\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

More documents

Recommendations

Info

$\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia$

} hdesPOPULAR CULTUREIN CANADAissAc BicKERSTAFF, Mariposa Forever. Stodidart,$9.95.VAL CLERY, Ghost Stories of Canada. Hounslow,$9-95-DIANA COOPER-CLARK, Designs of Darkness:Interviews With Detective Novelists. BowlingGreen State Univ. Popular Press, $9.95.MARIÓN CROOK, The Gulf Island Connection.Crook Publishing, $9.95.BILL GUEST, Canadian Fiddlers. LancelotPress, $7.95.DAVID GURR, An American Spy Story. McClelland& Stewart, $18.95.DON HARRON, Debunk's Illustrated Guide tothe Canadian Establishment. Macmillan,$19-95-JEAN HOWARTH, Treasure Island. Penguin,$6.95.KENNETH HUDSON, The Language of theTeenage Revolution. Macmillan, £15.00.MARGARET ANN JENSEN, Love's Sweet Return:The Harlequin Story. Women's EducationalPress, $9.95.BILL MCNEIL, Voice of the Pioneer. Vol. 2.Macmillan, n.p.VLADIMIR PROPP, Theory and History of Folklore.Univ. of Minnesota Press, $19.50.JOHN REEVES, Murder Before Matins. Doubleday,$14-95-JOHN REEVES, Murder With Muskets. Doubleday,$17-95-JOHN SEWELL, Police. James Lorimer, $6.95.EDWARD STARKiNS, Who Killed Janet Smith?Macmillan, $24.95.TED WOOD, Murder on Ice. Charles Scribner's,$18.95-IT IS VERY TEMPTING at this point toconsider my work done. Popular cultureis such a theoretical morass that it oftenseems "your guess is as good as mine" isabout the best assessment of boundariesone can hope for. In this case, I havebeen asked by the editors to write a pieceon popular culture. To aid in my endeavoursthey have sent a variety of booksto consider. Since they are the ones whowant the article and they are the oneswho sent me the books, the books themselvesdefine popular culture in the viewsof the editors. Ipso jacto, the list of booksis my article.But ipso facto, being Latin, is not popularculture (at least not our popularculture, although it might be that ofancient Rome [or it might be part of ourpopular culture if it is misused — as myLatin usually is ... you see my problem]).And in any case, the editors probably willnot regard my casual bit of bibliographyas what they had in mind. So to continuewhere Charlie's Angels would fearto tread .. .I presume I was offered this assignmentbecause of an article of mine whichwas published in Canadian Literature,No. 104. There I presented a means ofdividing culture into four classifications:folk, popular, mass, and elite. Folkloristsstate that folk culture is artistic communicationin small groups. This definition,however, includes many thingswhich the majority of us would think farfrom "folk." Common usage would furthernarrow the definition to pre-industrialmaterial handed down through tradition.Mass culture is a much simplermatter : that purveyed primarily throughthe mass media. Elite culture is quitedifficult to define but we all know whatit is. Phrases such as "serious music,""serious literature," and "high art" providesome of the boundaries.Within this frame, popular cultureslips in at the edge. My suggestion is thatthe term is most useful if it representsthe small group reflection of mass culture.Thus, the local rock group doingimitations of the Rolling Stones is notmass culture, neither is it folk culture. Idoubt that any of you thinks it is elite193
OPINIONS AND NOTESculture, no matter what kind of Stoneophileyou might be. It is thus popularculture.But now the confusion. What is theessential difference between that and alocal string quartet which performs compositionswritten by the cellist? Andwhat is the essential difference betweenthat and the folk musician performingsome Child ballad? Of course, the latterrepresents the old favourite of anonymoussong transmitted through oral tradition.But was the first performer of thesong thus not a part of folk culture? Andwhat happens with all this material whensomeone records it and puts it on theradio? Is this really a transformationfrom popular/elite/folk to mass, throughwhat could be seen as just a means ofpreservation?As Alan Fotheringham would say,"Has the good Doctor Foth misfused theobfuscation?" Ah, thank God, you say.At last he has reached a