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Related to this project: Creating Local Connections Canada/Liaisons locales Canada

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Hey team! I hope everyone’s April has gone well and that for those of you in university you’ve survived exams and all that fun stuff. A lot has been going on in Ottawa, so I thought I’d drop a line to keep you all informed. Last night I attended an event at the St. Bridgid’s Community Centre. It was a conversation between former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and historian Margaret Macmillan. Though it was interesting it was not about the uses and abuses of history as the programme claimed. They talked a lot about how things have changed in Canada and how in the late 1950s (1959 I think) women were not allowed in the history club at the University of Toronto and there was a whole university centre donated by the Massey family that women were not welcome in except for at dances. They even talked about how Kennedy (before he was president) when he came to the UofT for a debate, women were not going to be allowed in. Though women were allowed in after some serious lobbying, there was still a quota because they didn’t want the event to turn into buffoonery. Earlier in the month Lynne and I did two workshops at the Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots Conference held at Algonquin College. One was climate change guide to action and the other was on social networking for social change. Due to a room mix-up we had double the participants for the second workshop than we were expecting but it still went really well. That evening Lynne and I returned for a very interesting and inspirational talk by Dr. Jane Goodall. She spoke a lot about how she got her start and I wouldn’t be surprised in 30 years from now to see some of you guys coming to conferences as distinguished guest speakers. This week I have been helping Mai with compiling some Ontario stats and also just doing some wrap up meetings with different partner organizations. It’s weird to be wrapping up. These past two years have gone by really really fast.

April 28, 2009 | 1:57 PM Comments  2 comments

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Hunger (the film)
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Tonight I watched the film Hunger by Steve McQueen for the first time. For my historical films class I thought it would be really interesting to look at how contemporary English directors like Ken Loach (The Wind that Shakes the Barley), Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday) and Steve McQueen have become important in constructing a history of Irish republicanism that has maybe on purpose, maybe indirectly contributed to the construction of national identity. It's an interesting concept, how the outsider can, without trying to move into 'the inside', can help to construct and define the 'inside'. I chose these three films in particular because of their diversity. While Bloody Sunday and Hunger deal with historical representations of the events of the modern troubles, The Wind that Shakes the Barley looks at the Black and Tan War and Irish Civil War. While Bloody Sunday was originally meant to be broadcast on television (and only later secured cinematic distribution), the other two were festival darlings. While Ken Loach is a veteran director and Greengrass is fairly accomplished, Hunger was McQueen's first feature film. While Loach and Greengrass opt for realism (with Greengrass trying for total immersion) McQueen was exceptionally and unapologetically artistic. Anyways, sorry for the side track. What I am trying to get at is the film Hunger – I'm not sure that it worked for me. Based on the reception that Hunger has received most people have gained some sympathy for the man at a personal level, while I think I lost a lot. The film completely ignored the politics of it all and brought a national memory down to a personal one and in the process left out a lot of the context that I feel gives his story some sympathy. While before watching it, certainly not approving of the methods used by Sands and the like (violence is never the answer and the killing of civilians is unacceptable under all circumstances) I had a certain respect for the strength of his convictions and his political beliefs. Without this political context I found that Sands was reduced to the role of a selfish martyr, someone that was toying with his own mortality in some sick power game. I can see where people who do not have a sense of the history of the troubles, a context, or an understanding of previous prison protests might get lost or fall into a trap of accepting the mysticism around the hunger strikers, the legend that has been passed down without questioning it. Luckily, this is an area of interest for me and I finished reading Denis O'Hearn's biography of Sands, Nothing but an Unfinished Song. Though the film and the book are totally unrelated. I think this is one case where history did not necessarily need to be played out on film. Because art has such a power to change the way people see things I think that historical films really really need to be careful to try to surpass being beyond art, recognizing their place in historical discourse.

March 26, 2009 | 1:27 AM Comments  0 comments



Gossip Girl and National Identity
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Yesterday when I was looking for a film grant application from TG4, the Irish television channel that broadcasts as gaeilge (in the Irish language) I found a couple of things that really surprised me and got me thinking about larger issues of cultural and national identity. The first of these was the prominence of an Irish country music programme. Essentially it is a group of people around my mum's age that sing really twangy country western songs for an hours a few times every week. The second thing was that the channel, once renowned for its homegrown entertainment and news/public affairs programmes was carrying dubbed versions of popular American shows such as Dora the Explorer, One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl. This got me thinking, how does theAmericanisation of Irish television affect cultural identity on a broader scale.

While I can see the value in the dubbing of Dora the Explorer (I mean who doesn't want a trilingual child that can move seamlessly between gaelige, English and Spanish) I have to admit I was confused by the presence of a country music program and initially upset over the broadcasting of Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill (it should be noted that while I can't stand the show Gossip Girl, I am a big fan of One Tree Hill so the bias gets balanced out). At a time when my generation is being told constantly that we are at risk of losing our culture (especially our language) and that we need to hold onto it now tighter than ever for its survival, we find it being watered down. If a dubbed version of some American sitcom is what we are trying to protect is it really worth fighting for? Shouldn't the television channel that is best placed to help us protect this culture that we are being told is being eroded by immigration, westernisation, secularisation, globalisation (and a whole bunch other -isations) have a responsibility to preserve Irish culture as opposed to further adding to this Americanisation? Shouldn't TG4 promote the idea of "we ourselves" as opposed to "us only a little bit different from the rest of 'em"?

A bit bitter, and nostalgic for times when TG4 was full of grandfatherly men with flat-caps talking about sheep, I phoned a mate of mine still living in the Republic for his take on the matter and the perspective he offered surprised me even more than the thought of a ginger mum-look alike strumming a bango and attempting to yodel a Dolly Parton song on a Wednesday afternoon. He actually saw the dubbing of American programmes as a positive thing and a way for us to protect our culture by making it easier for us to engage with something that may seem distant and foreign at times, a relic of the past lost within the lights and sounds of the modern world. It is the Gossip Girl generation that (frighteningly enough) that is entrusted with the responsibility of pulling gaelige back from the brink of extinction. So, Colm argued, if the youth are going to be watching Gossip Girl anyways, wouldn't you rather have them watch it as gaeilge where they can reinforce their language skills rather than in English? Furthermore when they dub these programmes, Irish speaking youth get the sense that both they and their language are important and worth making an effort for. While I still think that it would be better if TG4 were to make an effort to create some worthwhile Irish programming that would speak more directly to this generation (preferably without all the consumerism or glorification of teen sex and drug abuse), I think now I see the value in the dubbing. I just wish if they were going to dub they would dub some different shows - maybe a little House, some Scrubs maybe? It's just too bad that I'm not in the Republic, because I'd like to think that if given the option of watching One Tree Hill as gaeilge every week as opposed to English I would take it.

As I live in Canada, it also got me thinking about the whole Québec situation. Is this what it felt like before the Quiet Revolution. Are the parents and youth of Québec struggling with the idea of watching Gossip Girl en français? Maybe with this whole globalization thing we are more connected than we think.

March 24, 2009 | 2:56 PM Comments  0 comments



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