way to partially redress this
imbalance, we believed that it would be productive to consider the ways in
which film and television intersect in Canada. Judging by the positive response
we received from members of the scholarly community to our initiative and the
quality of the submissions in this particular issue, we believe this investigation
provides some promising openings for the study of television in Canada.
The Rumsfeldian “absence of evidence” of scholarship on Canadian television is
certainly not a problem limited to CJFS/RCEC, which can only, after all, consider
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publishing essays that are submitted to it. Instead, we have come to realize that the
problems that face the journal are symptomatic of a larger under-appreciation of
the importance of studying television in Canada, which is apparent in journals
in both communication and film studies. Although television retains a considerable
degree of influence on contemporary social, political and cultural life, Horace
Newcomb’s observation that “most of us look at television without ever really
seeing it” seems apropos when considering the dearth of scholarship on the subject in Canada. 2
This state of affairs usually rears its head whenever one tries to assemble a
reading package for a course module on Canadian television and experiences the
frustrating lack of materials that encompass the medium’s extensive aesthetic,
economic, and historical components. This fact caused us to speculate as to why
this has been the case, to ponder its consequences and to consider various points
of contact for expanding the understanding of both media.
In a distinctly Canadian fashion, the problems associated with the study of
television appear to ha ve been predicted by the authors of a Royal Commission
report. In 1951, the authors of the Massey Commission’s final report observed
that television in Canada was “in the proverbially happy position of having as
yet no history.”3 This sentiment was true from a particular nationalistic perspective.
Since the country had no national television networks (CBC and Radio-Canada
would begin television broadcasting shortly after), independent production, distinctive programs, or regulatory institutions, it is true that television lacked a
Canadian footprint. Television in Canada did have a “history,” however. Thousands
of Canadians located near the US border were tuning into American stations
through rooftop antennas. As in the case of Canadian cinema, Canadians were
watching American in lieu of Canadian productions.
Over fifty years later, it is striking to consider how the Massey logic and its
faulty assumptions remain the dominant motif in the study of television in
Canada. The result has been the reproduction of a now standard set of research
orientations: a disproportionate focus on the activities of the CBC in relation to
other broadcasters; the twin concerns with American cultural imperialism and
the importance of articulating the distinctive components of Canadian television;
an overwhelming emphasis—particularly within communication studies—on
framing Canadian television research through the rubric of policy analysis.
To some extent, jurisdictional issues within the academy may account for
these tendencies. While film studies has developed a solid body of historical, theoretical and textual analyses of cinematic activity in Canada, television studies
has been slow to emerge in Canadian universities. Jeffrey Sconce has described
the inevitable and ongoing “turf wars” within film studies that positions the field
as “one of the most contested sites within the academy (and one of the most continuously imperilled).”4 The emergence of television studies resembles the emergence of film studies in many important ways. Both fields arrived at the gates of
CONSIDERING CANADIAN TELEVI SION 3
the academy from research in other disciplines. While film studies emerged as a
less serious—and it should be said, much more popular—sidebar to weightier
concerns of canonical literature in English departments, television studies is frequently concerned with an even more calculatedly commercial set of texts which
lack even the pretence of artistry that would justify them as worthy of study. In
Canada, the study of television has remained primarily the domain of communication studies and other disciplines within the social sciences. Since many television scholars find themselves engaged, either through commissioned research
or by dint of personal interest, in policy analysis, it is hardly surprising that it
has dominated the academic literature on the subject.
The poor state of Canada’s audiovisual archives is certainly another factor
inhibiting more elaborate research on Canadian television. Few stations preserve
all of their programming, and the television holdings at Library and Archives
Canada are spotty, at best. While efforts such as those of the AV Preservation
Trust have been vital in keeping the issue of the poor state of Canada’s Audiovisual
heritage on the map, there is still much to be done to ensure that researchers can
access the vast output of Canada’s television broadcasters.5
The net effect of these intellectual and disciplinary factors has been to
establish the boundaries within which television in Canada has been studied,
resulting in a number of glaring omissions. In addition to the lack of research on
the institutional histories of networks such as Global, Craig, TVA, and CHUM/City,
cable and speciality channels ranging from MuchMusic and TSN to Showcase
and HGTV, agencies such as Telefilm, production companies such as Barna-Alper,
Nelvana, and Cinar, there remains a relatively thin literature on audience research
and textual analysis of Canadian television programming on private television
outlets. There also persists a certain amount of ignorance with regard to the artistic contributions of Canadian artists and directors in the field of television, both
in domestic and international contexts .
Such absences carry with them important consequences for the social and
artistic legacy of television in Canada, as well as drawing attention to questions
regarding the foundations underlying particular policy initiatives. They have also
left the field of television studies underdeveloped—well behind the advances
achieved in the field of film studies. However, if the recent publication of Serra
Tinic’s study of Canadian television production and if the rumours of more
books on Canadian television in the works are true, it is likely that these observations will become less relevant as time goes by.6
As a means of moving forward, we concluded that rather than treating film
and television as separate entities, never to be touched by each other’s influence,
much could be gained by bringing the two into conversation with each other, to
examine the sites where film and television appear to cross paths. A cursory review
of some points of convergence reveals the potential dividends such an approach
can yield. When Canadian actors and directors shuttle between film and televi-
4 PETER URQ UHART AND IRA WAGMAN
sion both in Canada and the United States, we could gain insights not only into
different artistic oeuvres, but also into the nature of career development in the
entertainment field in Canada. When companies such as Alliance-Atlantis, Salter
Street Films or Remstar ha ve worked in the areas of film and television production, distribution, and/or exhibition, we are able to gain insights into the changing
political economy of Canada’s cultural industries. When television itself occupies
a key place in programs ranging from The Eleventh Hour (CTV, 2002-2005, many
directors) to Twitch City (CBC, 1998, Bruce McDonald) or in films ranging from
Videodrome (Canada/US, 1983, David Cronenberg), to Going the Distance (Canada,
2004, Mark Griffiths—a road movie revolving around a trip to the MuchMusic
video awards), important questions emerge about how television is represented
cinematically or televisually. When various means of film funding are tied to producers making arrangements for a television distribution “window,” or when
series production forms a key part of municipal, provincial, federal or international priorities, there are questions about the triangular relationship between
production, policy, and globalization requiring further exploration.
Further to this, the medium-specificity thesis, which still separates film from
television in some scholarly quarters, fails to take proper account of the ways
texts produced for these media may actually be encountered by audiences, with
films, on the one hand, consumed much more avidly on television sets in homes
than in cinemas, and television, on the other, increasingly watched (and certainly
discussed) on the internet and in other emerging platforms including mobile telephones. As John Ellis points out,
Increasingly, the real cultural significance of the circulation of a film text is
constituted through an ensemble of activities including the games narrative,
the star gossip and the televisual and journalistic working through of the
film’s problematic. As a result, the film narrative anticipates and expects
such activity in its textual organization. Television witnesses the same
process of textual expansion. The television Big Brother (Channel Four,
2000, Simon Hepworth, Helen Downing and others) depends on extra-textual activities for its meaning. These include live webcam broadcasts, live
broadcast on E4, phone and text message voting, radio, DJ chat, everyday
conversations, and, of course, acres of newspaper coverage.7
While Ellis’s allusions to blockbuster movies and huge television phenomena
may be slightly less resonant in the Canadian case, they are very useful as indications of the importance of considering film and television alongside each other.
In this issue, André Loiselle draws upon the concept of intersection to examine the dynamics of adaptations of nightclub acts, films and television programs.
In his examination of the critically acclaimed Québécois television program La
petite vie (Radio-Canada, 1993-99, Pierre Seguin) and the critically lambasted
CONSIDERING CANADIAN TELEVI SION 5
film vehicle for Serge Thériault and Claude Meunier’s beloved Moman and Popa
characters, Ding et Dong, le film (Canada, 1990, Alain Chartrand), Loiselle shows
that the movement between media forms is as much a critical and cultural
process as it is an artistic one. Murray Leeder also deals with the subject of adaptation, in this case the cinematic version of Steve Gallucio’s successful play,
Mambo Italiano. Leeder examines the place of television in both the filmic and
theatrical versions of Mambo Italiano, and stresses its symbolic significance in
the film’s treatment of communication versus non-communication. He also argues
that television’s incorporation of some of the formal characteristics of both theatre and film is an essential component in a story revolving around the theme of
hybridity. Blaine Allan’s study of the television commercials made by acclaimed
filmmaker Phillip Borsos, treats an important—and hitherto ignored—aspect of
Borsos’s oeuvre and places it within the local, regional, national, and international vectors of the director’s career. Allan’s article reminds us that an appreciation of Borsos and other auteurs must move beyond their cinematic
contributions to include the works, good or bad, that constitute an entire creative
life. Exploring a different kind of interesection, Sarah Matheson places King of
Kensington (CBC, 1975-80, many directors) within a key moment in Canada’s
history. She shows how the program’s central storyline, built around the efforts
of Larry King (played by Al Waxman) to work with people from different cultural
and ethnic backgrounds in the setting of Toronto’s Kensington Market, intersects
with a larger theme of national conciliation and mutliculturalism promoted by
the federal government during the 1970s, a time of social and political anxiety in
Canada.
While there remains much to be done in the areas of television aesthetics,
industry analysis, and institutional history, we see this issue as a provocation, as
a way of encouraging further research into both Canadian film and television.
This, we believe, will not only benefit television studies, but go a long way
toward developing a richer screen studies tradition in Canada.
4.
Jeffrey Sconce, “Esper the Renunciator: Teaching Bad Movies to Good Students,” in
Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste. Mark Jancovich, Antonio
Lozano Reboll, Julian Stringer, and Andy Willis, eds. (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2003), 14.
5.
See www.avpreservationtrust.ca. Similar problems face those attempting to perform
research in the areas of cultural policy or who study the Gouzenko-era National Film
Board. See Mark Kristmanson, Plateaus of Freedom: Nationalit y, Culture, and State
Security in Canada, 1940-60 (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press Canada, 2003).
6.
Serra Tinic, On Location: Canada’s Television Industry in a Global Market (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2005). At least two other books on Canadian television are
reportedly in progress.
7.
John Ellis, “British? Cinema? Television? What on Earth Are We Talking About,” Journal of
British Cinema and Television 1.1 (2004): 22-23.
PETER URQUHART is a Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University
of Nottingham and is presently working on Canadian popular culture, including
research on the film Meatballs and the television comedy Trailer Park Boys. IRA
WAGMAN is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and
Communication at Carleton University. His research focusses on cultural policy,
North American media history, and the history of communication research.
NOTES
We would like to thank the editor and the members of the editorial board of
CJFS/RCEC for their support, as well as the people who assisted us in the peerreview process. Their incisive commentaries and criticisms were much appreciated by both the contributors and the editors.
1.
John Corner, “Finding Data, Reading Patterns: Issues in the Historiography of Television,”
Media, Culture and Societ y 25.2 (2003): 273.
2.
Horace Newcomb, “Seeing Television,” in Television: The Critical View. 3rd edition,
Horace Newcomb, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 1.
3.
Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Sciences and
Letters (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1951), 44.
6 PETER URQ UHART AND I RA WAGMAN
CONSIDERING CANADIAN TELEVI SION 7