concrete, Canadian,example. But is it popular culture?In light of my definition above, certainlynot. But what if I come down from myhigh taxonomic cloud and accept anotheraspect of common usage, and employpopular culture and mass culture assynonyms? Macleans might seem a massmarket periodical but is it — in the senseof People or better still The NationalEnquirer or Teenbeat? Fotheringhamclearly has some intellectual pretensions.Does this deny his column's right to becalled popular culture? In this day andage when educator after educator complainsthat "People don't read!" can anythingin print be popular culture?Let's stop there. I presume I have nowconvinced you of my basic premise : definitionsare of value only as stimuli fordiscussion. Even more than such oldfavourites as "What is poetry?", thequestion "What is popular culture?" isunanswerable. None of you would claimthat the artifact now in your hands, anissue of Canadian Literature, is popularculture. But a "normal" university quarterlywould be unlikely to publish anythingas unstructured and unscholarly asthe piece you are now reading. If I maybe allowed a short, slightly scholarly,break to comment on my own style,there is a pseudo-orality about the dashes,parentheses, and underlining which reflectsmuch popular culture in print.Harron's highly contrived Charlie Farquharsondialect is an extreme example.Thus could we say that CanLit (may Icall it that?) is more popular culturethan many other periodicals? We thenget into the realm where a term such aspopular culture really functions, in comparisons.Such a shift is necessary here,if only because none of the texts providedto me for this review really seemsto be popular culture, either in the senseof my definition above, or in the broadergrouping which includes mass culture.None of these books is likely to have thesame interest in that context as a songby Michael Jackson or an episode ofDynasty.You notice that I choose two Americanexamples. If, for the purposes ofdiscussion, we accept mass culture aspopular culture, we must see it as generallyAmerican. Hugh Garner once lamentedthe passing of low-brow Canadianmagazines. I can't recall the exactstatement but a reasonable paraphrasewould be : "I learned to write by writingjunk for such magazines. And manypeople learned to read by reading thatjunk. It was junk but it was our junk,Canadian junk." Today very little inpopular culture has a Canadian stamp.If you wandered into a bar in Montanayou would have difficulty convincingyour drinking mates of some quintessentialmaple-leaf-ness in Donald Sutherland,Margot Kidder, Neil Young, orBryan Adams. When Canadian becomes
Page 1 and 2: \s m YevtewELECTRONIC ADDITIONANDRE
Page 3: BOOKS IN REVIEWing the University o
Page 6: BOOKS IN REVIEWencounter for the "u
Page 12 and 13: BOOKS IN REVIEWJohn Bentley Mays pu
Page 14 and 15: CHAFE AND JARRICHARD JONES, ed., Po
Page 16 and 17: BOOKS IN REVIEWA second aspect of M
Page 18 and 19: BOOKS IN REVIEWClarke's inappropria
Page 20 and 21: BOOKS IN REVIEWtrait of the "Doctor
Page 22 and 23: BOOKS IN REVIEWwho are part of and
Page 24 and 25: BOOKS IN REVIEWpursuing his poetic
Page 26 and 27: BOOKS IN REVIEWmurders the girls' f
Page 28 and 29: BOOKS IN REVIEWSmith-god, the disti
Page 30 and 31: termines his choice of career as ke
Page 32 and 33: BOOKS IN REVIEWwas seven). The prot
Page 34 and 35: BOOKS IN REVIEWskitters after the s
Page 36 and 37: BOOKS IN REVIEWclear testing, thoug
Page 38 and 39: BOOKS IN REVIEWchoral observations
Page 40 and 41: BOOKS IN REVIEWen plus des haïkus
Page 42 and 43: BOOKS IN REVIEWchoix, mais en l'occ
Page 44 and 45: BOOKS IN REVIEWoil worker's vitalit
Page 46 and 47: FIRST STAGESUSAN STONE-BLACKBURN, R
Page 48 and 49: BOOKS IN REVIEWappear, often to mar
Page 52 and 53: OPINIONS AND NOTESpopular culture,
Page 54 and 55: OPINIONS AND NOTESfar as the greate
Page 56 and 57: OPINIONS AND NOTESit was felt in th
Page 58 and 59: OPINIONS AND NOTESwhere they might
Page 60 and 61: OPINIONS AND NOTES** BERNARD GUNN,
Page 62 and 63: OPINIONS AND NOTESviews of the Utop
Page 64 and 65: OPINIONS AND NOTEStures), and Rober

\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?