Contemporary Canadian Literature and Film: Nation, Race and Gender

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Contemporary Canadian Literature and
FilmNation, Race and Gender

• Unit 2
• Gender, Race and Surviving Trauma or Apocalypse

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Contemporary Canadian Literature and
FilmNation, Race and Gender Unit 1

• Gender, Nation and Global Culture
• Power, Memory and Gender in Media
• Internal and External Boundaries
• Two Types of Globalization
• Boundary-Breaking and Boundary Setting
• Trauma and Healing
• Identity Crisis in Teenage and Old Age
• Body, Gender Identity and Consumer Society
• Body, Race and Gender Identity

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Contemporary Canadian Literature and
FilmNation, Race and Gender Unit 2

• Gender, Race and Surviving Trauma or Apocalypse
• Caribbean Canadian in Toronto
• Survival in the Postmodern Apocalyptic City
• East-Asian Canadian -- Racial Prejudice Past and
  Present
• Memory and Fragmentary Identity
• Rituals of Reconciliation and Reconstruction
• Language, Race and Identity Chinese Canadian

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The Caribbean Diaspora in Toronto

• Rude and The Canadian Experience

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Outline

• History of Immigration and Multiculturalism
• The Caribbean community at Toronto.
• Rude
• Canadian Experience

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Multiculturalism ? Mosaic as Canadian national
identity

• The 1981 census was ...the first to allow
  respondents to declare their maternal as well as
  their paternal heritage, which provides a limited
  opportunity to reveal more than one ethnic
  background.  
• Multiculturalism Act (1988)
• ? controversies 1) aborigines included or not 2)
  ghettoization? (clips 1, 2 from Toronto the
  Meeting Place)

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The Caribbean immigration to Canada Reasons

• Reasons 1960s -- Canadian immigration laws were
  reformed in order to base criteria for admission
  on individual qualifications rather than on
  countries of origin.
• Great Britain was closing its doors to massive
  migration from the non-white Commonwealth
  consequently, many West Indians who would
  normally have migrated from the Caribbean to
  Britain have been taking advantage of Canadas
  liberalized policies.

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The Caribbean immigration to Canada Early
Immigrants

• Students ? e.g. Austin Clarke
• maids Jobs for women as
• domestics and babysitters are almost
• always available despite downtrends
• in the general economy.   Access to employment
  for men is somewhat more difficult.
• ? inequality in males and females financial
  abilities
• (e.g. Rude)

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The Caribbean immigrants in Toronto Racism

• Examples of Racism
• institutional racism -- the policies and
  practices of an organization are not attuned to
  their needs and interests, with the result that
  the migrants do not derive benefits equal to that
  of other Canadians. 
• e.g. 1. Disregard for their African and Caribbean
  heritage in the curriculum of schoool and
  postsecondary institutions 2. Canadian
  Experience
• subtle messages and cues signal the dislike or
  lack of welcome to a migrant of colour.
• Brutal examples police brutality. Clip 3 the
  Caribbeans

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Clement Virgo Director

• From Jamaica went to Toronto as a teenager--at
  the age of 11. He honed his visual sensibility
  during his five years working in the fashion
  industry as a window display artis.
• Sex I like making films that have sex and
  bodies and all those very human things in them.
  I think we are so hung up on sex that we dont
  know how to enjoy it.
• Race Virgo sees racial issues as symptoms of the
  larger human condition. . . .Things spiral
  inwards in Virgo films.. . (Monk 207)

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Starting Questions

• What are the problems Luke, Maxine and Jordan
  face respectively, and how do they solve them?
  (e.g. Maxine Maxine and Jordan)
• What are the functions of Rude, the pirate radio
  DJ? (clip 1, 2 )
• What is the style of this film and how are
  symbols used?

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Rude Setting

• 1. Time frame From Good Friday to Easter Sunday.
• Space in Toronto
• Three main stories
• Luke apartment house, drug den, a wall,
• Maxine apartment room, camera
• Jordan boxing ring, locker room and shower
  room.
• Rude dark radio space from Zulu nation to
  Mohawke nation
• There seems to be no walls in each zone and the
  previous scene will skillfully change to the next.

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General Lukes Family

• A.The Power Relationship between Luke and Jessie 
• 1. Luke a drug dealer just released from
  jail, has nothing at all.
•    2. Jessica a female cop, has power, money,
  and a home.

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Eg. Husband and Wifes Relationship

• a. Jessica is the one who decides whether
• Luke stays or leaves
• b. When Luke tells Jessica that he cant
• afford buying ice cream to his son,
• Jessica says that she could give him
• money as long as he asks.
• c. Jessica saves Luke when Yankee
• threatens to kill him at the end.

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Luke and Johnny

• B. Father-son Relationship
• Luke tries to rebuild his relationship with his
  son and be a good father, but he seems cant
  satisfy his childs needs
• 1. Luke doesnt know how to take care of
  his son. (The cooking scene)

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Luke and Johnny

• 2. Luke can do nothing with Johnnys education
  and inferiority complex.
• 3. Luke cant even provide the basic
  material needs for Johnny.

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Luke? social problemsdrug dealing

• Yankee You like to suck my dick?

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Luke, Reese and Drug Business

• Yankee asks Luke to be in charge says Reece
  cannot be trusted, cannot even live till the
  thirty.? destroys Reece

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Maxine

• A. Love relationship
• 1.  The symbolic meaning of the camera.
• 2. The objectification of female body.

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Maxine camera objectification
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Maxine (2)

• B. Cultural Identity
• 1. The myth of metropolis.
• 2. The symbolic meaning of the image of the
  little girl.

