Globalization Of Canadian Culture

Canada as a nation has been striving to characterize itself as more ?Canadian? for decades. This has included numerous struggles and events such as protests, bans, and the creation of the Massey Commission, to encourage national development in the arts, and support major companies like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and National Film Board (NFB). However, this has not been an easy task for the Canadian government, as major influences from below the border (the United States) have been captivating the Canadian audiences by large. American media has had a momentous revolutionizing effect on Canada, even through efforts made to define Canada with its own cultural identity.

Canada’s media industries have played a huge role in the Canadian culture. The Canadian culture has integrated with other countries forming a successful globalization. Many countries including the United States have contributed to the success in Canada’s media industries. The success of globalization between all of the countries was predicted by Marshall McLuhan and ever since his prediction, the world can be depicted as a global village. The global village can be viewed as a tool, a tool that is bringing the world together, despite the different languages, locations, and diverse cultures. With new technologies being developed more often, the communication skills between different countries are very successful. Canada’s diversity in their media and policies has established a global village with people around the world, allowing them to relate to the Canadian culture.

Due the the geographic reason, Canadian culture is often seen as similar to the United States. For instance, language, political beliefs, food, religion and social well-being. I agree that most part of the American popular culture is being adopted by most Canadians because of the powerful media such as movies, films and books are produced by the American. Massey-Leveque, who is a chancellor of the University of Toronto, argued that “ Canada is cultural dependent in its ‘uncritical use of American education philosophy”(as cited in Gasher, M., Skinner, D., & Lorimer,R., 2012,p.196). Hollywood, one of the biggest and most famous film corporations in the world, is devastating part of the Canadian culture. The reason is that by multi-billion

For example, most magazines focus on American celebrities and American trends. People’s magazine is very popular, with 3 527 541 copies paid and verified. It’s an American magazine that talks about celebrity gossip. Reader’s Digest is also quite popular, with 4 288 529 copies paid and verified. It’s a general interest family based magazine.1 There is also Twist, a magazine popular among teens. It teaches them about all the different beauty and fashion trends that are currently popular.2 However, these magazines almost never touch upon what’s happening in Canada, as people assume that what’s going on in the USA must also be happening in Canada. While that’s not completely true, events happening in the USA will likely affect Canada in one way or another. Pierre Elliotte Trudeau even stated, “Living next to the United States in some way like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even tempered the beast: one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”3 Finally, Canada covers a lot of what’s happening in the USA but the states don’t do the same with Canada. As Canadian author Margaret Atwood said, “The boarder separating the two countries is like a one-way mirror through which Canadians can see the United States but Americans can’t see

Having lived in Canada when I was 8 before the US-Canada magazine dispute occurred, I found myself thoroughly engrossed in Canadian culture. It seemed a perfect culture, built to protect domestic interests and despite the potential division between countries, created a safe environment where people were unafraid to leave doors unlocked, due to almost no crime. The peaceful and respectful nature of most Canadians isn’t just a fluke, the country was designed this way, and one of the primary influencers of this strategy is the media. Watching the news in Canada, the focus is positive, the message is positive, there is no forced fear of sense of doom as we see here in the US. Life is about being sustainable, not so much a struggle to the top of the food chain, but working together, instead of separating and segregating groups. That is except the region of French Quebec; however, Quebec is like a whole new country in itself.

Media sources in current culture are construed as important as they communicate the dominant ideology promoted by the bourgeois which the lower-class public should adhere to as the correct social norm (Kress, 1988). The medium which these ideologies are shown in are important, as different medium are used by different cultures. This essay will focus on comparing print with online media through analysing the Guardian and the Australian from August 31st. This will be done by looking at the types of news shown in each, the constraints and advantages of each medium, advertising, the concept of ownership, and the way the media convinces the public of their ideologies through hegemony.

