#eng357

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

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.

    I came across Miriam Toews piece on Ryeberg the other day. After reading for the first time I left it alone, not thinking much of it. The piece seemed more about the power of silence rather than identity and self-image. However the intrigue it sparked in me caused me to go back and reread the work. That is when I realized I really liked it. What I love about it is it is not complex and it is not really about the author herself. More about her encounters with significant people that came in and out of her life and their struggles with their self-image and identity and how she tries to understand and accept that.

    The piece is not about anger or resentment or indifference towards these people either. It is about understanding. Understanding because that is the only thing that should try and be done in situations we don’t understand. Toews refers back to a young girl named Frieda that she met in her childhood who had a term Toews refers to as selective mutism. However, as she goes into details about Frieda, Toews doesn’t go on to describe her misunderstanding of the girl but rather her attempt to understand her and identify with her. Toews piece is excellent because she explores the thoughts of children through times of uncertainty both through school and home life and the innocence children have when it comes to understanding someone who might be different than them. She seems to say that we should strive to have the understanding we had as children as we grow older.

    Much like The Amazing Absorbing Boy by Rabindranath Maharaj, the main character, Samuel has fresh new eyes and a new mind like that of an innocent child being a new immigrant to Canadian. Being new to Canada Samuel is untainted much like children often are in early stages of their lives. As Maharaj’s character grows, the innocence dissolves bringing forth a new form mind, full of influences from the outside world. Toews introduces characters much like this in her piece that cannot identify with Frieda and her selective mutism. They are nearing the age of teenagers and seem to have lost their understanding and acceptance they had as children. Because of their mind set and refusal to try and understand Frieda, they resort to violence against her. In this way, Toews piece examines the challenges of becoming a young adult and the struggle it is to maintain that understanding and acceptance we have as young children. Toews shows that in most cases, we tend to give up and conform to how the world wills us to. In doing so, we lose our identity.

    As Canadians, we are viewed as a multicultural mosaic, a country full of accepting, polite and patient people, but as Toews shows in her piece that is not so. We conform to negative views and thoughts and bring them into our lives making them apart of who we are, completely changing our self-image. In Toews piece, newcomers beat up Frieda because she is from a different county, because they don’t understand her and because she acts differently than they do. While physical violence is not as common among adults towards immigrants, verbal comments and judgmental thoughts abound in the minds of adults towards people they view as not Canadian. Toews piece shows how the ideal Canadian would be someone who acts like a child, in the sense that they simply would try to understand and accept the unknown or unfamiliar. Toews piece tries to point out that being a Canadian is about finding your identity and being individual but also learning to be accepting of the other people around you who are individual as well.

     One of the clips Toews includes in her piece is about a young actress who becomes silent, practicing selective mutism. She is in a room with a doctor who says to her that she understands why she chose to just be silent. She calls it the “tug of war--what you are with others and who you really are”. This is an excellent clip illustrating the human struggle with identity and the struggle Canadians are often faced with. Should you be who you really are or what is expected of you? To be who you really are would be different. It would be something people might not understand therefore the best option seems to be to conform. The doctor in the clip talks about how the silence is a way the actress doesn’t have to “play any roles” or make any “false gestures” or faces. It is her way of shutting the world out and herself in, perhaps in an attempt to find her true self without all the outside world influences judging her for who she should be as opposed to who she wants to be. 

By Akaila Cowell

Toews, Miriam. “Silence.” Ryeberg Curated Video. 18 March 2012. Web. 1 Oct 2013. Retrieved from, http://ryeberg.com/curated-videos/silence/

Video: Ingmar Bergman, "Persona" (1966)

         My group incorporated the theme 'Remembering the Future' into the analysis of our short stories. This included observing current issues presented and determining which aspects of the story defined what it means to be a Canadian, while also taking care to note features which allow the text to present itself in a contemporary or new way. 

     In the short story "Snapshots from My Father's Euthanasia Road Trip," written by Meghan Adams, the narrator is put in a difficult and bizarre position, causing her to question and, in some senses, classify her identity in terms of setting and geography. The narrator, Caro, finds herself in a peculiar position as she embarks on a father-daughter road trip with a strange end result: as the father resolves to take his life by jumping off of the Don Valley Parkway bridge, and asks his daughter to drive him to his destination. 

     Though this short story was written several years ago, it still contains 'new' topics that are very significant in Canada today. Euthanasia is described as the process of ending ones' life to cease all pain and suffering. Currently in Canada euthanasia can be classified into two categories: Active and passive assisted-suicide. Passive euthanasia entails allowing an individual to die through withholding resources, whereas active includes someone purposefully causing the individuals' death. In the story Caro acts as means of active euthanasia to her father, as she helps him drive to the destination that he wishes to end his life.  

