\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

OPINIONS AND NOTEStrying to grab as large a part of Canadianpopular culture as possible, particularlyin his guise as Charlie Farquharson.Harron's constant punning, once moreon display in Debunk's, could provide aninteresting analysis for someone with adesire to assess his intended audience,and how "popular," in the sense of beingfor "the masses," the Farquharsonoeuvre is. What readers are required by"You take that Raw Bare Burns hoo wasin Reamy Leveckyou's first cabinet"?How do they compare to those neededfor the less sophisticated but more agespecificpun Charlie twirled in an earlierwork: "All them Hindoos in themDeana Durbins"? Issac Bickerstaff performsin a somewhat similar vein. Still,any book which only succeeds if thereader has read another book, in thiscase Leacock's Sunshine Sketches, seemstruly to be stretching the limits of popularculture, no matter what the definition.My favourites among this package arethe Reeves novels but I have already saidthey don't count. After them, I amdrawn to one of the examples of popularistics,Margaret Ann Jensen on Harlequins.Perhaps a bit diffuse and lackingin the theoretical scope of recent studiesin both feminism and popular culture,the book still provides a very interestinganalysis of all aspects of the Harlequinchain from society to author to publisherto seller to reader and back tosociety. At one point she states,Although most academics reject popularculture, a few scholars enthusiasticallystudy movies, comic books and roller coasters.Perhaps in reaction to the condemnationsuch topics usually receive, thesescholars uncritically embrace their subjects.I am suitably chastened. But then againI was already warned a few years ago. Ireceived in the mail a number of Harlequincovers as advertisements so I putthem on my office door at the university.One of my students hesitantly asked mewhy. I replied, merrily, because I thoughtthey were funny. She said that she andher friends had assumed that I mustwrite them.I don't feel compelled to remark individuallyon most of the other books. BillMcNeil's collection is an absolute delight,as was the first volume, as has been theradio series, but I would feel more comfortableplacing it in the oral history binor, as a folklorist might suggest, in thecategory of personal experience narratives.Another popularistics volume, theHudson, is primarily interesting as anartifact. The one British book here, itseems a rather lightweight example ofwhat sociolinguistics can do, but I amfascinated by its list price, $60.00 Canadian.For 137 pages. Can elite culturesurvive?The impossibility of making globalstatements about culture or mass cultureshould in no sense deny their importanceas fields of study. This is very much howwe live. When mainlanders ask me whatit is like to live in Newfoundland, I sayI drive my Toyota, buy groceries atDominion, hardware at Canadian Tire,and underwear at Sears. In between thatI watch CBC television (CTV when I'mslumming [The Sports Network whenI'm visiting a rich friend with Pay-TV])and take my daughter to her Suzukiviolin lessons.Extra-national uniformity is a bit morelimited but similar. I can find no reasonableway of convincing my six-year-oldNewfoundlander of the incongruity whenshe sings along with Bruce Springsteen's"Born in the USA." I consider myself anardent nationalist but, as Garner lamented,when dealing with mass culturein general, as opposed to elite culture orregional examples of mass or popularculture such as a local character or event,the battle against the Americans is notonly unwinnable but unbeginnable. As196