Cultural issues are complicated ones to solve. Sometimes it is even tough to express opinions about them. It is an area where one has had to establish one's bona fides before weighing in. The audience has to be assured that the commentator loves Canada more or at least as much as the next person and is willing to stop at nothing to protect our culture. Trade consultants wanting to mine the cultural field are well advised to have a Can-lit or artistic icon as an immediate family member. Otherwise, they need not even bother hanging up a shingle.

The Canadian government identified magazines as an important touchstone of Canadian natural identify. If the government recognizes this as a national identify, then those who purchase it are showing loyalty to their father land and preserving their culture for the younger generation.

I think Canada’s own government pressured itself to self-preserve the publishing industry with Canadian driven material along with local publishers in efforts to continue to provide local culture and issues for its citizens. The article doesn’t mention how the Canadian government is helping the publishing industry to reorganize, in order to compete with American magazines. This area may be where the problem lies and probably wasn’t assessed until US magazines came into the picture. But if Canada wants to continue to maintain the small percentage of Canadian magazines they should be looking at

If Canada wants to protect their national identity, they must all embrace each other’s cultures, instead of creating multiple broadcasts that preach one view or culture. Without state governed media, the dominance of US products in Canada would diminish its identity as a nation, fail to serve the public interest and create less profits causing more advertising and less content in the media. Government regulated media proves to be more favourable and beneficial than policies based off of self-regulated solutions when addressing Canada’s media industries and cultural

If I were the Canadian government, my problem will not be the name of the magazine and where it was published. My major concern will be that, the magazine should carry at least 70% of Canadian life. This will mean, putting in place a medium of censorship. Consequently any magazine that does not fulfill the conditions will be considered a split-run. One of the criteria will be the content of the adverts. A magazine that is carries mainly foreign adverts will be classified as split-run. On the bases of those considerations, all split-run magazines would have to pay higher tariffs or face a ban. It sounds like violation of the freedom of press but a nation must not sit down and watch globalization eat up her culture.

I suspect that the real motive of the Canadian government was not to protect Canadian culture in this dispute with the US. But rather, it seemed to concern more with political and economic factors. As appeared in the article, the Canadian government finally gave in and went on to settle the dispute (The Levin Institute, [1]). To me, that seems somewhat irrational to suddenly give up on one’s culture like they did, when the US threated to retaliate with trade barriers. As a speculation, I believe the dispute was motived by political and economic concerns. The Canadian government was attempting to defend the local media from a total domination by foreign media since it implies that Canadian businesses will be paying foreign corporations to have their products and services advertised on a magazine, even when local magazines have the capacity to provide the same type of service. Simply put, the concern seems to be related to the higher outflows of capital.

For this research, the unit of observation are magazines as obviously will be making my observations in magazines. What are the reasons for choosing this medium? Convenience, easy to secure, and also it is quite easy to analyse compared to other mediums. However, there is one important criterion for magazines, such as they have to be in English language as it will be important in identifying gender stereotyping in the writing. Though, there are criteria that are not important to me such as the genre (men’s and women’s magazine) and also, the magazines will not be filtered in terms of their release date

Each and every one of the world's many nations is unique in its own way. No two nations are the same in terms of the way they live. Whether it is driving on the right or left side of the road, pronouncing words a certain way or using hand gestures to communicate different meanings, each nation of the world has something that allows it to stand out. This uniqueness can come from certain religions, cultural practices, geography, history or from a multitude of other reasons. Despite this, a unique nation usually gains its originality and identity from its people. The way the people interact, live, work, play and have come to exist dictate how others perceive them as a culture. Canada is a provocative country with a divergent population.

Surely, Canadian magazine dispute was motivated by genuine desires to protect Canadian culture. In fact, I heard about several similar occasions of government protection of the culture of a nation. In those cases, it was not the magazines, but movies and tv shows, because they have a greater impact on the culture. So, it is usual for governments to try to protect their culture by reducing an influence of others. I believe that Canada had the same intentions. They wanted to preserve an own culture and were afraid of greater "Americanization" of the country. At the same time, culture protection clearly was not the only reason in Canadian magazine dispute.