     Through the story, the reader is exposed to Caro's inner thoughts and most importantly memories. Caro appears to shape herself as an individual through her memories, which almost all have to specifically do with place. The short story makes explicit references to distinct places all across Canada from New Brunswick to Toronto; alluding to her memories. For example, she speaks of her mother dying in the hospital and makes a reference to the hotel she stayed at in Saint John the night her mother died. She also refers to her Great Aunt, who is presumed to have killed herself in the Bay of Fundy. It seems that Caro, as a character, seems to shape her Canadian identity through her experiences and most specifically her memories, which appear to be bound to specific places. 

By: Sarah Dickson

Source:

Adams, Meghan . "Snapshots from My Father's Euthanasia Road Trip, or Esau." CBC Books - Canada Writes . N.p., 11 Aug 2011. Web. 16 Oct 2013. <http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2011/08/snapshots-from-my-fathers-euthanasia-road-trip-or-esau.html>

Image Source:

The Three Times Rule by Becky Blake

 In the short story ‘The Three Times Rule’ written by Becky Blake (the winner of the 2012 CBC “Canada Writes” short-story prize), the narrator describes in a compact series of dialogue between a female and male figure and the internal and melodramatic struggle that arises from detaching oneself from the already-deadened (and perhaps geographically distant) past. The female character faces a heart-wrenching struggle in despair when she realises that she has been emotionally trapped in her carousel-like recollections of an “on-again off-again” casually sexual relationship with her friend, to whom she comes for physical and perhaps emotional unwinding, but in return he does not love her in the way she hopes and desires.  

The conceptual engendering of the female character’s own aging in response to how she is viewed and dehumanised as a woman as well as her cynicism about life remains an existential crisis in the framework of the story that begins to asphyxiate readers’ expectations from its very first line of conversing: “Euphemisms are for [expletive].”  Certainly this statement foreshadows the happy-sad duplicity of the story’s ending, which is an ending that teeters on a balance beam of learning to adapt and accept situations as they arise and fall in time.

Blake paints a portrait of what adaptation might be defined as by her female protagonist in very gently layered, yet coarsely textured brushstrokes of how adaptation to the unfamiliar is a frightening and inevitable circumstance in life that cannot be circumvented. Drawing on longing experiences of imagined yesteryears (“fantasizing”) is one of the fascinating snapshots of adaptation that Blake may have intended to embed implicitly within her work. Cultural and interpersonal adaptation is a part of life that transcends Canada’s national, social, and physical borders, since such a broad scope of defining the self focuses so sharply on the most vulnerable parts of each person's reality and what is perceived as real. Throughout the story there are implications that both characters have managed to find themselves physically involved with one another in time, though the female is perceived to be emotionally anchored to her fantasies of what their relationship actually was not – and defragments and relegates the insecurities of her emotive responses to her hyper-misinterpretations of ice skating with a person of the opposite sex (and in minor detail, the greenhouse effect and how it effects the livelihoods of Canadian moth species).   

The beauty of this text shows not only for and within its prosody, but also in its ability to capture one sensitive pastime that is cemented within Canadian identity, which is the perennial act of enjoying winter ice sports; the heightened recollected senses of smelling things and occurrences that have long since expired within nature (“ patch[es] of soft fur”); and finally, how this story in itself is more Canadian than it reads - if only the reader tenderly embraces their reading of the story as such.  A discourse and thought to take away from reading Blake’s story is that Canadian literature is becoming a delivered marvel (as we can see with the success Alice Munro’s recent Nobel Literature Prize win) that does not necessarily have to have spelled-out tropes and allegories to Canada, but as an art form, would do well to be accepted, disseminated, and read rather increasingly – both with and without adaptation.   

 Christine Odunlami

Story selection hyperlink source: http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2013/03/the-three-times-rule-by-becky-blake.html

Inter-media links, accompaniments, and things to enjoy:

Brief interview with Becky Blake by Open Book Toronto:

http://www.openbookontario.com/news/writing_cbc_short_story_prize_edition_becky_blake

Ice Skating at the Rideau Canal, Ottawa, Ontario Canada (a compilation video):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFONao8ayxY

“Embraceable You”, as performed by Ella Fitzgerald: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF1yQMPMEMo

"Lover's Game" by Geographer (song):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtqygWkyy8Y

The Greenhouse Effect in Canada: