class blog

After the presentations last week Friday, there was a clear and recurrent discussion of the age old Canadian crux of the “search for an identity” – a theme that is similarly most prevalent in literature yet left unanswered. The question of a Canadian identity is even more troubled when the idea of a virtual and real-world identity is added into the equation in a rapidly advancing technological world – making the answer that much more difficult to flesh out.

Maiko Bae Yamamoto’s “Nostalgica” speaks of this conflict of memory and the representation of memory, whether accurately or not, in the media. In “The YouTube” by Joe Cobden, the article which I first reviewed, he speaks of the inability to separate his “real-world” from the virtual because YouTube has made it incredibly easy to share and connect ideas instantly. Thus his naming of YouTube to “The YouTube” is a means to create that separation and distancing from him and the virtual world.

Both articles respond to the question of a kind of translation of our memories and perception of our lives into various social media platforms – YouTube being the main interest. Yamamoto’s desires to watch sentimental videos, describing her drug-like addiction in which “YouTube is one of my dealers when I need a hit” is an interesting parallel to Cobden’s experience with the media platform, claiming that his obsession with finding and sharing videos results in “endless clicking around and voyeuristic horseshit.” In both experiences, YouTube (and other platforms) has an incredible capacity to share and find “shared experiences” and stories. And in such a diasporic country as Canada, it is only natural to want to know more about the different cultures and stories this country houses and especially to connect to a community. And YouTube is that “community” to learn and share for many people. There is an emotional and social gratification aspect of YouTube in which you can comment and have a dialogue with a stranger, even the ability to “thumbs up” comments in which you agree with or like – a virtual high-five.

But it also has an increasingly surreal affect for our findings on the interwebs to trickle into our real-world lives and consume our time and attention there. Where it is so easy to share information, it is also easier to be consumed into a world which is not tangible – but still has that uncanny quality of “real-life.” From Cobden’s hunger of YouTube videos to obnoxiously show his friends and Yamamoto’s crave of a true or false nostalgic story suggests that sharing is not caring in the virtual world.

I also wanted to respond to a post on Tumblr by Felcity Keung titled “Familial Relations in Nostalgica” – a response to Yamamoto’s essay. In the beginning of Yamamoto’s essay, she mentions that there is a candy tin that a character within the cartoon carries around. Keung clarifies the question of the contents of the tin, claiming that there is not actually candy inside, but rather, the “boy’s sister’s ashes.” I will take this a step further and suggest that Yamamoto and Keung alludes to a yearning hunger and need for consumption in Canada.

The importance of nostalgia and memories are so incredibly important to figuring out one’s present identity that it is mirrored in this act of consuming the past. By carrying his sister’s ashes in a container once meant for food, and Yamamoto’s hunger for sentimental videos and memories, it allows us to internalize memories of the past and suggests that through this consumption of the past, it enables Canadians to take on the past as our own identity. So, we are no longer looking for who we are as individuals in the present, but rather, heavily engaged with and influenced by our past and our memory of it.

By: Alicia Jagsarran

Essays and Articles Mentioned:

Link to Maiko Bae Yamamoto’s “Nostalgica” here: http://ryeberg.com/curated-videos/nostalgica/

Link to Joe Cobden’s “The YouTube” here: http://ryeberg.com/curated-videos/the-youtube/

My original review of Cobden’s essay on Tumblr, “YouTube and the New Canadian Experience and Identity” here: http://newcan.tumblr.com/post/64263198390/youtube-and-the-new-canadian-experience-and-identity

Felicity Keung’s “Familial Relations in Nostalgica” posted on Tumblr found here: http://newcan.tumblr.com/post/64264816595/familial-relations-in-nostalgica

Original sourcelink for the first image found here:http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/one-does-not-simply-watch-youtube.jpg

The study of Canadian literature, in both name and practice, can be fundamentally looked upon as the study writings produced by Canadians. While such a designation sets clear boundaries, it also raises a number of questions. Can works produced in Canada by authors of different ethnicities be considered Canadian literature? Should works revolving around Canada or Canadian characters be studied? Yet even more problematic, is the question of ways in which we study Canadian literature in which no direct references to Canada are made. Mathew Howard’s short story Old Hands can be considered an example of this third dilemma.

A response to this question can be found in the theories unexpected source, Roland Barthes. A key figure in the structuralist/poststructuralist movement, Barthes published Death of the Author in 1968. In this influential essay, Barthes calls into question the major ways in which we study text. Barthes argues that texts can have endless meanings, and “to give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause”. Barthes believes literature should only be evaluated on the basis of language. Taking into account personal details, such as the historical context or situation of the author, is unnecessary when critically analyzing a work. By means of Barthes’ style of evaluation, we can understand the ways in which the text of Old Hands creates a sense Canada, without explicitly stating referring to it.

Old Hands, the story of a home and its lone occupant sinking into the sea,begins with a description of the “creeping dampness” coming upon the house. Dampness, a state most find uncomfortable, can be looked upon as the beginnings of the increasingly uneasy tone Howard creates. This feeling becomes apparent as the reader becomes fully aware of the “rotting, reeking and private” secrets of the house. The “bone heavy” narrator slowly reveals a history of abuse, as his home sinks into “the great wet stomach of the sea”. Descriptions such as these add to Howard’s ominous tone, highlighting the hopeless situation of the narrator. As we continue through the story, this dampness turns to “cold air [swallowing the narrator] whole”. This frigid motif continues as the narrator recalls “truths loud as a winter storm”, memories of his family and transgressions against them “chills [him] to the bone”. These passages leave the reader with a clear sense of the cold, an attribute that many instantly equate with Canada. A reference to “quiet, cold nights…without end” can also be looked upon as an allusion to Canada’s seemingly endless winters.

This type of implicit suggestion of Canada continues as the narrator refers to his past as a “wreck upon the shores of an island I’ve chosen to forget”. For many readers this quotation merely acts to highlight the isolation felt by the narrator. Yet for individuals familiar with Canadian geography, this passage can also invoke images of Prince Edward Island and of the “frigid water” of the surrounding Atlantic Ocean. A later reference to “rough work-worn hands” implies a past profession in manual labor. This can support the proposition of a west cost local as many residents are employed in the fishing industry. As we examine Old Hands, it is the small details such as these that add together to imply Canadian ethos. It is by means of these indirect hints that Howard’s craftsmanship as a storyteller is exhibited. The language of Old Hands successfullytransports readers to a specific setting without blatantly referencing it. With the aid of the theories Roland Barthes, we can confidently place Old Hands in the realm of Canadian Literature.

By: Richard Stewart Sinclair 

Sources:

Barthes Roland. “The Death of the Author.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2001. N. pag. Print.

Our group focused on how the Canadian short stories we read indicate that even though Canada represents a land of abundance, it does not satisfy the emptiness and loneliness in people's heart. 

In my reading, Arriving to a New Nation by Tina (Evergreen16) from Wattpad, I was able to strongly connect with the story because I had the similar experience arriving to a new country as an immigrant. At a young age, I came to Canada by myself to study in hoping for better future just like the narrator and her parents. Ironically, both the narrator and I have no way of knowing how it would be like to live in a different nation so there is no way that our hope would be accomplished. However, we, representing most of the immigrants, assume for better future because we are moving to a wealthy nation.

In doing so, immigrants have to adapt to the new nation. Adapting to the new environment requires immigrants to learn the new language, and its culture. Throughout the reading, the family represents loneliness and emptiness as immigrants. On their way to Canada from Iran, sense of loneliness is portrayed in terms of family separation; leaving their grandparents and relatives behind. Also, the family failed to understand people’s behaviour which distances them from the new environment as well. Lastly, the fact that they are unable to sympathize with the culture they feel the emptiness of being foreigners, who are required to adapt but fails.

L’Étranger, one of the stories that were in the running for the CBC Short Story Prize, is an extremely multi-faceted piece of Canadian writing. The title of the short story literally translates to the word abroad and it describes the interaction between two women who live together in a city that is foreign to both of them. Although they are residing in the same small run-down apartment located in Marseille, France, they remain strangers for most of the story until one of them discovers symptoms of a potential illness and decides to return home to be properly diagnosed. Although the story does not take place in Canada, the narrator makes a reference to British Columbia, and the themes are unmistakably parallel to common themes that we’ve encountered in the Canadian literature that we’ve read in our New Writing in Canada class. For example, loneliness, alienation and the concept of “home” and where that truly is are present in Eliza Robertson’s L’Étranger and can also be found in David Chariandy’s Soucouyant, along with the theme of overconsumption presented in Buffy Cram’s Radio Belly. These themes present themselves in many different ways across the works we’ve studied and in the one I’ve chosen for the purposes of this assignment.

In L’Étranger, the narrator has come to Marseille, France from London, England and her roommate, Irina, is described as Ukrainian so it can safely be assumed that neither of them, while in Marseille, is in their place of origin. Although they are not truly alone, as they are living together, they barely communicate and seemingly live around one another rather than with each other. The narrator presents Irina as a woman who is not very amiable. She describes hearing Irina speak English to her boyfriend on the phone showing her awareness that there is no language barrier between them, and she also points out that her roommate only enters the kitchen once she herself has fully exited. This could be the cause of the hostility perceived by the narrator, which leads her to sabotage her roommate’s food supply. This act comes as a result of the ambiguous relationship between the two women, which stems from their lack of verbal communication. Upon finding out that Irina cannot consume gluten, the narrator begins to understand why her roommate keeps all of her utensils and food separate and immediately begins to feel remorse for her cruelty. This tension between the roommates is reminiscent of the alienation felt by the narrator of Soucouyant when he returns home to his sick mother and is met by a strange girl, Meera, who is living in his childhood home but doesn’t make any effort to speak to him for an extensive period of time. This type of action poses the question of where home is and what it is that makes something our home. Is it simply the place where we grow up, or the place where we sleep at night? Or is it the place where our family resides? The narrators of both stories are in a place where they are unable to communicate with the people around them, making it difficult for their home to function as a home. This idea is further realized when Irina decides to leave the small apartment in Marseille to return home to see a doctor. Although there are doctors everywhere, and despite the narrators offer to accompany her to one, Irina decides to leave and return to where she feels most comfortable in her time of vulnerability. Both the characters of L’Étranger and Soucouyant share this feeling of alienation that results from being unable to feel at home in one’s own home, which is a common theme in Canadian and especially diasporic literature.

Another theme that I found interestingly linked by two new pieces of Canadian literature, specifically L’Étranger and Buffy Cram’s Radio Belly, is the notion of over-consumption and how it is used to fill a void brought on by lost relationships. In L’Étranger, when Irina decides to return home to see a doctor, she leaves all of her food in the apartment for the narrator, who then proceeds to consume all of it in one sitting. She says, “after she went, I sat before the mountain and felt I needed to eat everything. Like if I didn’t eat the crème fraîche and plums and chestnut spread then, they would spoil. So I did. I ate until I could not eat, and then I sat on the stool with lead in my stomach.” (Robertson) This scene is parallel to the first story in Radio Belly entitled “Mineral by Mineral,” in which the protagonist Shana develops a habit of consuming dirt after she has experienced a kind of disconnect from several defining parts of her life. Shana, after going through a bad breakup and handling the loss of her job, attempts to find peace by consuming minerals of all sorts in the same way the narrator of L’Étranger consumes all of the food Irina has left behind, perhaps to come to terms with her leaving, or even to ease the guilt she feels for not getting to know her before her departure. Both of these women consume too much because they are missing something in the other parts of their lives. For the narrator of L’Étranger, it is the physical loss of Irina in the apartment they shared; for Shana, it is a sense of purpose that she cannot seem to find after dealing with her break up and demotion at work.

I found the parallels between L’Étranger, Soucouyant and Radio Belly quite interesting. It is widely recognized that Canada is a place significantly populated by people who have come from other places around the world. More importantly, it is a place where people come in hopes of building bright futures and finding success. That being said, the question of home, the alienation that comes from feeling alone even among others and the problem of overconsumption may not be exactly what comes to mind when people think of Canada and for this reason, it is quite important that these themes and difficulties are reflected in new Canadian literature.

By Roma Bhim 

Memory is a strange and confusing concept, infinite, and vast. It can be utterly toiling and confusing, as well as devastatingly important. In this course, the reader has been presented with 3 texts closely related to the concept of memory and more specifically, the theme of nostalgia. In her article “Nostalgia”, Maiko Bae Yamamoto presents a modernized concept of nostalgia and an insight on her life growing up as a second generation Japanese woman, daughter to immigrants from the Japan. Her life and experience, as well as opinions and definition of nostalgia can parallel certain themes in the texts studied thus far. She illustrates the difficulties and hardships experienced by those who have been uprooted by hardship, and cast of to the place that we, and now they call home.

Yamamoto gives the reader an insight onto the familiar struggles of identity and conflicting associations with “home” and where that truly is. Yamamoto speaks specifically on the topic of “nostalgia” relating it to sound, taste, smells, and touch-the human senses. She describes nostalgia as “bittersweet”, combining emotion and sense to create a form of memory. Since nostalgia and memory are such complex concepts to define in only written word, Yamamoto has included a series of video clips, to try and further develop and define her feelings of longing. Feelings that to some, may be completely unknown.

Yamamoto first chooses to discuss the film “Grave of the Fireflies”, focusing on a key symbol from the film- a tin of candy- that serves as both a figurative and a literal sense of nostalgia in the film. Yamamoto describes the scene in which the can is reduced to it’s last piece of candy, rattling at the bottom of the can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjjGXrbjDw

“In that moment, when we hear the rattling of that tin, we feel the entirety of this boy’s loss. Somehow, we understand all that he has been through.” (Yamamoto)

Yamamoto has given Nostalgia a sound to the reader, the sound of the final piece of candy that these two orphaned children had from a better time. She continues with this symbol, next linking nostalgia to the sense of taste

“We hear that sound, and we can taste the sweetness of that candy, of times past. Joy and sorrow intermingle to form an even bigger feeling. It is like a heavy stone on our chests.” (Yamato)

Yamamoto provides a clear concept that nostalgia and memory can be directly related to, or triggered by our human senses. The slightest smell, sound, name, taste, or touch can become a figure of memory. The tin of candy serves as a key connection to the children’s home and parents, though it becomes bittersweet as the can empties and the memories begin to fade.

