The North American entertainment industry is rapidly consolidating, and new modes of technological delivery challenge Canadian content regulations. An understanding of how Canadian culture negotiates its rapport with American genres has never been more timely. West/Border/Road offers an interdisciplinary analysis of contemporary Canadian manifestations of three American genres: the western, the border, and the road. It situates close readings of literary, film, and television narratives from both English Canada and Quebec within a larger context of Canadian generic borrowing and innovation. Katherine Ann Roberts calls upon canonical works in Canadian studies, theories of genre, and a wide range of scholarship from border studies, cultural studies, and film studies to examine how genre is appropriated and sometimes reworked and how these cultural narratives engage with discourses of contemporary Canadian nationhood. The author elucidates Guy Vanderhaeghe's rewriting of the codes of the historical western to include the trauma of Aboriginal peoples, Aritha van Herk's playful spoof on American western iconography, the politics and perils of the representation of the Canada-US border in CBC-produced crime television, and how the road genre inspires and constrains the Québécois and Canadian road movie. A reminder of the power and limitations of American genres, West/Border/Road provides a nuanced perspective on Canadian engagement with cultural forms that may be imported but never foreign.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [369]-394) and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- 303.48/271073
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- Geographic Area Code
- n-cn---
- ISBN
- 9780773553224 9780773554399
- LCCN
- F1021.2
- LCCN Item number
- R63 2018eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaBNVSL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (404 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)thg00976043 (CaOOCEL)454298
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaBNVSL
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- WEST/BORDER/ROAD 2
- Title 4
- Copyright 5
- CONTENTS 6
- Acknowledgments 8
- Introduction 12
- 1 WEST 1 Courage and Restraint in Guy Vanderhaeghe’s Western Trilogy 33
- 2 WEST 2 Stampeding Together, Sundance Style, in Aritha van Herk’s (New) West 93
- 3 BORDER 1 Post-9/11 Anxiety on the Small Screen in CBC’s Intelligence and The Border 139
- 4 BORDER 2 The Edge of America in Border Songs, Frozen River, and Canada 189
- 5 ROAD 1 Where the River Meets the Sea: The Politics of Memory in Quebec Road Narrative 240
- 6 ROAD 2 Updating the Canadian Road Movie with Hollywood Canucks 286
- Conclusion 339
- Notes 348
- References 378
- Index 404