Our culture and our southern neighbour
Re CBC chief stands up to U.S. cultural swamping, Mallick, Feb. 4
I am a fan of Heather Mallick’s column and think she is usually thoughtful, well-informed and on the right side (the humanitarian side).
So it surprised me to read her view that “Americans think they’re seeing the world, but instead, they’re looking at themselves. They don’t do foreign well. Generally passportless, they laugh at foreigners’ funny ways, abhor hearing other languages on their own soil and refuse to learn even the basics when they visit another country.”
The population of the United States is about 325 million people. If Mallick’s generalization is true, it surely it would mark the first time in history that so many people could be characterized by one simple description.
Just look at one of Mallick’s statements, that Americans are “generally passportless.” In fact, the percentage of Americans holding passports has been widely reported to have risen dramatically since the 1990s and is at roughly 40 per cent now. That’s less than the Canadian figure, but it certainly undermines Mallick’s contention.
Reducing a country or people to stereotypes does nothing to advance our understanding of them. Half of my family is American and Mallick’s description does not fit a single one of them. Linda Hossie, Campbell River, B.C.
Conventional thinking about culture would agree with Heather Mallick: Canada’s authenticity is being diminished by the American saturation of our media. However, those who fear assimilation should remember that “intimations of deprival (Canadian philosopher George Grant)” is the stimulus to creativity. During the rise of the American cultural world dominance starting in the ’60s, Canada had one of its most creative and productive growth bursts in its cultural identity.
Consequently, before concerned Canadians panic over the loss of our Canadianism, we should politely remind ourselves that historically every dominant cultural push has produced its own unique counter-cultural identity. So be attentive and proactive to what you resent. Take the fear of annihilation, ceasing to be Canadian, away and our cultural production might stagnate. As unpleasant as the counter-cultural experience is with its uncertainty, ironically, in the end, the threat of Americanization will make us more Canadian. Our creative knowledge workers will make sure of that. They are artists of our consciousness of Canada.
Canadian culture has thrived more when threatened than when there is no pressure to assert itself. Artistic resistance is not futile, it is often the source code of whom we will be. Tony D’Andrea, Toronto