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Boxer Jordan

• A.  Homosexuality and boxing
• 1. The boxing community as an all-male
  community.
• 2. The masculinity of boxers shown in the shower
  and locker-room scene. E.g. The faggot grabbed
  my dick. in the Regent Park.
• (e.g. next slide)

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Boxer Jordan

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Boxer Jordan (2)

• B.  Jordons state
• 1.    His difficult situation among gay bashers.
• 2.    His expression of guilt through punch bag
  and boxing with his friend
• 3.    His break-through by kissing his friend and
  allowing the man in the park to beat him.

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Boxer Jordan (2)

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Rudes Function and Role

• Dah Poet/Prophet  1.rhythmic intonation
  monologue  2.calling forth the lost identities
  of
• Caribbean   immigrants/black
  diaspora  3.foreseeing the future mentioning
  about ArmageddonFifty thousand is the number
  of boys and girls, dogs and bitches. Fifty zero
  zero zero thousand puppies will be conceived on
  this beautiful Friday night

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Boys and girls, the lion is loose tonight. If
youve seen his Majesty, give him a call. 

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If you lost the song of your disenfranchised
diasporic voice, give me a call.Maybe I have it.
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No one wants to hear your voice, bitch, why dont
you give it back. Cause theres nobody want any
love, too.
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Rudes call for awakening

• Don't recognize my voice can't see my face?
  Many faces, isolation, isolated by a fragile
  infantile fantasy.Many sleep with eyes open,
  coping with the pain that stays in the brain.
• Don't recognize my voice can't see my face?Rock
  the light pace, feel the blood waves.Treading
  motor, a tragic existence is a coexistence.Fight
  with spiritual persistence.
• Don't recognize my voice can't see my face?A
  kiss of dysfunctional illusion, fusion of silence
  plus night confusion, sweet and sour
  delusion.Laws of survival resist the self-rival,
  self-righteous primal desire to see, to feel, to
  buy, to find the bland center of
  identity.Reality.Reality? Two-dimensional
  sensuality.To touch you is not to know you.

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Rudes call for awakening

• Don't recognize my voice can't see my face?The
  past is set for me destructive destiny.Self-fulfil
  ling prophecy.Oh, the tragedy.Another ocean
  swallows the island, treading water, a tragic
  existence fight with spiritual persistence.
• Don't recognize my voice can't see my face?A
  kiss of mental intrusion, physical exclusion,
  inaccessible solution, seeking spiritual
  evolution.Voided eyes, embraced by a lie, coated
  in self-despise.
• physical exclusion, inaccessible solution,
  seeking spiritual evolution.Voided eyes, embraced
  by a lie, coated in self-despise. I wonder, I
  ponder, I imagine -- if I shall rise from my
  sublime demise? Don't recognize my voice?"
  

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Rudes call for awakening

• Oh, ya, shouts from the mother ship have just
  been heard.. . . Keep yourself on the prize and
  youll live to see the dawn.
• Is this mother-fucker what you really want?

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Foretelling the end of Western civ.

• Tonight we worship the golden calf.Eat the sacred
  codes and speak in recognized tones. 
• Tonight the uncircumcised participate in the
  intercourse.A music is for the youth, for they
  shall inherit the earth.
• Tonight its gonna be like the last night of the
  world.Propaganda and mind bombs rule. Armageddon
  has begun.

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Self-destruct

• Luke confronts Yankee, who kidnaps Johnny,
• Jordon goes and get beaten up by the gay man who
  his group beat up before
• Maxine

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Rude Final Call for rebirth

• Its Easter Sunday morning.The sun is rising, the
  sun has risen.And the mother ship is leaving.Our
  majesty has forgiven us, and our senile sins are
  washed away.You just heard the trumpets disguised
  as gunshots singing us home.So all aboard on our
  mother ship for those who want a chance of
  rebirth.
• Im sending out an SOS to the boys and girls that
  were taken from the mainland brought to the land
  of Mohawke and . . .Im sending out an SOS.If you
  want to reach my voice, give me a call.You know
  my number.

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Rudes Function and Role (2)

• B. Rebellious voice from the immigrants towards
  the colonizers  --criticizing the fall of "the
  Babylon"/"the land of the Morak"(sex,
  violence,isolation)
• C. The struggling of hunger/desire inside
  Caribbean immigrants' hearts  --feeling it
  everywhere through the airwaves  
  (studio--nowhere--dinning room)
• D. Announces the possibility of salvation on
  Easter Sunday. (next slide) 

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Rudes Function and Role (2)

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Symbols

• Virgo I created my own 'hood, the sort of 'hood
  where a lion could roam, where mystical
  aboriginal spirits could dance among urban,
  transported Africans."
• A. The religious imageries are mixed up with
  Caribbean folk belief.
• 1. Lion as Hail Salosea
• 2. Easter and Black Jesus
• 3. The wall with pictures (examples)
• B. The redemption appearing in the end fits the
  theme.
• 1. Sun and rebirth
• 2. Music

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Symbols the mural

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Foretelling the end of Western civ. the spirit
dancer

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Canadian Experience Structure

• 1. Preparing for the interview (dress and
  pyschological preparation his past and present
  situations in Toronto revealed.)
• P. 55 going out finally 1) subway car 2)
  elevator in the building
• Back to his apartment, talks to the actress
• Back to his room, thinks of the past and a way
  out
• Pp. 62 On a platform

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Canadian Experience Starting Questions

• Why cannot the protagonist gets his job? What
  are his problems?
• How does he finally solve his problems?