Yamamoto’s use of video and sound reference, are very modern tools of identifying with the youth and audience of today. We live in a technological age, and our brains are constantly searching for the next surface, the next device, the next video link. The videos and film and television references Yamamoto has selected, come from both Japanese, and Canadian/American descent. This parallels the concept of immigrants attempting to merge and make new life in Canada. And the mixing of race and culture that is found in the second generation.

These themes and definitions Yamato has provided can directly parallel certain texts studied in “New Writing in Canada”. The fact that she is a Canadian, half Japanese with immigrant parents, her life and growing up that she describes- can be related to the narrator from Soucouyant. Yamato discusses the difficulty growing up as the “privileged” generation,

“Happiness had to immediately be offset by the shadowy reminder of how lucky we were. We were lucky that the sacrifices of those who came before meant that our suffering was much less.” (Yamamoto)

These quotes can be related to the turmoil experienced by the characters in Soucouyant. Haunted by his and his families past, he and his brother have a very difficult time growing up as mixed children in Canada. The themes of memory and nostalgia are both strong and reoccurring, though deeply altered and distorted by the confusion of Adele’s condition. Adele is constantly lost in a state of longing for her home, spurring out old stories and fairy tales, fragments of memories that she can no longer piece together. Adele is desperate for a connection to her home life, constantly running water and overflowing the sinks in her home. Adele’s use of the tap causes it to serve as a source of nostalgia that she clings too. Here we see a sense of touch, and sound serving as a trigger of memory, much like the tin can used by Yamamoto.

The tin can is an important symbol Yamato focuses on, as it represents a source of visual, auditory, and taste trigger of memory for the two orphaned children in “Grave of the Fireflies” Yamato specifically identifies with this film, as it is a Japanese animated film depicting the hardships in Japan during these times of war. She comments on the bittersweet nature of thinking about home, because of all the difficulties and harsh memories that usually reside there for immigrants. Similar themes can be seen in the story “Drift” from Radio Belly. In which Lena feels conflicted about her “motherland” and anything to do with her past, because of how Ama had brushed off the topic for so many years. This story also features many aspects of sound, and how that serves as a sense of memory and nostalgia. As Lena talks to her mother on the phone, she hears sounds that remind her of “old country”, though she has difficulty believing it.

Conclusively, Yamamoto provides an enjoyable piece on nostalgia, explaining that it can be defined by many things-specifically the senses.

“Here is Proust describing the power of taste and smell: “…when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

Yamamoto quotes author Proust, who writes on the subject of taste and smell in relation to nostalgia. If Yamamoto is trying to say something specific, it may be that nostalgia can strictly be defined by human sense, which thus triggers human emotion. Thus nostalgia is the combination of sense and emotion to create memory. In Yamamoto’s sense nostalgia is more of an equation- a bittersweet equation that no one can really solve yet.

Article Source: Yamamoto, Maiko Bae. “Nostalgica.” Ryeberg. Ryeberg Curated Video., 1 Mar. 2013. accessed 15 Oct. 2013. Web. <http://ryeberg.com/curated-videos/nostalgica/>

In the personal and insightful work Nostalgica, Maiko Bae Yamamoto describes her experience as a young girl growing up in a Japanese-Canadian immigrant family. Her perspective is one that has been shaped by both physical and cultural geographies. It is both her personal story and the story of millions of other families who have been displaced due to wars and other unsafe conditions in their homeland.

Yamamoto uses clips from movies and other visual media to help describe the sense of nostalgia and the desire to connect to one’s heritage. In particular, I would like to draw attention to the Tim Horton’s commercial.

This advertisement shows a father and adult son watching a hockey game in which the grandson is playing Timbits Hockey. The pair bond over their coffees, their memories of the past, and the fact that three generations are sharing the same physical space of the hockey arena.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI33WlHqx-o [Please click the link to watch the commercial]

In the first part of the grandfather’s story, it seems that he and his son have a rocky relationship. Growing up, the son wanted to take part in the team sport of hockey whereas the father wanted him to pay more attention in school. It seems that the older man’s perspective has changed over the years, and there was a time when he accepted his son’s hockey as a change brought about by their new home of Canada. Now, the grandfather actively encourages his grandson when he scores a goal, perhaps showing that time in Canada requires one to become more accustomed to the traditions and way of life. This commercial is very effective in the way that it shows individuals of Asian descent enjoying the ‘national sport’ of hockey and the Canadian restaurant franchise. It implies a sense of acculturation within a new country, where old ways need to be reassessed and fit into the framework of the Canadian landscape.

Yamamoto comments: “Nostalgia sells. For someone like me, it’s better than sex. I’m an easy target” (Yamamoto) and then comments on her own upbringing in Toronto and the way that “[the past] would come up during dinner conversations, the recounting of how hard things had been in Japan when my parents were kids” (Yamamoto). She expresses a sense of frustration because “for me and my sisters, it almost felt like we were never allowed to be completely happy because we hadn’t suffered enough” (Yamamoto). Clearly, there is a marked disconnect between growing up in Canada and what her parents experienced, and Yamamoto is still in the process of trying to reconcile her life in a new country, as it was built by previous generations.

Life in Canada is not without its own challenges, especially as an immigrant or the child of immigrant parents. As much as one might try to fit into society, one still feels the tug of melancholy and the desire to return to a cultural ‘home’. This leaves the author with a sense of nostalgia that she will carry throughout her life, and recognizing the existence of a “weepy land” (Yamamoto) of nostalgia is very important in the context of a New Writing in Canada English course.

by: Nadia Svoboda

Yamamoto, Maiko Bae. “Nostalgica.” Ryeberg. Ryeberg Curated Video., 1 Mar. 2013. accessed 15 Oct. 2013. Web. <http://ryeberg.com/curated-videos/nostalgica/>

RESPONSE TO "PRETTIER IN PINK" by Masha Tupitsyn

In Masha Tupitsyn's article, Prettier in Pink, she examines the idea of how clothing can define an person, but how it could also blur the line between the fixed identities that society is used to. Tupitsyn begins her discussion with a short narrative about growing up in the 1980's with her friend Nora, and what an experience at a costume party as an adolescent has taught her as an adult. Tupitsyn focuses on the 1986 John Hughes film, Pretty In Pink, starring Molly Ringwald as Andie, Andrew McCarthy as Blaine, and James Spader as Steff, to examine the differences between mainstream and alternative, and how identity is distinguished through clothing choice.

The first couple paragraphs are written about Tupitsyn's childhood friend, Nora. The way she writes about her, I can tell that Nora was someone that Tupitsyn absolutely revered, “Nora, who could be mean and cold, and whose actions could be inscrutable, like a boy’s... I would wander the school halls alone, watching Nora flirt with her other friends. Watching Nora seduce new people... I discovered a lot of things with Nora.” Because Nora was a friend to Tupitsyn in adolescence, during such a critical growing period in her life, it is easy to see that Tupitsyn loved Nora precisely because Nora was different. Nora taught her new things. Nora challenged her, like when they decided to dress up as Miami Vice characters. The reason they wanted to become these characters, though Tupitsyn did not realize this until later in her life, was because they believed that dressing powerfully made the dresser powerful.

Tupitsyn goes on to discuss films in the '80's and how so many were revolved around the idea of changing or challenging an individual's set identity by changing the way that individual dressed, and therefore behaved, as if the clothes took on life when you put them on. In this case, “power dressing” was the term used to describe taking on adulthood by wearing mature clothing. It was a way of identifying with the materialistic and powerful, even if one did not hold any power at all. A child can be an adult. Tupitsyn uses the example of the film, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Ferris does some pretty childish things, such as ditch a day of high school, opting to pretend to be an adult for a day instead. Ferris' actions are intended to trick people into thinking he's an adult. When he sports a trench coat and pretends to be his girlfriend's father, or borrows his friend, Cameron's, father's most expensive car. Not only is he acting like an adult, he is acting like the adult people aspire to be. The kind that own expensive cars and dine in five-star restaurants. He is creating an identity.

"Ferris Bueller's Day Off" Trailer

However, power dressing is not just about changing from a child to an adult. It is also about changing from mainstream to alternative, or alternative to mainstream. Here is where Tupitsyn's Pretty In Pink focus comes in. Andie is seen as different. Alternative, I guess is the word that is used here. Both Blaine and Steff are drawn to her. Both Blaine and Steff are rich and popular, however Steff is arrogant and selfish while Blaine is kind and giving. The story focuses on Andie's differences, and how the way she dresses symbolizes how different she is from the mainstream, not just in appearance, but in her beliefs and her actions. She hangs out with people who are also alternative, who are different from the mainstream, but alike as alternatives. Blaine and Steff are the same on the exterior, mainstream, but Blaine is trying to reach an alternative, the same kind of alternative that Andie is. He just wants to be alternative without actually doing anything that is alternative. He has an identity that is hard to define, and is confusing to someone like Steff. Tupitsyn's argument here is about how the '80's were about trying to define everyone, to separate them into a category.

The thing is, just because someone acts or looks a certain way does not mean that they fit into any defined category. Blaine has money, but he's not a snob. Andie is different, but still wants the same things as most people, like money and expensive cars. Putting yourself into a category is giving yourself a limit. It means that you have to look a certain way or act a certain way. It means you have to be either rich OR poor, conservative OR liberal, mainstream OR alternative. There is not longer a set definition of what is mainstream or alternative, because alternative is mainstream. Rebellion sells just as much as a designer label. The rich can pretend to be poor, and the poor can pretend to be rich. The beauty of blurring lines and of “playing pretend” is precisely that you can be something one day, and you can be totally different the next. Maybe it is not pretend, but rather discovering new parts of yourself. Identity is not a fixed label. It is a constant change. Tupitsyn dressed as men from Miami Vice because in her mind, only men could have power. She had always felt different as a girl, so she thought that pretending to be a man might suit her better. What Tupitsyn really wanted was not to be a man, but to feel powerful in her own skin.

As a group, for this assignment we decided to each write about how our article has related to the new Canadian text we have read as a class so far. Our unifying theme is identity. The Amazing Absorbing Boy was about a boy who arrived in Canada and struggled to find an identity in Canada. The novel took a look at immigration in Canada and what it meant to identify as a Canadian. Is a Canadian white? Are they mixed? Can an immigrant be truly considered Canadian? We see Samuel struggle with this, wondering if people see him differently or know, immediately upon seeing his face, that he was not born Canadian. Samuel changes the way he dresses to fit in too. When he went to poetry readings, he wore his black turtleneck. Samuel got new sweaters, a jacket, and shoes, believing that looking more like the people he saw around him would make them accept him. He believed that it would help him find an identity in Canada.

Personally, I chose this article because I strongly believe that clothes can be powerful. Anyone that knows me knows that one my biggest fears is being a boring dresser. I do not necessarily believe that clothes define me, but I believe that clothes can make me feel differently about myself. If I am having a bad day, or I know an event in the future will cause me stress, I do not reach for the sweatpants in the back of my closet. I reach for the jeans that make my butt look good and the red lipstick on my vanity. Looking good can change my whole attitude. It makes me feel good too. I guess, in that way, I am a lot like Ferris Bueller. I do not know if I am entirely ready to act like an adult all the time, but I can sure pretend.

- Angie Liu

As a group, we wanted to look at the theme of remembering the future in the context of new Canadian stories. By remembering the future, we looked at stories that dealt with current issues such as euthanasia, the impact of increased traveling, and the struggle to find gender equality in romantic relationships. By choosing these topics, the authors invite people to think of modern concerns in new ways, shaping future ways of thinking. Each of the stories answers a different aspect of what makes a text Canadian ranging from the setting of the story, to the character’s identity, to simply the author being Canadian.          

In her short story “Snatch and Release”, Becky Blake looks at how Canadian identity exists independently of setting, as a character trait. She does those by setting her story in Barcelona Spain and by presenting the narrator as a Canadian, in contrast to the tourist couple that the narrator observes as sounding American. The reader has no concrete way of knowing if the narrator is in fact Canadian or not given the unreliable first person narrator. It is the fact that the narrator is, or at least presents herself as Canadian that makes the story possible. Stranded in a strange country, with a language barrier, after having just been robbed, the only thing that makes the “everybody laughs scam” possible to succeed in the first place is for the tourists to trust the narrator when she approaches them. This trust exists because she is presents herself as Canadian, and Canadians have the reputation of being nice and polite, especially when they go abroad. The fact that a character uses this reputation as a recommendation of character suggests that a Canadian identity, especially in a text, comes not only from the setting being in Canada, it comes also from the characters who are expected to embody certain characteristics and hold certain values and beliefs.

            Blake presents the narrator as struggling with her decision to take advantage of the tourists, which contributes to the argument that the narrator is in fact Canadian because she feels guilty for taking part in the scam. The newness of the piece comes from the way in which Blake approaches the scenario. The scene of the story does not simply focus on the tourists being robbed, or on the narrator and her partner robbing them. Told from the perspective of the guilty party committing the crime, Blake makes her story about examining the complexity of people rather than about being a warning piece of travel fiction. In telling the story from the thief’s perspective, Blake has the opportunity to show the struggle behind the character’s actions while also hinting at the reason for the action in the first place. The way in which Blake pairs the line about the woman’s mascara and sunscreen smudging together before having the woman admit that they “just wanted to go to the Gaudi buildings. Take some pictures,” looks at the superficial expectations tourists have of the places they visit. The sunscreen and mascara are an example of how the couple only thought of being ready to take pictures of the landmarks and of looking good in them. They were either unaware or unconcerned with the social political state of the day to day life of the locals underneath the postcard images they expected to see.

The woman’s tear smudging her mascara and sunscreen together works to show that beneath the facade of the touristic spots lay the strains of day to day life that the locals face. The tear, shed from experiencing hardship and sorrow, washes the protective layer off of the tourist’s face, who is presumed rich. The smudging of the mascara and ink makes the tourist and the local equal to each other in the face of experiencing sorrow. The narrator herself acknowledges that “One minute you had plans for the future, the next minute you had only the present”, which gives the narrator a sense that she too has experienced a reversal of fortune in her travels.

A. Mihai

Sources:

Blake, Becky. "Snatch and Release". Room Magazine, 2013. Web. 6 October 2012

http://www.roommagazine.com/sites/default/files/samples/Snatch%20and%20Release.pdf

In the article “Lana Del Rey, Meet Your Boyfriend,” Nick Mount explores the paradox behind the image that the twenty-seven year old indie pop singer presents: that is to say, just how genuine is Lana Del Rey’s preoccupation in what one might label as ‘hipster culture’ – the indulgence in nostalgia, the recreation of one’s image, the inability to strike a basic between irony and sincerity – and what that means on a larger scale in terms of what it means to take part in an identity built out of imagery.

Mount begins by dissecting the music video and lyrics of Lana Del Rey’s most widely known single, “Video Games,” a song inherently involved with Youtube, as both its physical elements (the music video is a collage of vintage video clips and paparazzi footage intertwined with self-shot webcam footage of the singer) and its success (the video since has garnered close to fifty million views) came from the online streaming website. Mount laments that to ask the singer if she is sincere in saying that playing video games as her idea of fun is just about as “strange [a] question to ask of a pop star” as asking “if Madonna really was a virgin, if Lady Gaga really was born that way,” and thus begins a discussion about sincerity in terms of Lana Del Rey’s image. To be honest, I was initially drawn to this article because I consider myself to be a big Lana Del Rey fan, so my familiarity with her persona and music has equipped me with prior knowledge regarding her ‘reinvention’ as well as the tension between her sincerity and her use of irony. Among her largest criticisms – that is, aside from her infamous Saturday Night Live performances – are about her image: her real name is Elizabeth Grant; she sings about hardship despite being a privileged daughter of a millionaire; and she remains ambiguous about if or if not she had plastic surgery on her lips. The appeal of Lana Del Rey as an ‘indie’ artist lies in her indulgence in all things vintage and nostalgic – her music speaks of the “old days” through dark imagery connecting to Nabokov’s Lolita – and therein lays Mount’s ongoing dissection of irony.

Mount maintains that because Lana Del Rey grounds herself as an indie artist, she therefore must always be sincere; a sentiment that is complicated by considering her 50’s American imagery is as much an image to present to the general public as the name “Lana Del Rey” is in contrast to Lizzy Grant. He then argues that the struggle between “Video Games” being ironic or sincere is that it is a performance “deliberately balanced between the two. Like in art.” He draws parallels to Lolita and argues that like Nabokov, Lana Del Rey was conscious of being both a “confession and a parody of a confession,” and that perhaps what she is attempting to achieve is Lowbrow Art – that is, something that appears to be ironic at first, but is actually sincere under its layers of sarcasm. The complication with Lana Del Rey’s image is that she caters to both realms: the construction of the image of Lana Del Rey is something devoid of sincerity while remaining absolutely sincere at the same time.

When valuing Nick Mount’s comments with respect to the sincere (or is it ironic?) montage that is the “Video Games” music video, I drew parallels to The Amazing Absorbing Boy by Rabindranath Maharaj, and how part of Samuel’s discovery of identity in Canada is hinged on a preoccupation with imagery. The gaging of sincerity or irony aside, “Video Games” on the surface level is an obvious over-indulgence in a sort of American Dream that is far before Lana’s own time, and the images, when coupled with the somber footage of her singing and with the lyrics themselves yearning for a time when things were more like a paradise, present the idea of defining oneself in terms of imagery at their disposal. In The Amazing Absorbing Boy, we find a character transplanted to a new culture whose only image of Canada is based on the unreal, dream-like images of multi-flavoured snow falling from the sky told to him by his friends who know no better than he does. As well, Sam’s imagination and constant idealization of the bleak spots of his life being like the fantastical elements of the comic books he so greatly reveres suggests that imagery, like the world found within the grainy clips of “Video Games,” is a sort of paradise left to strive for; that images hold the capacity to provide for an escape.

And in that sense, I believe that Lana Del Rey is sincere.

- Mathew Spadafora

          Amy Rutherford, like many other people in the world, is very critical and condemning of children being put in the spotlight from young ages. The reason for this criticism, however, is slightly different from that being touted from the rest of the population. Rutherford argues that hailing children as prodigies and stars is giving a title that the child in question did not earn nor deserves. She argues, by using the example of young Anna Paquin winning an Oscar, that children are merely “…chameleons of the highest order and they live to please.” Rutherford attributes Paquin’s Oscar winning performance as just following the order given to her by the producers in order to win favour and praise and not to any innate talent that the child actress might have possessed that allowed her to give such a performance.

            The author goes on to blame the adults surrounding these child stars are being enablers and taking advantage of the so-called ‘talent’ possessed by the children. Rutherford introduces readers to Aelita Andre, a little girl being hailed as a prodigal painter. Rutherford doesn’t seem to hold the same opinions as others regarding this girl’s talent or ability and accuses Aelita’s parents as “…brand[ing] her creativity,” and “…mak[ing] her into something more than an innocent, little kid who makes colourful drip paintings”. Rutherford goes on to explore to this inherent need for people to exalt these talented kids and give them the titles of prodigies. She believes this habit comes from our need to fill that void inside of us or correct the mistakes made in our own childhood that kept us from achieving the level of fame and ability being displayed by these children.

            I, unlike Rutherford, do not hold such a negative view regarding children in the spotlight for various reasons, especially concerning child actors. The ability to portray different emotions and to portray them so believably as to make those watching feel the same emotions as well is one that is not easily learnt or mastered. Having had a variety of experiences evoking a variety of emotions would, ideally, allow said ability to grow. Just for this reason child actors are something to be marvelled at; despite their lack of experience they are able to act them out and make the audience join in on their emotions and experience. 

            In order to take on many different personas successfully and believably one must have a strong hold on their own identity. A firm knowledge of their own identity is what allows actors to be able to take on so many different roles without losing sight of their original one. When one is unsure about who they are how can they be expected to let alone understand the personality of an entirely different person but also assume that personality. To put on a commendable show, like the one displayed by Anna Paquin, child actors must first be sure of themselves before they can portray a character completely different from their own.

            This same ability, or lack of, has been the cause of the mental anguish in the novels read so far. Most notably, the narrator in Soucouyant was never quite able to reconcile his Canadian self with his Caribbean self and as a result had problems understanding and, ultimately, connecting with others. He never truly saw himself as a Canadian due to his outcast label in his community and neither did he identify himself as a Caribbean since he was born and raised in Canada. His in ability to understand his own identity or make peace with his troubled psyche prevents him from making any real connections with outsiders as he has great difficulty when trying to understand them.

            The fact that children are able to achieve what some grown adults cannot must go to show their innate talent and must not be dismissed as merely following orders of the adults in order to please. 

Source: Rutherford, Amy. “She’s just A Little Girl.” Ryeberg Curated Video. 5 August 2013. Web. 16 Oct 2013. Retrieved from, http://ryeberg.com/curated-videos/shes-just-a-little-girl/

Both novels we have read in class, Soucouyant by David Chariandy and The Amazing Absorbing Boy by Rabindranath Maharaj, are stories of immigration into Canada, and the struggle of finding and identity within new experiences. Keeping with that common theme, I have chosen to write about Life and Death of Self-Portraits by Jowita Bydlowska. She explores how self-portraits can be a form of self reflection, and how it can the photographer build his or her identity, as well as being able to create a new sense of self. I am going to relate elements of the article with the novels

In Soucouyant, the struggle of finding one’s identity is more pronominally shown through the narrator piecing together the stories that his mother tells recalls in moments of clarity during her battle with dementia. As he recalls the stories she has told him, the reader is able to piece together who the mother is and what her past is. She tells stories of her life in Trinidad, the move to Canada, her younger days as an immigrant in Toronto, meeting her husband, and many more stories that give the reader, and her son, an idea of her identity. He also uses these stories to piece together ideas of Trinidad, in the hopes that it will help him create a sense of identity with it, as it is as part of his family heritage. The problem with this process is that his mother’s illness causes an element of doubt in all of the stories she tells. There is not way of being able to tell whether the stories are authentic, or whether they are ramblings caused by the dementia. There are no archives that can be dug into, or concrete proof of the events that his mother is talking about, so the narrator struggles in his quest of piecing together his mother’s identity as well as his own.

In the article written by Jowita Bydlowska, she features a video about a man named Jeff Harris. It is the story of how he takes a self-portrait everyday of his life and how the process of doing so has influenced his life. Taking a picture of himself every day has created a concrete timeline of his life, to which he is able to go back and trace specific moments or memories that he has about his life. Each photograph tells a story, and unlike the protagonist’s mother in the novel, they are specific, and clear on what they are about.

Video Link: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/01/03/jeff-harris-self-portraits/

It is especially important to him once he becomes diagnosed with pelvic cancer. He had to go through several hard times due to his illness, yet he still took a picture of himself every day to document it. I am a strong believer in past experiences shaping our present selves. I find it extremely important to be able to remember events that have had a significant impact in our lives in order to learn and grow from them properly. Keeping proper documentation, and archiving those moments can be a tremendous help in keeping track on one’s identity. It is shown well in the video of Jeff Harris’ story. With the self-portraits he takes, he can remember who he was before his illness, and remind himself that he is still that same person, and that his cancer has not taken over his life, and changed who he is as a person.

There are major events in one’s life that can cause someone to doubt their identity, or realize that they have not completely formed one yet. Being diagnosed with cancer, as well as less serious events such as a break up, can cause someone to completely rethink about who they are as a person, as events such as these can drastically change your life. In The Amazing Absorbing Boy, the protagonist named Sam is forced to immigrate to Canada from the Caribbean after the death of his mother. Both the death of his mother and the culture shock that came with moving into a completely different country, as well as the added loneliness that came with the rejection of his father, caused him to initially struggle with finding that it meant to be “Canadian”, and finding out how he fit in in this new country. Sam slowly built an identity for himself by familiarizing himself with the area in which he lived in and by talking to people in similar situations as his own.

Jowita Bydlowska also goes through a significant event that causes her to reconsider her life, which started with becoming pregnant with her son. “Until then I was just your average vain young woman who occasionally snapped photos of herself pouting this way or that. Now I was in a body that was nothing like the one I used to identify with. The body seemed to be undergoing a tremendous physical change along with my psyche.” (Bydlowska, 2012). She explains the experience as a way of noticing life for the first time, as it was growing in her. Once her son was born, she went through another change. For the first time, she started noticing how much she had gotten old; she no longer saw the young woman she thought she was. To cope with this sudden change of outlook on life, she began taking self-portraits every day. “I wanted to document the present day me for the future me, to be able to look back and get a glimpse into the process of dying that is life.” (Bydlowksa, 2012).

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfBi5r7l8OU#t=43

Much like the previous example, documenting one’s past proves to be an excellent way of learning to build a new identity. Many say that it is bad to live in the past, however I believe that there is no way to truly know who you are unless you are aware of your past, and that you accept it as at a part of yourself. Much like the protagonists in both novels, both of these people who take self-portraits every day are reflecting on the good and bad parts of their life, but instead of letting it dictate who they are they are growing from it and rebuilding a new identity because of it.

          Jowita Bydlowska frames her “Ryeberg” in a cautionary sense that sheds light on the inherent danger of future generations, and their apparent empowerment they have in shifting market values, effecting capitalism and growth, and essentially being the determining factor in a company’s success or failure. The video she cites, titled “We Are The Future” is an empowering advertisement utilizing young boys and girls to dictate to the viewer, presumably the current leaders of the marketing industry, to adapt to “Smart tailored content… [and] You better embed everything that is featured with additional information”, or else face an inevitable downfall at their hands           She does not draw on any sort of literary influence aside from the second video in her essay, a trailer for the Children of The Corn, a film adaptation of a Stephen King book where kids “eat your brains”. Her interpretation of the first video advertisement is a pessimistic one that frames the future in a cynical sense where the children of today will be the powerful, the rich, and the affluent members of society tomorrow. Her tone and the hostile interpretation of this possibility is not unfounded in fact - the advance of technology is rampant. Every year many phones, cameras, websites, and intuitive social networking platforms are released to the public, they go viral, and the start to arguably define internet and media culture. Platforms such as Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and the streamlining of these onto numerous platforms – Facebook Mobile, Skype Mobile, etc. Having all of these resources in the palm of one’s hands makes it easy for the consumer to connect, and it also gives a company a steady series of platforms to advertise.

Image used from: http://www.alleywatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/multifarious_marketing.jpg           In addition to the functional benefits of the rapid advance of technology, there is also a considerable (and probably obvious) benefit in the way people connect with others. Instead of having to gallop on horseback for three days to see a family member in the province next door, the advance of technology allowed people to communicate without being physically beside a person. An important question to ask would be: What is the effect this information age induced worldliness has on a country’s identity; specifically a Canadian identity? First it is important to try to define a Canadian identity – something that has been attempted by numerous Canadian authors; more recently including diaspora narratives such as The Amazing Absorbing Boy or Soucouyant. In these narratives, there seems to be a consistent emphasis on the displaced individual, leaving their centre of origin, being forced to adapt to a country that is sometimes hostile towards immigrants, sometimes inviting. Canada, when framed in this way becomes something of a central hub of world culture – a place where cultures meet and intermingle yet when viewed individually seem disconnected from their original home country.

          If a diaspora narrative is based on permanent displacement, what will this increase in connectivity, marketing, social networking mean for future generations, not unlike the young people in “We Are The Future”, perhaps coming to Canada for the first time? If Bydlowska’s argument rings true – and the next generation become the powerhouse dictating market trends, vying for “augmented reality”, then the figurative distance between the homeland, and Canada would ultimately be shortened. This might slightly lessen anxieties caused by leaving a country, it could lead to easier access to revisiting the homeland, and it would help people in some situations to not become totally cut off from parts, or all of their family. The young generations are learning how to use technology, and they are incorporating computers and gadgets into their everyday lives at an earlier age, and these means of communication transcend geographical borders and contribute to a Canadian identity that not only currently accepts and embraces multiculturalism, but is also plugged into a massive quantity of media, foreign countries, and information streamed through technology and social networking.

The first thing that caught me in this essay was Yamamoto’s assertions about the candy tin in Isao Takahata’s movie Grave of the Fireflies. She talks about its significance in the opening scenes of the movie and seems to assert that there is candy inside it when, in actuality, there should not be candy inside it but the boy’s sister’s ashes. Unless this was instead some kind of intentional metaphor, using an incorrect fact to start an essay should be easily noticeable and a grave error for someone who might be concerned with professionalism. This could possibly show and be part of her tendency to ignore things such as facts or context in her interest in scenes that she considers nostalgic as many of the scenes that she cites in this essay seem to have little to do with her life and therefore should not be invoking actual nostalgia.

Other scenes in larger works that she references are from Pixar’s Ratatouille and Marcel Proust‘s In Search of Lost Time that explicitly have characters experience nostalgia by recalling meals that they had during their childhood. The next two works that she cites are both commercials and they both deal with relationships between fathers and their children and Asian people. The next two videos that she cites are from YouTube. The first one of that also deals with a relationship between a father and his child while the second one dealt with metaphorical fathers and their child.

All the works that she cites can be considered to be about familial relations as the meals in the second and third examples were made by relatives and the first opening example would need external context that is not given in the essay. The familial relation in that would be the fact that the candy tin is a keepsake from the boy’s sister who had died. All of the examples cited seem to end positively as she says that “I identify all too viscerally with other people’s agonies and misfortunes, especially when they are shown to be overcome, and especially when they involve parents and children.” Even the first example given, although it should be known that it ends badly, seems to try to hint something positive by saying that “the dull rattling is somehow the sound of relief, the promise of an end to his suffering.”

All of the examples that she cites deal with familial relations and don’t seem to be things that she personally relates to in other ways as she does not cite having similar events in her own life. Because of this, it is possible that what she seeks is not quite nostalgia in general but is a desire to connect to her parents. She said that even when she was growing up she experienced “this manifest longing for elsewhere. And for the past.” even though she would not have experienced those events. This desire could come from “the recounting of how hard things had been in Japan when my parents were kids” so her parents would be the ones experiencing nostalgia rather than her.

Her desire, when she was growing up, to connect with her parents’ and their past could be similar to David Chariandy’s Soucouyant where the protagonist tries to connect with his mother’s past. Both Yamamoto and Soucouyant’s protagonist grew up in Canada with their parents being immigrants to Canada. They would both try to connect with their parents who grew up with different livelihoods than them so they would have little inherent idea or experience about their parents’ bouts of nostalgia.

Her “inclination towards the sentimental, towards the weightiness and importance of [her] familial obligations…is something [her] parents passed on to [her]” and would show how close she was to them. Her seeking of these sorts of moments may not actually quite be general nostalgia but a sign of her parents’ legacy in passing down their values to her and of the importance she puts on her personal relationship with them.

Yamamoto, Maiko. “Nostalgica.” Ryeberg. Ryeberg Curated Video., 1 Mar. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2013. <http://ryeberg.com/curated-videos/nostalgica/>

link to original image source (now broken): http://img04.pixiv.net/img/syounen_no_uta/198761.jpg

       Technology in Canada has become increasingly important to the way history, individual voices, and memories are perceived and internalized by Canadians. Though various media fads have allowed Canadians to have a “shared experience,” a theme that Canadians have struggled to definitively flesh out for many years has recently been accomplished via YouTube. Since its birth in 2005, YouTube has been a medium for millions of Canadians to share their experience of growth, heritage, and independence – and in the process – quickly realizing that there are much more similarities than differences in our multicultural fabric. YouTube has been an outlet for many Canadians to share a new kind of literature for a new generation: video literature for an electronic-phenomenon-crazed culture.

     Because of YouTube, we have laughed together at Mayor Ford’s constant blunders and football tumbles, cried when we saw the sheer destruction and devastation of the Lac-Mégantic derailment, and even celebrated when Team Canada won gold in Vancouver at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The ability to upload, view and share videos of an experience has united the nation and has allowed everyone to view, experience, and react to the same video and issue at the same time. However, this movement of understanding the Canadian experience by not having a single one, but rather a series of shared experiences available at any given moment has also complicated human connection and presence outside of cyberspace.

     This theme of “the multitude” and “information overload” is common in Canadian texts and literary traditions. In Joe Cobden’s essay on Ryeberg titled “The YouTube,” Cobden speaks of the issue of the collective story and the simultaneous burdening of copious amounts of information. Cobden stresses the burdening-nature of social media as an intrepid force working its way into your habits – controlling the way you behave and communicate. It is almost as if you have been bitten by the bug – the YouTube bug. You know, telling yourself at 4 a.m. that you will go to sleep in five minutes – you say groggily, eyes burning from the computer screen’s glare – but you just have to see what that silly kitten will do in that darn tissue box*. Silly kitten. “Let me just click on this other similar video,” you say 15 minutes later… Just. One. More. Video. Then boom: it is Monday morning 9:20 a.m. and you are now late for New Writing in Canada just because you could not control the urge to watch another video. It is a slippery slope, my friends.

(*For educational purposes only, of course, the kitty and a tissue box video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYOENjZVbsU)

     Cobden’s article is particularly interesting because it constructs a new idea of a shared Canadian experience by way of a new medium: YouTube. Cobden begins his essay with an anecdote of peer-pressure; this sparks his shift from playing video games and watching television towards the YouTube to seem “busier and smarter and more attractive.” It is an interesting image that emerges from Cobden’s description of his shift from television to the Internet. As this “old-fashioned” form of media (television) seemed to be stagnant in content, there was a movement towards the Internet for the latest in news and information and its quick and easy access by a new generation wanting more from every second of the day. The transition from one screen to another is a poignant image that everyone has experienced together and will continue to be a trend for every upcoming generation.

     Technology, or social platforms, in Cobden’s essay are addressed as a noun, with a capital letter and a subtle mention of its importance on its own. There are a multitude of similes of how sickening the capital “I” Internet makes the author feel. In true Canadian reference, the Internet to Cobden makes his mouth “taste like it has dirty pennies in it.” As if time spent on the Internet has a sickening quality to it which commodifies the viewer into insignificance. Similarly, Cobden nicknames YouTube as “the YouTube” to create a space between the viewer and content and acknowledges the artificiality of the platform itself. It is a simple yet effective way to create disassociation between a virtual and real life.

     The essay continues with two situations that are juxtaposed. The Internet junkie Cobden’s addiction to the Tube has caused social anxiety and a rift between his friends who are not as amused by the constant soliciting of YouTube videos. The idea of Tube addiction is parallel with the image of his hipster, outdoorsy neighbours who are “attractive, strong, healthy…. [and] too busy having sex.” They don’t spend hours on the YouTube each day, sending videos to their friends through emails or on Facebook. They have zero interest in the performative nature of the cyber world. Nature and its healing and isolating quality is a prominent theme in Canadian literature and has become a literary tradition. Cobden adds another element to the typical Canadian binary of man versus nature; it is now man and woman versus nature versus the rapidity of technology.

     Cobden’s essay touched on an important topic that I believe constructs a Canadian identity in a modern sense. The ability to live and experience vicariously through videos or “voyeuristic horseshit” as Cobden eloquently phrases it, is important to note when understanding the fascination of other social media platforms, but also speaks to a new kind of interest in art and literature. YouTube substitutes for actual experiences, giving way to a new genre of literary tradition: the voyeuristic video.

     There is a trend towards creating independent internet presence, as YouTube has cleverly hung onto in their slogan “Broadcast Yourself.” Yeah sure, we exist in real life, but it’s not official until you have internet presence. It provides a new, interactive, gratifying way to share stories and to comment on them. I think Canadians feed into this trend because for many years we have struggled to figure out what makes “Canada” Canada. But with YouTube, we are now able to visually present ourselves as individuals – as Canadians – not just a giant country. It encourages self-representation in a visually stimulating way. Literature has shifted from a once oral, to written, and now has reverted back to an oral and auditory culture in such a clever way. Now, we can all know. YouTube feeds that craving: that urge to consume information, to watch videos that have no direct benefit to us but to fulfill that carnal urge to simply feel relevant and know it. This is how the landscape of literature has changed in most recent years.

     Seeing what Cobden’s neighbours are involved with, as stonemasons and outdoorsy folk who are not bound to their Wi-Fi-strength or the latest in social media trends, prompts the author to repeat “Fuck you. I’m going outside while I still can.” Cobden ends with a vow to no longer harass people with another video that will potentially – but not really – change their lives. The author speaks of his frustration with the Internet and YouTube, but admits that he will continue to use various platforms after this essay. The idea of the uncanny is an appropriate term to describe this generation’s relationship with social media. We are disgusted yet attracted to technology and its liberating yet isolating potential. And I think this is becoming an increasingly important theme to Canadian literature and identity.

     The trope of the “Other” in Canadian literature is a post-colonial fascination that still persists in the modern era and has trickled into social media platforms making it easier to track. Whether the “Other” are French Canadians, First Nations peoples, or even immigrants, where individuals fit into the multicultural “melting pot,” or more recently, the cultural “fabric” of Canada, is what social media platforms like YouTube seek to map and voice. Every Canadian has a story, why not broadcast yourself?

- Alicia Jagsarran

Link to Joe Cobden’s “The YouTube” here:

http://ryeberg.com/curated-videos/the-youtube/

Original image source link here:

Jingwen (Grace) Xie

ENG357F

October 16, 2013

Professor Siobhan O’Flynn

                         Review on “L'Étranger” by Eliza Robertson

       Eliza Robertson’s “L'Étranger”  (The Stranger) is one of the five runner-ups for the CBC Short Story Prize. “L’Étranger” makes a contribution in the context of Canadian Literature because it portrays the changing dynamics of living in a multicultural place, conveys a sense of loneliness through its characters (Irina and  “I”), and draws on the aspect of loss like many readings that students have surveyed in the course New Writings in Canada. Robertson engages with her readers fully by using a first person narrative. The story would be more meaningful for its Canadian readers if it took place somewhere in Canada instead of Marseille.

       Like Samuel in The Amazing Absorbing Boy, who is always meeting new people, and saying bye to other people in Regent Park. “I” and Irina in “L’Étranger” also deal with a changing social dynamic. “I” and Irina were both new to France:  Irina does not refer to France as home, and “I” is not comfortable living in a new environment (with slugs and a churlish roommate). Robertson deepens these feelings by having Irina leave France and  “I” does not really get a proper chance to say goodbye. Similarly, in The Amazing Absorbing Boy Samuel did not get a chance to say proper goodbyes to the old timers and Dilara. Both cases suggest that a piece of Canadian writing today should capture the changing dynamics of people living in a multicultural place. Robertson successfully accomplished this through the relationship between her main characters “I” and Irina.

       Robertson also conveys a sense of estrangement and loneliness through “I” and Irina. Loneliness is expressed through Irina: she is alone in France and had to allow a stranger to feel her breast. “I” also exemplifies the loneliness at the end when she is trying to eat everything after Irina had left. Estrangement and loneliness are themes present in “The Amazing Absorbing Boy” and “Soucouyant”. “L’Étranger” echoes these themes and hence, again shares the characteristics of the Canadian literature.

       “L’Étranger” also reflects the yearning to preserve memories; “I” still tries to hold on to the memories left after her roommate Irina leaves. In “Soucouyant”, the son tries to capture the last memory of his mother by staying in the basement for a while. Samuel in The Amazing Absorbing Boy tries to savor the memories by accepting, learning and constantly growing alongside of them. In comparison, “I” tries to savor her memories by the act of eating the food Irina left for her. The food at the end of the story can be interpreted as memory itself, and by eating the food “I” traps the memories in her body, which then emphasizes her loneliness.

       I really enjoy the fact that this narrative is written in the first-person perspective. It allows readers to be fully immersed in the story. The story immediately invites readers into the inside struggles of the main character “I” by using the first person. As “I” feels irritated by slugs and by Irina, readers feel the same way as her. As “I” overeat in order to drown her sorrow from Irina’s leaving, the readers share in her feelings. Moreover, being a Torontonian for five years myself, the title ““L’Étranger” (The Stranger) immediately catches my attention. I understand the loneliness and annoyance “I” feels when she is living so close with Irina (in the same apartment), while feeling so far from her (they do not even talk to each other) , and the estrangement described by uncle Boysie  and Aunty Umbrella in The Amazing Absorbing Boy , where people do not talk to each other on the street, and they do not meet one’s eye. This estrangement is an unavoidable part of being a Canadian due to its multiculturalism. People from all over the world come to Canada looking for their own new beginnings (immigrants and refugees) or to fulfill their long dreamed holidays (tourists). Each person has his or her separate goals and destinations in life. Hence, the new emerging Canadian literature should be able to capture these aspects: the estrangement, the loneliness, and things are always changing. Eliza Robertson did a great job on capturing these characteristics if Canadian writing by using a first-person narrative.

       I feel due to the different elements described above, “L’Étranger” is a piece of Canadian Literature, and it would benefit greatly if the origin of the story is Canada. Although she said in her interview that “L’Étranger” is inspired by her time in Toulouse (France), the story would fit into the landscape of Canada perfectly, whereas reading things about France can imply a different scenario for the readers. As a Canadian myself, I feel a bit disconnected when reading things about France. Using the location Marseille undermines the closeness a reader feels when he or she is reading this story in first person point of view. Also due to the face that this competition is “Canada Writes” hosted by the Canadian Broadcasting Cooperation, it would be fitting if this story had sprouted in a city like Toronto or Vancouver, and the storyline would fit in as well because Toronto and Vancouver offers the same diversity; they are all a place for many immigrants and refugees. In her interview with the Canadian Broadcast Cooperation (CBC) Eliza says: “Vancouver Island is stunning. The landscape feeds most of my writing. This story, however, sprouted from France. I did in fact live with a churlish housemate. Temporarily. No Slugs, but it was enough to spark a story. The setting was inspired by my time in Toulouse (France), where I lived in a greasy hole not unlike the one described (“Q&A with Eliza Robertson”). Perhaps the author got the theme of her story (estrangement, loneliness, and dynamic changing environment) from her time in Vancouver, and the story line (dirty apartment and a churlish roommate) is from France.

       As a conclusion, this short story stays true to its Canadian roots by showing a sense of loneliness, estrangement and a changing social dynamic. It also touches readers by its first person perspective.  However, the story would benefit if it had took place in Canada.

                                                Works Cited:

"Canada Writes - The Shortlist: Q&A with Eliza Robertson." CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2013.

The link to  “L’Étranger” and its original image is here: http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2013/03/letranger-by-eliza-roberston.html

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